As a Leopard user, I decided a long time ago that Safari would be my Internet browser, whereas Firefox would be my Development browser. The main reason for this was that Safari has historically had an extra care for the UI, which made it better as an everyday use mac application. Today I downloaded the new beta which takes this to the next level.
I’ll review the key new features of Safari 4 next.
Better browsing screen real state
They probably got the hint for this idea from Google Chrome. But I doubt Chrome for Mac can come with a half as nifty implementation. Each tab has a handle to regroup them into new windows, and the default behavior of dragging them is moving the window, which is nice.
No more about:blank for new tabs
This feature is called Top Sites.
Again, another feature that Chrome already has, although Firefox was playing with the idea before.
What sets Safari 4 apart is the implementation and style. It’s easy to trigger it whenever you like by clicking 
and the screenshots display takes up all the window space. The rounded display of the windows also helps you find the one you’re looking for more easily, definitely a nice optical trick.
Even better for us web developers
If you have used Webkit nightly you know what I’m talking about. Safari 4 includes the revamped developer tools that more or less offer what Firebug offers.
The CSS inspector now works exactly like Firebug’s. It displays all the declarations related to a particular element style, crossing out those that are overridden by another declaration. Hovering the element tags in the inspector adds a blue shade to the rendered element, a feature I’ve been long missing. It also seems to differentiate padding or margins in the shade.
The live DOM HTML element editing is much niftier than Firebug’s. It does syntax highlighting, and you just have to double click what you want to edit, and only a particular section will be selected. If you just want to edit an attribute, you can do that. The same applies for the node content.
What is the inspector still missing? A boxed representation of the element with the element, borders, padding and margins width, and a better location for the “Inspect Element” icon, which I use all the time. Highlighting of the element when an attribute or its content is altered, which is a very useful Firebug feature.
The conclusion
The performance has also been enhanced, which you can tell immediately. The Javascript engine is one of fastest out there, and it overall works excellently for a beta.
While it really doesn’t have any truly innovative features, I insist that Safari succeeds at integrating what it was missing with astounding elegance. That applies for the Dev tools, the new tab bar, the tab page placeholder, the history search, and much more.
Maybe Safari can now become both my development and browsing platform.
11 Comments
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I love the beta. I actually seen that cliencide.com had an update (the star) and that is how I got to your site.
I played around with the beta for 20 mins before I made it my default browser. The inspector from webkit is a BIG plus and it is definitely as good as firebug. I just wish that it had firebug’s inspect mode (mouse over element on the actual page also in Opera’s debugger) and firebug’s “big” command area option (I like to write some multiline JS in there).
I just changed the tabs back to their original location because with a few tabs open, you cannot see the whole title of the page that you are currently on.
All in all it is a great browser
Boxed representation ? When you explore the dom, on the right pane under Metrics… no ?
Yep I had missed it at the time. I still think it’s pretty poor UI wise, since I often have long lists of styles and computed styles, and I have to do some serious scrolling to reach it
“Again, another feature that Chrome already has, although Firefox was playing with the idea before.”
Are you sure as far as I know it came through “Quick dial” feature in Opera
I agree, I believe quick dial came out first.
Благодарю за пост, а ведь это действительно тема :) В мемориз однозначно, пригодится! :)
А как на блоге можно заработать? У меня есть блог о игре на гитаре. Правда там народа в день не много ходит…человек 20. Можно с него что то заработать?
+1 поддерживаю
А у Вас талант писателя прям :)
Не подскажете, как ссылки в футере убрать, если он закодирован. С интересом читал ваш блог и тоже решил завести себе на подобную тему. Заранее спасибо.