Safari 4 Beta

M

MasterShredder

2[H]4U
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Jan 3, 2002
Messages
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I just installed the Safari 4 Beta, and i'm pretty impressed. I love the Top Pages option and being able to browse your history in CoverFlow. Cool stuff! Anyone else tried it? Thoughts?
 
I just installed it and am enjoying it so far. It does feel snappier and Top Pages is great. I do like Coverflow for History/Bookmarks is great. It makes things a lot easier when searching for a site. I'm not sure how it is on the Windows side, but I've heard both good and bad experiences.
 
WIndows version works really well for me, other than the minor problem with it not displaying pictures. Flash animations and ads show up, no problem. Regular pictures? Nope. lol
 
Maximus825 said:
The Windows version is HORRIBLE. The OSX version is really good so far.
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"Horrible"? I beg to differ. I run it on my Vista machine. Faster than Firefox, slower than Chrome, but I prefer Safari for some reason I can't quite specify. The nightlies of Safari 4 are, by FAR, the fastest browser I've ever used. The progress of Safari has been impressive, to say the least. Safari 1.2 to 1.3 saw a 10x increase in JavaScript performance. It's been steadily increasing since, and 4.0 does that and then some again. So, basically, the software runs about 100-200 times faster on the same hardware. That's a pretty good gain, I would say.

Of course, OmniWeb is The One True Browser.
 
Maximus825 said:
The Windows version is HORRIBLE. The OSX version is really good so far.
Click to expand...

What don't you like in the Windows version? I'm running it in Vista at work and it seems pretty decent. I like how they kept the Windows look to it unlike the awful Safari 3 for windows. That was bad.
 
Thus far I'm really impressed with the beta. It's fast, an improved UI, and it's fast. Did I mention that it's fast *grin*
 
MasterShredder said:
What don't you like in the Windows version? I'm running it in Vista at work and it seems pretty decent. I like how they kept the Windows look to it unlike the awful Safari 3 for windows. That was bad.
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I think it is more of a shot at it being a windows system over it being vastly different, you get the same response from people if you say anything about the windows version of iTunes.

As for Safari 4 I saw it at work but I don't see anything really innovative, sure they changed the layout and tweaked some things...but other than that it looks exactly like chrome welcome to 6 months ago.
 
MasterShredder said:
What don't you like in the Windows version? I'm running it in Vista at work and it seems pretty decent. I like how they kept the Windows look to it unlike the awful Safari 3 for windows. That was bad.
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Menubar being below the tabs, mousewheel doesn't work on bookmarks menu, can't open targeted links in new tab, clickable region for selecting tab is too small, tab close button is on the left side of the tab instead of right, fonts/graphics don't appear smooth...

EDIT: My main environment is Windows. I have a MBP that I use as well.
 
Just downloaded and installed it for Tiger and it is fast. The only thing I might about it is the blue progress bar (to tell you how along the page is loading) in the address bar. Seems to be a good mix of ideas.
 
for some reason it seems slower than than safari 3. However it might just be my internet loading super slow
 
Torquemada XP said:
WIndows version works really well for me, other than the minor problem with it not displaying pictures. Flash animations and ads show up, no problem. Regular pictures? Nope. lol
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Go under Develop and make sure you don't have Disable Images checked. It is one of the options in there.
 
Maximus825 said:
The Windows version is HORRIBLE. The OSX version is really good so far.
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I second that! The Win version has some work cut out for it, OSX version is great so far.
I had some issues with Safari 3 on my PC though so maybe that is not helping.
 
On OSX, can't access Windows Live Hotmail. Other than that, a LOT faster than Safari 3.
 
Maximus825 said:
The Windows version is HORRIBLE. The OSX version is really good so far.
Click to expand...

Agreed. I am still tied to FireFox on my Mac and all three PCs. Safari 4Beta has been nice on my Mac, but I can emulate almost every new "feature" with a FF plugin. On my PCs, it is a slow, bloated, slow, buggy, and slow experience.
 
Its ok, tried it out for a bit today. I dont see much of a reason to use it really. Not much faster than firefox and it looks like chrome to me but not quite as good for raw speed

The beginning gallery view is kinda cool, but not worth giving up all my addons and using yet another browser for.
 
I'm using it on Vista, but I how do I get the tab bar to be UNDER the address bar? Right now it's on top and it looks hideous.
 
Grentz said:
The beginning gallery view is kinda cool, but not worth giving up all my addons and using yet another browser for.
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The opening gallery view is easily available with Opera and FireFox; it just doesn't have that curved, black background effect. Give it time and one will be available.
 
So after an afternoon of using Safari 4 Beta for OS X, I have to say...I like it. I don't love it. It is a lot faster than Safari 3, however, I've found the browser itself to be a little unresponsive some times. By which I mean, sometimes I need to click on something twice, etc.

In terms of the interface, I with the tabs would've been kept below the address bar, and you were able to drag them around to organize them, but that's not a big deal, just a minor thing I didn't personally dig. Other than that, I like how clean it is. That's a BIG plus.

I still prefer the way Firefox handles Bookmarks, but I'm getting used to Safari's methods, so not a big deal there. The whole new "Top Sites" thing I could care less about. Nothing against it, I just would never use it. But it is something new, so that is good in itself. Finally, I did like how while looking through your history, you can actually see the sites in a cover-flow like manner. That is great.

Overall, I'll probably continue using this over Firefox on OS X for now, but it still has some annoying flaws.
 
This is a pretty damn good beta, IMO. The new features are definitely usable, and brings Safari in line with both the bleeding edge of browser development and with the rest of OS X, especially with the implementation of Cover Flow.

I would use Safari full time over Firefox if not for the absence of a truly configurable Adblock plugin (yes, I know there are plugins available already, but they're not as fully-featured: no collapsing of blocked elements, for example) and a NoScript equivalent. But all things being equal, Safari 4 is going to reclaim the title of best browser on OS X.
 
AshleyG said:
The opening gallery view is easily available with Opera and FireFox; it just doesn't have that curved, black background effect. Give it time and one will be available.
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Ya, I already have it on firefox, just not as cool as the curved look and not as many shown.

In any event, like I said, it is a tiny thing and not worth switching over.
 
Does anyone have any trouble loading pages such as South Park Studios?

Like the page loads, but when i go to play an episode, the player never does.

And i also like Safari 4 a lot, used to use Safari 3 a lot, but i dont like the new way the tabs look. I do like how they look and act like in Chrome, but for my aero theme in Vista, i use Graphite as my color, so i cant read the page names in the tabs :(

But it is very fast, loads pages and everything else much faster than FireFox and Chrome IMO, but two things make me not use it.

1) The tabs as i said earlier
2) Not able to see Cartman :( anyone know how to fix that?

Haha thanx in advance! :D
 
So far I dig it and it the way it handles fonts is superior to the prior version of Safari.
 
I finally installed the new Safari version on my MacBook Pro. It is nice, fast and sleek. I like how my Foxmarks sync still works with the Beta 4 version!
 
I find Safari 4 beta faster than pretty much anything out there right now. It even seems a just little faster than Chrome.

The main thing that bothers me is that the "ICC Color Profile Support" is broken which is sad given that Safari is known for that. Its possible ti was broken on the past versions but that last Windows version handled fonts so badly I couldn't use it. The feature uses ICC profiles with standard images on a web that have the img tag but other images such as navigation images other images in a website theme fail to have their ICC profiles used. On top of which all of the other colors that are not images on a web page are displayed in the native gamut of the monitor.

Compare that to FF3 that displays everything as sRGB unless there is an ICC profile that is different. That is the way a color aware browser should work.

It would be smart if Safari would fix that.
 
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