Safari 4 Beta just released

Boom!  Finally, some Apple news. Today Apple took the wraps off of Safari 4 for both Mac and Windows.  This looks to be a BIG release with so many features and add-ons it is going to be impossible to list them all here.  Here are my first impressions.  How are you liking it out there?

Top Sites

Thanks to Top Sites, you can enjoy a stunning, at-a-glance preview of your favorite websites without lifting a finger. Safari 4 Beta tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page. You can even customize the display by pinning a favorite site to a specific location in the grid. That locks it into position, so you know just where to find it every time you open Top Sites.

Wonder which sites have changed since your last visit? Sites with a star in the upper-right corner have new content. A single click opens the page and updates its thumbnail. Whenever you want to return to your ever-evolving Top Sites page, just click the new Top Sites button in the bookmarks bar.

Cover Flow

New to Safari, Cover Flow offers a highly visual way of reviewing your site history and bookmarked sites, presenting full-page previews of the websites that look exactly as they did when you last visited them.

One look is all you need to recognize the site you want to visit. Simply flip through website previews in Cover Flow the same way you flip through album art in iTunes. Directional arrows let you browse forward and back. Or you can quickly flip through multiple sites using the slider. And when you find the site you want, simply click to open it.

Full History Search

With Full History Search and Cover Flow, what you see is where you went. Safari introduces a dramatic new way to revisit sites, letting you flip through full-page previews of the sites you visited in the past. You may not have total recall, but Safari does, automatically storing all the text and a thumbnail of every page in your history. That makes it easy for Safari to get results even if you remember little about the site you’re searching for.

Just type a word or phrase in the History Search field in Top Sites, and Safari quickly presents you with a list of possibilities. In fact, you can search for anything that was on a page you visited, even photo captions. To jog your memory, Safari presents the sites it finds in Cover Flow, giving you the opportunity to spot the right site on sight.

Tabs on Top

Tabs offer a great way to have multiple pages open at the same time in a single browser window. And to switch back and forth with a click. Now Safari takes tabbed browsing to new heights — to the very top of the browser window — instantly providing more room for you to enjoy the sites you’re reading.

Safari also makes it easy to create and manage tabs. To create a new tab, just click the + button in the upper-right corner of the Safari window. Want to rearrange tabs? Simply drag a tab by its handle and drop it in a new location in the tab bar. You can also use the handle to drop a tab into another Safari window. Or quickly create a new window by dragging the tab out to the desktop. You can create a bookmark from a group of tabs. Or even tell Safari to open a set of tabs every time you open a new Safari window.

Nitro Engine

Windows Native Look and Feel

If you’re using Safari on a PC with Windows Vista or Windows XP, you’ll feel right at home. That’s because Safari features a native look — just like other Windows applications — including a native title bar, borders, and toolbars. To provide a consistent Windows experience, Safari now uses Windows standard fonts, but you can choose to use Apple’s crisp anti-aliased fonts if you prefer. Of course, Safari in Windows delivers the same lightning-fast performance provided by the Mac version.

Developer Tools

In Safari, developers will find the best set of development tools ever included in a browser. Just turn them on in Safari preferences and use them to examine the structure of a page, debug JavaScript, optimize performance and compatibility, inspect offline databases, or test experimental pieces of code on the fly. For more specific information about each of the development tools, visit the Safari Dev Center page.

More Safari 4 Features