RSSA Google Chrome user's opinion of Safari 4 Beta
By Tim Conneally | Published February 25, 2009, 1:07 PM
After writing for Betanews for a couple of years, there's something you may not know about me. If there is one company that I approach with favoritism (but never fanboyism!), it's Google. Yes, Google's omnipresence is enough to make you want to don a tin foil hat, but it's hard to argue with a company that gives everyone such powerful research tools at no cost.
Take Chrome, for example. I'm going to keep this anodyne by saying that there is no perfect browser, and I personally keep five different ones installed for testing purposes. However, Chrome managed to deliver in its first release what other companies took years to deliver, while giving it the classic Google design ethic. Where customizability is often sacrificed for elegance, Chrome strikes a balance, and offers a dynamic browser still that lacks clutter. Therefore, I use it quite a bit.
That said, Safari is another browser that I use a lot, but not due to any real effort on my part. Quite the opposite, actually. My relationship with my Mac is the following: I make no unusual demands of it and use it for what it tells me it can do. I'm really quite lazy about it. Yes, I run resource intensive applications like Logic Studio and Corel Painter on it, but that's sanctioned Mac stuff that works right out of the box, and I digress. I use Safari regularly but have no particular affinity for it, so in testing it, it's both a pleasure and an annoyance to see the direction it's heading.
The Safari 4 beta has brought the "about:blank" default home screen from Chrome which shows your most frequently viewed sites and given it the iTunes treatment. It's just as useful, and just a bit prettier than Chrome and its Speed Dial counterparts. A search can be performed within the top viewed sites, which yields a Cover Flow of screenshots with the term you searched. The retrieval of these screenshots is wastefully slow.
A long overdue and welcome addition to Safari is the revamped bookmark screen. This also has been given the Cover Flow interface, with fantastic results. The first time I ran it, it took an extremely long time to fetch screenshots of each site to flesh out the window. My Bonjour devices -- a file server, printer, and Chumby -- never really came together in that layout though, and are represented by blown up 3k sidebar icons that are just downright unfortunate.
The browser itself has taken a design cue from Chrome and moved the "Stop/Refresh" button to the inside of the address bar, and moved browser tabs to the top of the window instead of beneath the address bar.
After updating Safari to the newest beta, something silly started happening. I started typing search queries in the address bar. This "auto pilot" behavior is one I picked up while using Chrome that only happens when I'm using that browser. Maybe I've just had it on the brain since I've been using it, or maybe my subconscious mind has recognized the similarities and it reacting. I have no doubt that it's just the former, but it's nonetheless frustrating to repeatedly make that mistake.
Here's the bottom line: These new headlining features in Safari 4 are useful, the same as they are in Chrome. However, the aesthetic improvements Apple has added appreciably slow down an experience where I have come to expect a certain degree of performance. Call me crazy, but I'll take stripped down and quick over gorgeous and lagging any day of the week.
There does seem to be a bug in Safari 4 where it ignores proxy settings. When I tried using Privoxy 3.0.11 to block ads on websites it worked until I opened a new tab. After that ads started appearing on websites again even though the proxy setting for HTTP is set to 127.0.0.1 port 8118. Otherwise this is by far the best browser ever created. Safari 4 Beta can actually download 4GB files unlike Chrome. Safari 4's appearance blends in with Windows Vista better than any other web browser (IE 7 included).
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|I've tried Safari from its first release on Mac OS X and it still doesn't appeal to me as much as Firefox does, but I also don't find Chrome all that appealing yet.
The one thing I like is that it doesn't grate against the current Windows theme. That said, there are plenty of others Windows-based applications that do. If these kinds of changes happen for Safari, I think QuickTime Player and iTunes will both be improved, also.
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|I like it. It's not as quick as Chrome but it's fun to use and has an extensive featureset. I suspect they'll catch up on Chrome's speed when they upgrade their webkit engine, since both use Webkit and Chromes is the newer version.
Now to go through the ropes and put it through my default browser test.
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|Chrome actually upgraded to a webkit build that gets a score of 100 on Acid3? The last time I checked Chrome failed the Acid3 test unlike Safari 4 Beta. If Chrome still fails Acid3 then Safari 4 Beta has the newer version of Webkit.
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|I'm sure Windows users will appreciate that Safari now looks and feels like a native program on Windows. Even the fonts are native to a Windows environment which was a common complaint before.
There's no question Apple is stepping it's browser game up with this new release. Not only is it faster but it offers over 150 features, many which are new to Safari. This is a pretty ambitious release by Apple. The final product will be even better.
http://www.apple.com/safari/whats-new.html
Score: -1
|On that page it says "Now Safari takes tabbed browsing to new heights — to the very top of the browser window — instantly providing more room for you to enjoy the sites you’re reading."
What? That's a lie. Moving it to the top makes no difference whatsoever to the room you get to read the page.
This page makes me furious.
For a start, Safari IS NOT the only browser to support Acid3, Opera 10 does (and don't go saying that it's not released yet, because this Safari build is Beta too).
Secondly, they've listed "Full-Page Zoom" twice as a new feature at the top and bottom of the page.
The day their marketing department stop lying is the day I may try Safari. Until that day they can shove it where the sun don't shine.
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|Actually it does give you more room..
Old Safari:
Top - Window Buttons (R/Y/G), Page Title
Middle - URL, Search
Bottom - Tabs
New Safari:
Top - Window Buttons, Page Title, Tabs
Bottom - URL, Search
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|Ah yes, I see it now (on a Mac at least - I can't find a picture of it open on Windows with multiple tabs open). I retract that part of the comment. The rest still stands.
I presumed it meant 'above the address bar' but not actually in the top program bar.
*Edit* Same on Windows. Nice idea.
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|Yeah... a nice idea they took directly from Chrome.
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|Unless I'm mistaken the top Chrome bar doesn't have the Windows native style, does it?
It certainly didn't when the first version came out (the only one I've bothered testing thus far).
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|What is Apple's obsession with CoverFlow? Every time I turn my iPhone 90 deg when in iPod mode, it pisses me off to see that crap. Now they stick it in Safari? WTF?
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|I loved Chrome from the very start. Very fast, and very few crashes. I tried Safari, really wanted to see the 3D effects. It lasted for a couple of minutes before it crashed, never got to see the 3D stuff, never even got close to finding how to set them in motion. But as I now had time on my hands having binned Safari, I tried Opera 10 alpha, usually make fun of the gang who frequent this place singing its praises, but this alpha is very good indeed. It's my default now, an alpha for a default, and me with FireFox and Chrome at my disposal. Give it a whirl it'll surprise you, and it won't crash.
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|Do you have any plugins like Growl, Glims or Inquisitor? I had to remove Growl and Glims otherwise Safari 4 would keep crashing on startup which is no fault of Apple. Now Glims has been updated to work with Safari 4 and I have restored it. I have used Safari 4 pretty intensely over the last day and a half and it has never once crashed on me after originally removing all plugins.
This was a very common problem that many people were complaining about but it seems every single person with this problem also had a plugin of some type. Also because Mail uses the same Webkit engine, it also will constantly crash once you've updated Safari 3 to Safari 4.
Aside from that this new version is very fast and stable for a beta product.
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|3d stuff is absurd. Still looks just like Operas bookmarks.
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|while i can see myself using firefox for awhile, instead of having IE as an alternative to firefox i use chrome or the dev builds, firefox needs to take a que from google on application speed ... but yeah, while i could enjoy the native look of safari under windows, safari could do without the crazy aesthetics, they aren't needed in the browser world, google, firefox and IE have done that part right
i'll have to see how IE8 shapes up though, i haven't touched any of the betas but when its released publicly, i'll be upgrading IE7 anyway, so we'll see then if chrome is worth remaining on my system
the setup for safari is also near 30MB, chome at 8, firefox at 8, what the heck is safari been eating :P
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