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The public beta of Safari 4 is now publicly available for download. The public beta most noticeably features a new interface that shares a lot of the design elements with its closest competition, Google's Chrome browser, and several user experience features found in other Apple products.
Safari users will also find the browser a little more speedy using web applications like Gmail as Safari 4 boasts faster speeds using its new JavaScript engine, dubbed Nitro. Meanwhile, web developers will be excited with the latest graphic and offline advancements to its Webkit rendering engine, as well as several new developer tools built into the browser.
New User Experience
After loading the browser up for the first time, you'll see a fancy Apple animation screen and then be transported to a Top Sites page. Top Sites takes from Google Chrome's New Tab ability by drawing from your web history to display thumbnails of the 12 most visited web pages.
Also in common with Chrome is the way Safari now handles its tabs. The tabs are now displayed at the very top of the window above the address field and you are able to reorganize and drag tabs out into its own window.
The Top Sites design shares many visual elements in common with other design elements found in Apple products. For instance, the Top Sites page looks a lot like iTunes' Cover Flow, a display method that allows you to flip through web pages. Cover Flow itself is also available in Safari as a method to browse through website history. The Top Sites page itself is editable to display 24 or 6 thumbnails, reorganize and "pin" based on taste or remove pages similar to how you would remove widgets in Mac OS X's dashboard or applications from the iPhone.
Along with Chrome Opera and Firefox browsers, Safari now sports "smart address fields" capable of recommending pages from history while you type.
Behind the Scenes Power
Where Safari 4 really shows its strength and leads the pack is behind the scenes. The browser uses its new Nitro JavaScript rendering engine. The engine purports to be 30 times faster than the latest version of Internet Explorer, 4 times faster than the Safari 3.1 and three times faster than the current version of Firefox.
Safari also includes the latest build of the Webkit rendering engine, which makes it the first publicly available browser to pass the Acid 3 test -- a test designed to stretch the outermost goals of web standards in order to allow browser bragging rights for being the most standards-compliant browser. It should be noted that Google's Chrome browser also uses the Webkit rendering engine, which means it will be toe to toe in rendering speeds and standards in upcoming versions.
Webkit has expanded its lead in CSS 3 support, meaning it can include customizable web fonts in pages and do basic animations without the need for plug-ins like Flash. The new version adds CSS effects, allowing developers to apply professional Photoshop-like effects to images and photos. Other built-in Flash-like abilities include Scalable Vector Graphics and Canvas allow developers to create dynamically generated graphics on the fly. These abilities are built into most modern browsers today, but Safari 4 extended the feature by allowing the developer to manipulate Canvas elements using CSS.
Finally, the new browser has built in HTML 5 offline support; offloading some of the more intensive application elements off of the internet and on to your computer's hard drive. Offlining web applications let you search and process data through the browser faster. Downloading the applications locally also allows you to utilize web applications even when you lose internet connectivity.
Developer Tools
Developers will also be happy to find new developers tools built into Safari 4, presumably to compete with applications like Firefox's Firebug extension. The tools allow developers greater insight into the bugs and limitations of their websites as they are built.
The Competition
Safari 4 is available for both Mac and Windows, but follows Internet Explorer and Firefox in terms of users. Safari, Chrome and Opera round out the bottom 10 percent of browser usage according to Net Applications.
However, despite being one of the underdogs, the kind of features found in Safari 4 show that Apple has a few tricks under their sleeve. By utilizing the best of what's around, and the including the kind of user experience Apple products are known for, Apple shows it may have what it takes to make users switch.
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