Safari 4 Smash Into Browser Wars
I’ve already tried a new version of Safari 4 beta on mac. Here is several new key features:
- Top Sites – a start up of your browser, showing your recent visited website in a 9 box preview mode just like in Opera or Chrome or any other browsers out there. So this the trend.
- CoverFlow – yeah, it’s over hyped. You can use to browse your bookmarks. Nice tough.
- Full Search History – it said so
- Tabs on Top – ouch, this one is hurt, a very like IE7 or the like. Not in Apple way.
- A truly faster JavaScript engine – not yet tested it. Tough after opening several web apps, I think it is very good. It said it is faster than the fastest Chrome.
- Developer Tools – yay, this is cool. Tough it still far from inconvenient to Web Developer on Firefox or the Firefox itself, so now it seems Developer menu is default (which previously should be managed via settings).
- Full page zoom – just like Opera
- New experience on address bar.
- A friend said Safari now able to operate in secret mode, just like Chrome or Opera, so no log or history or cookie after you get dirty.
You see? The browser wars has yet just began. I am enjoying this.
Since I didn’t like much how Safari treat new tab experience and that annoying + button on top right of window (why we need that much + button?), I can get rid of them by running several hacks via Terminal (in mac):
- defaults write com.apple.Safari AlwaysShowTabBar -bool NO – this is to get back the always show tab bar to no (previous setting on Safari 3 is no)
- defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO – this is to get rid the new Safari 4 style tab bar.
In case you missed the new style, just replace the NO value with YES and hit enter on Terminal.
This is how my Safari after being customized. Notice the old tab style, but it now has + button before address bar, and the MobileSafari like refresh button inside address bar.
Well that’s enough. I knew every new thing needs some time to get used to it. But I absolutely believe for everyone knew well how Apple make stuff, this tabs thing seems ridiculous.
UPDATE: Here you can find some Hidden Preferences on new Safari 4. Love it. It collects all hack including those I mentioned above, and also disabling dimming on Top Site preview, and so. Jump directly to Hidden Preferences in Safari 4 Public Beta
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