Ok, so Safari 4 beta just came out. I’m a huge Safari fan - as much as I try to love Camino, Firefox, Omniweb, or whatever else, Safari is light, fast, beautiful, and has all the system integration I need (bookmarks sync and such).
After 30 minutes of use:
Good:
- The ‘top sites’ landing page & all that comes along with it (a la chrome)
- The smart address bar (a la firefox)
- The new google search drop down (a la inquisitor)
- All of the Webkit goodness - great developer toolset, superfast js rendering, CSS3 support, beautiful text rendering.
Bad:
- HOLY SHIT THE TAB BAR SUCKS SO BAD. The tab bar is now on the top of the window. That’s a rant all in of itself, but now if the window is deselected, i go to click on safari, and i click on an unselected tab at the top of the window, it switches to it. Same if I want to grab the window and move it.
- Spaced out UI controls. Instead of home, forward/back, stop/reload and such being next to each other, now the reload button is at the end of the URL bar, and the add new tab button is in the top right corner always.
- New font for menu bar. I’m guessing that’s the direction snow leopard is going, but it just makes the entire thing feel out of place.
- Performance issues? I’m not sure yet, but we’ll see if all of this coverflow / icons for every history item ever feature sucks performance.
- (valid) Javascript new window popups open in new tab, then when you close the window it will not go back to the previous window.
It’s just a beta, so it’s hard to say if any of this will matter when Safari 4 proper is out. But I feel like we took two steps forward and at least two back with this release. To their credit, there is an uninstaller, and honestly the good outweighs the bad.
