A few minutes with Safari 4 Beta

In case you missed it this morning, Apple released a beta version of Safari 4. Overall, it's very similar to the old version with a few notable exceptions. First, it added a "Top Sites" view, which shows a wall with the top 9 web sites you visit - showing a thumbnail of the page the last time it was visited (it shows a star for pages not updated recently -- at least I think that's what it means).

More interestingly, from this "wall" view, you can search your history and see the results in a coverflow format. The exciting thing about this search is that it searches content, not just URLs. Since I tend to like visual representations over textural reps, I like the potential of this search system.

The tabs have changed significantly. Instead of hanging from the bottom of the toolbar, it now sits on top. At first, I really didn't like this position, but I'm slightly warming to it. First, it goes against the standard mac window usage, where the top of the window is fixed and will lead to confusion. Now, instead of being able to simply grab the tab and move it around, you have to grab a little tiny bit of the tab on the right side to do the same thing. However, once you get used to that, it nicely allows you to move the tabs, rip them off for a new window, or move from one window to another. Another nice thing about the tabs is that it now shows a lock on the tab for secure pages.

There is also a coverflow interface with search for working with your bookmarks. This too has potential, but it limited by how often you loaded the pages.


I'll be happier, though, when 1Password gets up and running with it.