Apple released a public beta of Safari 4 for both OS X and Windows on Tuesday, declaring that this new version is loaded with more than 150 features, many of them new. Safari 4 represents quite a technical leap over the previous version of the browser. So which of those new features are you most likely to find interesting, useful, or possibly even a bit disruptive? (If you’re curious as to why some of these features were added, Jason Snell shares his thoughts on that subject.)
Built for speed
The big behind-the-scenes news is the introduction of the Nitro Engine, a super-fast JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7, and three times faster than Firefox 3. To get a sense of the speed increase, I ran a quick test using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on our 2.66GHz iMac with 2GB of RAM. I ran SunSpider in Safari 3, Safari 4 Beta, and Firefox 3.0.6, to get a sense of the speed differences amongst the browsers.
Top Sites
One of the more noticeable changes in Safari 4 is the new Top Sites page, which loads by default when you launch Safari. (You can disable the auto-loading feature in Safari’s preferences if you don’t like it.) Much like the Speed Dial feature in Opera, or the Speed Dial extension for Firefox, or the Most Visited feature in Google Chrome, the Top Sites page shows a page of website thumbnails, making it easy to visit a site with a single click.
-These are not my worlds and were originally created by Rob Griffiths from Mac World
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