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

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 25 February 2009 10:50

IT Industry - Development

Andrew Saffer of Aish Australia (a non-profit educational organisation) is much less impressed. "It crashed my machine, so I restarted. Safari 4 kept crashing, so I restored version 3.2.1 from Time Machine."

What does Apple say?

"Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing.

"Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications."

Apple also claims Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.

Safari 4 requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 and Security Update 2009-001, or Mac OS X  10.4.11. Intel and PowerPC systems are both supported, with a minimum of a G3 with built-in FireWire. It's not that Safari uses FireWire - this is just a convenient way of describing systems with the required CPU and graphics horsepower.

The Windows version runs on XP SP2 or Vista and requires a 500 MHz Pentium or better, plus a DirectX 9 video card for full use of the new features.

The Safari 4 beta can be downloaded from Apple's web site.