Safari 4 Beta was released last week, and yesterday I sat down and spent some time using it.
Visually, Safari 4 is very clean and looks similar to Chrome. Tabs are now on the top, opening up a ton of real estate for web page display. Functionally, Safari 4 is much faster than the previous version. Apple touts it as the world’s fastest browser with it’s new version of Webkit and improved JavaScript engine.
Private Browsing makes its first appearance in the Safari family with the newest version of Safari. Private Browsing (similar to Internet Explorer’s inPrivate or Chrome’s Incognito mode) prevents Safari from storing data such as history or cookies for the duration of your private session. Private Browsing isn’t as easily accessible in Safari as it is in Chrome, and there isn’t a visible indicator if your current session is private or not.
Moving on to some more technical points, Safari 4 scores an impressive 100/100 on the Acid 3 Test. By comparison, Chrome manages a 79/100 and Firefox a 71/100. JavaScript intense web apps (like Gmail and Google Maps) load in a snap and pages render plenty fast.
Most of things I don’t like about the new version of Safari have to do with the tabs. For example, the button to close a tab is located on the left side of the tab and clicking with the scroll wheel does not close a tab. Tabs also can’t be rearranged or dragged to create new windows.
Since September, I’ve been using Chrome as my default browser. It’s lean and quick, and I love having the tabs on top. If I need to use tools like Firebug, I fire up Firefox and use that when developing for the web.
Safari 4 falls somewhere in the between. It’s faster than Firefox, but not as quick as Chrome. It has more features than Chrome but has nothing as powerful as Firebug or the Web Developer toolbar. In short, Safari 4 is a great browser by itself, but Chrome and Firefox are better able to do the things I want. If I owned a Mac, Safari 4 would definitely be my default browser.
