Safari 4 ready for its closeup

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 09 June 2009 04:59

IT Industry - Development

Besides the architectural changes, Safari 4 incorporates several new interface elements.

In the opinion of this writer, who has been using the beta since last February, the new features are worthwhile innovations, not just fluff.

Most useful is the full history search with Cover Flow display. First introduced in iTunes and later appearing in the Finder, Cover Flow lets you "page" through items visually rather than simply scrolling through a list.

In Safari, this means you can open a History window and search for, say "iPhone," and page through thumbnails off all your recently visited Web pages that include that term. Clicking the thumbnail takes you to the page.

The Cover Flow History display displays thumbnails of the site you're looking for. (Click for larger version.)

You can look through your bookmarks the same way. What's more, Safari will continuously update your bookmark thumbnails if you want, so you're always looking at the most current representation of the page.

Similar visual browsing is available through the Top Sites command, which brings up a virtual curved wall displaying up to 24 of your most frequently visited sites. Bringing up Top Sites and clicking on the desired thumbnail actually feels faster, in some cases, than typing in the URL or going through the Bookmarks menu.

Other new features include a dropdown list of suggested completions for a partially typed URL, suggestions in the Search field, and the ability to zoom in on an entire page or just the text it contains.

Fans of Safari already will almost certainly be pleased with the new version, and users of other browsers should probably take a look as well. System requirements and the free download are available here (in Australia: here ).