As if I don’t have enough to do, I’m going to try the new Safari 4 Beta. If the new features match their descriptions, this version will set an entirely new standard in what a browser can and should be.
Cover Flow
Top Sites
History
Developer Tools
Tabs on top.
What should a browser be? And why does Safari do it?
Compare Google’s Chrome to Safari. They are becoming exactly the same, especially the top tab thingy. I still use Firefox which has some very useful developers tools (Firebug and HTTPfox).
Though I’m pretty impressed with the Safari Beta after a couple of weeks, there is one change Apple has made that I find very distressing.
In previous versions, the status of a page load showed up in the address bar of the browser. The more loaded the page was, the more blue ran across the address bar. It was an immediate and obvious read. They have removed this graphic, and now have one of the spinning loaders in the address bar.
This change fails for two primary reasons. First, the location and design of the spinning wheel is so unobtrusive that it is almost invisible. Second, unlike the progress bar nature of the previous loading graphic, this one gives you no visual indication as to how much of the page has loaded; in fact, a spinning wheel could just as easily mean the page load has stalled altogether.
I hope the final release restores the progress bar to its original, useful design.
I think a great browser should be fast, stable, Web-standards compliant, unobtrusive, intuitive, helpful to developers, and accessible for people with disabilities. It shouldn’t require a ton of extensions to be fun and useful. It should be as visual as possible, especially for items like your browsing history and bookmarks (who remembers sites based on URL strings?).
I’m going to try it for one week, and I’ll let you know what I think. Do the same!
I can’t use Chrome because it’s PC-only for the time being. I’ve never been a big FireFox fan, though I know that’s not cool to say. FF has always seemed a little slow and klunky. But it does have some nice extensions. So far, the new Safari screaming fast, and the features seem pretty good.