Apple Releases Safari 4 Public Beta

Submitted by lalit on February 24, 2009 - 10:30am.

Apple today announced the public beta of Safari 4 and the company claims it’s world’s fastest and most innovative web browser from Mac and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.
“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”
Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:

  • Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click.
  • Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they’ve seen before.
  • Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes.
  • Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones.
  • Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy to read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history.
  • Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches.
  • Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text.
  • Built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility.
  • A new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.

Safari 4 is a public beta and hence we would like to caution our readers that it might not work perfectly. In our two hours of experience with Safari 4, it worked perfectly, it’s really fast and it hasn’t crash even once yet. You can download Safari 4 beta from Apple’s website.