Apple's Safari 4 browser beta for Mac OS X and Windows

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 11:50

IT Industry - Development

The forthcoming version of Apple's Safari browser sports performance improvements and several new interface features. A public beta of Safari 4 allows keen users to explore the changes and provide Apple with feedback.

The major new features in Safari 4, now available as a beta release for Mac OS X and Windows XP and Vista, are Top Sites, Cover Flow, and the Nitro JavaScript engine.

Top Sites provides previews of frequently visited web pages. It's similar to Opera's Speed Dial feature, but with up to 24 pages and a 3D layout similar to iChat's videoconferencing feature.

Apple is showing a tendency to use Cover Flow - originally an iTunes feature that spread to the Finder - wherever it makes sense. It is used in Safari 4 to visually flip through a thumbnail display of the browser history and bookmarks.

The previews in Top Sites and Cover Flow are updated whenever the page is loaded.

If you can't see Top Sites or Cover Flow under Windows, the most likely reason is that the PC's video card does not support DirectX 9.0. You won't get any warning - the new features simply don't appear.

Searching for a previously visited site is further eased by an extension to the search facility. Where it was previously restricted to URLs and page titles, the full text of visited pages is now included in search.

Faster JavaScript and more - see page 2.