Justin Cox
Safari 4 Beta Beat
I kind of like beta software — I’m not talking about things labeled beta for no reason, I’m talking about actual, in development software. I’ve actually been using the nightly WebKit build as my regular web browser for awhile now. Why? Well, why not? I like that it makes me part of the cool kids, I like that it’s the only browser that passes Acid 3, I like that it’s constantly up to date. So when I found out that Apple released a public beta of Safari 4 on Steve Job’s birthday, I signed right up and clicked download.
Right off the bat I realized that Safari 4 looks much nicer than it’s predecessor. It seems more refined, cleaner. There are some swanky new features that make it really stand out, namely the Top Sites and search suggestion features. It’s eye candy, but it’s also functional. The Top Sites is an especially nice feature when you open a new tab.
One thing that seems to be causing a significant amount of debate, at least on Twitter, is the new location of Safari’s tabs. Instead of under the address bar, like they are on every web browser, Safari 4 has moved them to the top of the browser. I actually really like this. It’s practical, it utilizes some screen space that would otherwise be wasted and in turn allows for more of the page to be shown at one time.
There are a few things I don’t like, however. The first and foremost is that 1Password, a tool that I can’t live without, currently doesn’t work with Safari 4. I’m sure the Agile team will fix this in the coming days, but I’m literally dead in the water without 1Password. Another thing that I absolutely can’t stand is that the website progress bar, which was a nice blue bar going through the site bar while the page is loading, is gone. Now there is no real way to tell the sites loading progress. Luckily, someone already figured out how to get it back.
There is one thing that’s not currently supported that I’d like to see added in a future update, and that’s handling the domains in much the same way that MobileSafari does: dropping the http:// and www for the address. They’re useless anyway, why should I have to see them? twitter.com/justincox is the same as http://twitter.com/justincox, it just looks a lot nicer.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve got to say about Safari 4. (Can you tell I’m running out of ideas for the February Blog-O-Rama?)
Update: Thanks to 1Password’s awesome Twitter presence I have found out just how to update 1Password so that it works with Safari 4: have it check for beta updates as well. My life is once again complete. See, I told you the Agile guys would figure it out.