Safari 4 Beta – First Impressions

I’ve been messing around with the new Safari 4 Beta release and so far I’m pretty pleased with the browser. There is a bit getting use to some of the new features but overall, I think that they have made some changes for the better.

Here is a run down of the big features:

Top Sites – This is a nice feature that gives you a nice display of the top sites that you visit on a regular basis. You can easily make this your home page by setting your home page preference to

. I know that many of the Mac fanboys are thinking that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread and I agree it is pretty cool. But I hate to break it to you, Apple copied this one. See Google Chrome

Cover Flow – The cover flow feature is kind of cool. Its a neat way to go through your history and kind of reminds me of the interface of difference pages on the iPhone. Cover Flow is infecting just about every application on the Mac, whether it really needs it or not.

Nitro Engine – Yes, the web engine seems to be faster to me. I’ll be interested to see how the browser handles after running for a week. In the past, Safari has been a memory hog for me. I’m a bit abusive on my web browsers so I’m probably not the “normal” user.

Tabs on Top – This one might take some getting use to. I’m not sure if I’m a fan of having them up there yet. I kind of liked them where they were before. But we’ll give it a week and see what shakes out.

Conclusion – I think that the browser is worth taking a look. The interface seems more responsive, it is Acid3 compliant and supports the latest web standards.