Safari 4 Developer preview is available for Mac OS X Leopard, Tiger and Microsoft Windows.
Safari 4 currently has very few new features but is significantly quicker compared to Safari 3.1 and scores 100/100 in the Acid3 test.
Safari 4 adds the ability to Save a webpage as an application, similar functionality to the third-party application Fluid. Also spotted in the Safari preferences is the ability to specify whether new tabs or windows open with; home page, same page, empty page or bookmarks.
Safari 4 passes Acid3 test with 100/100 under Mac OS X 10.5.3
Save webpage as web application
Open news windows or tabs with specific option
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mad@safari
11th June 2008, 00.22 am
Hopefully they slimmed down the memory footprint.
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Brian
11th June 2008, 01.33 am
I just hope they add a preference that forces links that would open a new window to open in a new tab instead, like Firefox does. That’s really the only thing I don’t like about Safari, but it’s still my favorite browser by far.
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Guillermo
11th June 2008, 01.39 am
Brian, type this in your Terminal: defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true
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Alec Peden
11th June 2008, 01.47 am
TargetedClicksCreateTabs is not working in the Safari 4 dev seed.
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Peter Payne
11th June 2008, 03.31 am
PLEASE look at Saft and add the major features to the browser. Remember what sites I was looking at all the time upon re-load, undo accidentally closed windows, that kind of thing.
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Ernie Kwan
11th June 2008, 03.51 am
@Brian
If you hold down the “CMD” key while clicking the link it’ll force open it in a new tab.
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Leon
11th June 2008, 04.45 am
I recently switched to Firefox (after playing with beta3) and getting fed up with certain obscure Web sites not working in Safari. If Safari 4 wants to whip FF ass, they are going to have to do better than the improvements listed here.
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Alex Brooks
11th June 2008, 11.09 am
Peter,
Not quite what you’re looking for but Safari can open all windows from a closed session by going to the History menu.
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Jerid Hill
11th June 2008, 13.51 pm
Brian, if you go to Safari Preferences all you have to do is check Apple-Click opens a link in a new tab. I’ve used this feature since Safari used tabs.
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This Is Me
11th June 2008, 14.08 pm
Add shortcut recognition; in OmniWeb if I would have a website saved with its proper name and URL but have its reminder name saved as something short, I can start typing in either one, and Omniweb will recognize it and clue into it as well. Safari; you have to start typing the full address or use a bookmark link.
E.G., this site; I’d have to start “news.worldofapple.[etc]” whereas with Omniweb I can have the shortname as WOA and it goes right to it when I type in “WOA”.
Another great Omniweb feature I’d like to get Safari to do is site preferences. I cannot read white-on-black-background text (e.g., thedigitalbits.com) so I set a preference for that site to not load background images and/or override page styles and I’m seeing black on white instead.
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winterbear
11th June 2008, 15.15 pm
why? Memory has fallen to almost free and we all have 2 gig now… Its 2008 dude…
Its very important that Safari is blazingly fast on modern machines, lowering the memory footprint would be very low on the list of requirements.
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JonO
11th June 2008, 18.59 pm
It’s this kind of thinking that’s driven the requirement for 2GB of RAM. If every application requires 700MB, 2GB doesn’t go that far.
Bloated software doesn’t help anyone. Dude.
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Dan
11th June 2008, 19.42 pm
Brian may be referring to what happens in Gmail:
In Safari, clicking on a link in an e-mail opens that link in a new window, regardless of what your settings are or how you click the link (e.g. Cmd-click).
In Firefox, clicking on a link in an e-mail opens that link according to your preferences.
Now maybe that’s more of an issue with Google than with Apple, I don’t know. But it annoys the crap out of me and I would love for that obnoxious bug to be fixed.
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YellowBirdMan
11th June 2008, 20.30 pm
Faster is good. Smaller memory footprint is good. Now, how about a sidebar like FF has where I have real easy access to all my bookmarks? Heck, I’m on an old 4:3 CRT and have room for the sidebar and webpages, along with my dock on the right side. So, not having enough horizontal space on a widescreen MB or iMac is not a real excuse.
To be completely honest, there were two reasons I switched to FF 3 on Tiger, small memory footprint and easy access to bookmarks. Give me those two things with Safari and I’d jump back in a heartbeat.
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Name3
11th June 2008, 20.34 pm
you all realise the memory is so big because it caches previous pages in FREE MEMORY for faster back button action.
You realised that right?
idiots
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Goddammit
11th June 2008, 20.44 pm
My 2007 Mac Pro only came with 1GB RAM. Adding gigs of RAM in pairs is *not* cheap.
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Devon Young
11th June 2008, 21.35 pm
This sounds rather exciting. I like that “save as web application” feature and the passing the acid 3 test.
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Preston
11th June 2008, 22.06 pm
Unused memory is wasted memory. Safari (and OS X) uses memory to cache things. If that memory is suddenly needed by anything, it will be freed and made available. There’s a misconception going around that big memory footprints mean something is wrong with the software.
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Preston
11th June 2008, 22.38 pm
Disregard that. I am an idiot and I don’t know anything about software.
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Wireman
11th June 2008, 22.49 pm
Wrong. Cmd-click offers new tab override.
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Leon
11th June 2008, 23.01 pm
If you want to try all these features out now without requiring a developer pass just download webkit, at http://webkit.org/
thats the entire basis for Safari 4
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Chris
11th June 2008, 23.17 pm
Not really. Its the engine, but its just wrapped in Safari 3. You wont get any of the new functionality, such as saving a page as a webapp.
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Gustavo
12th June 2008, 20.41 pm
Did you try it? It doesn’t work. Go to http://mail.google.com/mail/ and cmd-click on a link from an email. You’ll get a new window, not a new tab.
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jhmart1
13th June 2008, 17.56 pm
@Brian: you can force Safari to open new windows as new tabs:
In the latest Safari 3.1 Apple finally added a (hidden) preference! To enable single window mode and have all links open in a new tab that would normally have opened in a new window, we only need to enable the TargetedClicksCreateTabs preference using the following command (paste it into Terminal):
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true
You might need to restart Safari before the setting is taken into effect. To disable the setting again, run the same command with false instead of true.
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Eimantas
15th June 2008, 07.53 am
Hmmm, my acid3 test scores only 98/100. What can be wrong?
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Steven Hambleton
15th June 2008, 13.28 pm
Open new tab button
Tabbed text area
I would be very happy then!
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Alex Brooks
17th June 2008, 01.09 am
I was using 10.5.3, and has Safari 3.1 installed previously.
Any differences your end?
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Nam deFlamme
23rd July 2008, 20.12 pm
How about give me a big fat break - undo “accidentally” closed windows?
Stop whining!!!
I don’t want those kinds of things bloating the priority list; idiots who want bullshit don’t speak for the vast majority of users who want a fast, reliable, secure browser. Buttering toast is better suited to fork and toaster.
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Matt Martin
10th September 2008, 05.25 am
They better stop being stupid and enable middle click close by default. There was a developer that created a SIMBL plugin to solve this problem, he pitched the idea to Apple and they brushed him off. FireFox 3, IE 7/8, Opera and any other decent browser has this feature. Why Safari doesn’t follow this ’standard’ is beyond me.
/rant
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Jordan
17th September 2008, 11.32 am
I have a mac with tiger and I love it. However, I use FF3 because of the addons, but safari is a good browser. GO APPLE
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Me
18th September 2008, 05.26 am
I know I sound lazy but come on with EVERY OTHER web browser in the world you do not have to do this ctrl-click thing. Only idiots would still make it mandatory to get a page to open in new tabs.
Also I liked the old spell check better with out the box- so how do you get the old menu type back?
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