Taking a Closer Look at Safari 4 (public beta)

On Tuesday, Apple released the beta version of Safari 4 for Mac OS X and Windows. The browser update includes several new features, including an upgraded Top Sites view, a redesigned user interface and a trailblazing degree of Web Standards compatibility, which is becoming a key issue among browser developers.

So, how does the new public beta version of Safari 4 fair? Breaking it down by the newest features and how the current public beta compares against Safari 3, let’s take a look:

Top Sites

Graphically-oriented, with flashy 3D effects, the Top Sites View is visually impressive, but entirely unnecessary. The feature defaults at 12 sites, selecting the sites most frequently visited by the user. The feature can be customized to include sites not visited as frequently, and sites that are viewed enough to be in the top 12 can be removed permanently from the list and made to never display again.
The feature itself is oriented around the mouse, with zoom, fade and site toggling all controlled through moving and clicking the mouse. While this is a fairly common interface design function, there are no keyboard shortcuts to use alternatively to the mouse.

Verdict: The Top Sites View feature is easy on the eyes, but hard on the hands. However, inclusion of alternate keyboard shortcuts could balance the disparity between appearance and utility.

Redesigned User Interface

Cover Flow, the concept first utilized extensively in Apple applications like iTunes, is used extensively for most organization tasks associated with browsers. Bookmarks, History and tabs all function through the Cover Flow, which enables users to rapidly filter through a visually-oriented interface. Like the Top Sites View, this user interface design is mouse-oriented.

In addition to Cover Flow functionality with Bookmarks and History menus, new tab navigation features have been included. The tabs now display in the actual applications bar, as opposed to taking up space in the browser window. Tabs can also be dragged, dropped or removed to form new windows in the new beta version. And, in addition to Safari’s pre-existing tab navigation shortcuts, the new beta version offers a ctrl-tab shortcut to toggle between tabs. One conspicuous absence is the tab load progress indicator, which allows users to see which tabs have loaded, failed to load or are currently still loading.

Verdict: Cover Flow functionality does speed up organization and gives a visual finish to sites in Bookmarks and History, taking much of the guesswork out of bookmarked sites. Aside from the missing tab load progress indicator, the new tab features are mostly improvements.

Web Standards

Apple’s Safari 4 beta is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 Test. The Web Standards Project was initiated to reduce the cost and complexity of development by focusing on coding platforms that that would be accessible and viable long-term. For a comparison to Safari 4 beta’s perfect score, the recent IE8 beta only achieved a 20% on the Acid3 Test. The closer browsers come to perfection, the better they will be at rendering sites and web documents accurately.

Verdict: In an industry fueled and predicated upon rapid change, Web Standards and the Web Standards Project are playing increasingly important roles in working with browser and coding language developers to make the web consistent for all browsers and rendering engines. With Safari 4 beta receiving a perfect score, other browsers could follow its example.

All in all, Safari 4 beta is just that: a beta program. Though the final version will see little change from the public beta version, there is still the possibility of additional changes and improvements. As it is now, Safari 4 beta is fairly structurally sound, but could still benefit from tightening a few screws and re-attaching previous Safari features like tab load progress indicators.

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