Safari Beta 4 is now available for download for both Windows and Mac from the Apple site. According to Philip Schiller, Appl’s Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing “Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” going on to say “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.”
Features
Top Sites. This is the first thing you see when you open Safari. All your recent sites are arranged nicely in a grid. You can choose between Small Medium and Large which changes how many sites are shown. When you first start Safari this page opens up and the most recent sites you have visited appear as default. Clicking edit on the bottom left allows you to arrange and pin sites that you care about so they always show up. This is especially useful when creating a new tab since the Tops Sites screen pops up. Pin you most commonly used sites for quick access.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1125×812.
Cover Flow. Apple loves their Cover Flow. In this new Safari 4 beta it is used to view through your Web History and Bookmarks. It does look awesome as along as you wait for it to catch up loading previews (I have countless bookmarks and such) otherwise it will just show a nice little black screen for preview. It looks awesome but in reality doesn’t add any real functionality — of course looking cool is half the battle.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1065×733.
Tabs on Top. The Tabs have been moved to the top bar. This is actually a really awesome idea. The Menu bar area of Safari has a smaller verticle footprint than before because of this leaving just as much functionality while giving you more verticle webpage viewing are. One gripe. The close the tab is on the left of the tab instead of the right — that’s going to take some time to get used to. You also have to grab the right corner (where close tab used to be) to drag and rearrange tab order when before you could click anywhere in the tab but that makes sense since there is no top menu bar now — you have to be able to grab somewhere to drag the entire window.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1120×99.
Full Page Zoom. Zooming in full page not only zooms text, it zooms images as well. There is also a text only zoom available if you prefer. Quality while zooming in doesn’t degrade much as well!
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 1195×809.
Smart Address and Search Fields. The Address Field now provides you with options to select from your browsing history and bookmarks to select as you type in words to the Address Field. The Search Field also has been enhanced to show suggestions and recent searches. At the bottom to the enhanced search field is also the option to highlight the word you are searching for every time it is used in the current page you are viewing.
This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 667×314.
Those are the major new features. Apple says they have a total of 150 features and you can find here.
Missing feature. Automatic loading of all the tabs you already had open in your previous browsing session. Is that so hard to do Apple? FireFox does it.
Performance
The new features may be awesomely functional (for the most part) and look neat but they mean nothing if the browser is slow. Safari 4 Beta doesn’t have an issue with speed. Apple boasts that Safari 4′s new Nitro JavaScript engine executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Microsoft’s IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Under normal use it feels a bit faster than the previous Safari (which was faster than its competition already) while loading normal web pages and there is a noticeable speed increase when loading pages with heavy duty javascript.
For the last few hours I have been using Safari 4 beta it has been a pleasure. I have to admit I am won over by the new features — especially the tabs at the top. The eye-candy is something that I can’t really complain about as well. On top of it all this new version of Safari is performing as well if not better than the previous version which was already a very quick browser. What puts this Safari over the edge is the bleeding edge support for web standards including both HTML 5 and CSS 3 which are the future of the internet and support some really cools things like highly polished gradients and mirror finishes (CSS 3) along with the ability to do more advanced offline webpages (HTML 5. If you haven’t heard about Google’s preview of their offline Gmail google it).
This is a pretty excellent browser especially for a beta. The Mac OS X version if of course better than the Windows version but I have to admit, with this release the Windows version is catching up quite a bit (it is better than IE7 any day). You can grab Safari 4 beta from Apple.
In case I wasn’t clear enough above here is the one sentence summary:
So there you have it people, an actual blog telling you about things that are interesting unlike myself lol…
Well i thought i’d make a blog displaying all my current favourite videos, these consist of the following below videos.
These are all my favorites / fad videos i’m watching over and over again these days!
Mitch Davis
Owl City – Fuzzy Blue Lights
That’s it for now as it’s 5:20AM and i’m dead tired, but yeah i’m going to bed.. And sorry for the lack of updates lately this is due to the fact i broke my 3G iPhone which disables my mobile blogging side of things..
Rachael and i have just bought guitar hero world tour!
Ok, let’s get this straight… I suck really, really badly at the whole drumming thing. But i’m slowly getting better at the guitar.
My vocals suck! Rachael masters the microphone if it be to Bon Jovi or Michael Jackson.
Ok, ok i’ve got a problem… I’ve decided i’m turning this side of my desk partition into a papercraft palace!
Tony is probably pissed due to me blocking up his window etc, but i’m not a pretty face to look at all day so i’m probably doing him a favour.
Below is the template for the full featured cut-out, click it for a bigger version!
There were a few more photos which remained on Rachaels camera from big day out.
It was a really hot day and we got hell sunburned, but i would totally do it again over and over and over.. Ok it was a real drain so i’d probably do it again once.
Anyways, i’m rambling so i’ll end it there and just give you the photos..
Well, i had my fivteen minute lunch break got bored and created ceiling cat, from a link given to me by my flatmate heh.
Please excuse how crappy it is, i had to use sticky tape, instead of craft glue.. That and i made a tiny version of the large scale ceiling cat heh!
To print out your own and make your own ceiling cat use the picture below.
meow, you can has lolcats. happy papercraft
of the deity of lolcats, ceiling cat.
He is watching you right now so please make
this model^-^ You can tape it to your ceiling,
his rightful place. Print and cut out the pattern
and stick it together, this one it quite easy to
make I think though I cried a little designing
it. lolcats are nice. meow^-^
Click on the image to make it bigger…
In a nutshell, i’ve just been given this TV for free… Turns out dad was buying a new one and didn’t want me to spend the cold hard cash we wanted to spend on the LG..
Shit is just really working out for me lately, let’s see how it goes from here!
Firstly i’d like to appologize for the lack of blogging as of late. Me and Rachael have been running around moving a massive queen size matress with some help from a friends van, going back and forward from shop to shop, had a short visit to the homemaker centre and then finally made all our furnature choices.
We did some food shopping at coles and got lots of food and cleaning products…. this blog would be boring to the normal reader so i’m going to ramp it up a bit with the excitment factor..
AND POST PICTURES OF OUR NEW SHIT!
127CM (50″) Plasma TV With Inbuilt High Definition Tuner
LG 19 Litre Microwave
Karlstad 4 Seat Sofa
So all in all this is the tip of the iceberg, a lot more needs to be done but sorting financials and making sure we can afford these things are a must lol.
I’ve never been so happy, seriously.. I can’t remember the last time i was this happy with how things are going.
Rachael breaks the news to her mum today about the move out, and i some what fear for my life!
We also bought lots of Manchester for the bedroom and soon we shall have pieces of art all through our house created by our friends & family.
Maybe a canvas from her mum, and one of our friends and one of his friends are really talented at graffiti pieces… So the plan is to get them a massive canvas get them to place their pieces on it and then place it in our lounge room for everyone to see!
Once the house is completly finished i’ll run through it with my video camera and get some shweet footage of a house which will probably look like it’s straight out of the IKEA magazine.
Sorry for a long and boring blog but this ones more or less for my mum / dad to get an update on what’s happening.
Oh shit, i also remembered.. When i was modding my iPhone i took it apart and remove all the insides and then was too stupid to be able to piece it back together, so I’m somewhat mobile phone-less..
This will be sorted out soon!
