Yes, Safari 4 Beta is quicker at loading web pages and faster at running javascripts, but the real gain comes from a set of features that make it easier to monitor and access the websites you visit habitually. Apple has also taken the web browser and transformed it into a PVR for the web, allowing you to quickly search through all the content of the pages you have visited in your internet travels, both through simple keyword searches and a visual timeline. Along with a number of interface tweaks, the new browser delivers significant gains while failing to offer a match for one of the most popular features from their competitors – the extensions loved by Firefox users.

I’ve played with both the Mac and PC versions of Safari 4 Beta and there really is little difference. MacBook Pro users will find better use for the multi-touch controls on their touchpad and PC users will see the Safari browser do a better job of changing its appearance to better match the look and theme of your desktop. To me the sight of an Apple program on Windows has, probably will always, fill me with a quirky sense of amusement and so I’ve always liked the way the brushed aluminum trim of the browser has contrasted against Microsoft’s blues, so seeing the browser now conform to your desktop settings, isn’t an immediate plus for me.

Top Sites

More than just a 3D gallery of your most-visited web pages, Top Sites in use is like a control room, the kind we have here at CTV, where operators sit in front of a wall filled with banks of television displays in order to monitor all our channels at the same time. It’s the same thing here, each time that you lod up the feature the browser fills the gallery with your most-visited sites. You can then click on any of them to “pin” them in place and prevent them from changing. If one of the sites has updated its content since the last time you visited, it displays a blue star icon in the upper right hand corner. This makes it easy to glance at your favorite sites, see which ones have new content, and instantly visit them. For someone like myself who has to keep on top of multiple news wires, this is perfect.

History View

Using Cover Flow, the visual jukebox display from iTunes, History View gives you a visual timeline of your web surfing history. You can quickly flip through thumbnails of your past web pages as well as look through lists of your past urls. You can enter a keyword into the search bar to quickly sift through the results, and not just the names of sites or the headlines of articles, but the complete page content including both text and images. For my own uses, this is a major productive boost. I’m always researching new stories, both for myself and other CTV reporters, sessions that can send me through hundreds of web pages, splayed out across multiple tabs. Having the ability to quickly reach back and find a web item from my early research will save me an incredible amount of time. Not to mention that History View itself loads up faster than the History directories of both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

Speculative Loading

Just as Safari keeps track of your past, it also works to stay ahead of your future. Like a butler that anticipates your needs, Safari pre-loads the content from your most-visited sites in order to make sure they load up faster when you request them.

They have also added a Smart Address field, meaning that when you type in a new web url into the address bar, the browser will auto-complete your entry using your own bookmarks and web history, allowing for reliable matches, but keeping to smaller urls and avoiding those long strings of added text and symbols that are added to article pages instead of the main front page of a web site.

Similarly, the search bar is also “smart” using Google Suggest to offer up relative search suggestions as you type in your keyword. When you’re looking for something, it’s a process that is now faster, accurate, and with less obstacles.

Full Page Zoom

Here’s another helpful feature, you can now zoom into a page and it will cleanly enlarge both text and images. On a PC you can do this using Ctrl + or Ctrl -. For those with a new MacBook Pro you can simply move two fingertips across the touchpad for the same effect. There are several levels of zoom and the crispness of the page as you zoom in is quite impressive.

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Tabs On Top

The browser tabs are now at the very, very top of the frame, placing the emphasis where it should be, on your address bar and bookmarks. By grabbing a tab on the one corner you can easily change its place in the order or simply pop it off and drag it away to become its own separate browser page. This is only organizational, unlike Google’s Chrome browser, each tab does not have its own separate processes powering it.

A Command Centre For The Web

Safari 4 is a definite improvement over Safari 3, offering up more than just tweaked loading speeds and some flashy visuals, the Command Centre-like combination of Top Sites and the quick History search features give it great appeal, especially to Windows users who might have avoided Safari up until now. The only major feature missing would be the use of extensions or something that can act as a response to that popular feature used by Firefox users which, let’s face it, is still the browser to beat.