Being that I hadn’t used Apple’s Safari browser for some time I decided to check it out again. It’s now at version 4 beta. This is the exact version I have:

The install completed easily, however on attempt to load www.google.com (yes, that Google), this happened:

Not good.

Everything with my internet connection was fine as my other browsers worked with no issue. Eventually Safari started working properly. Must be a beta bug thing (it is a beta browser, after all).

When you first start Safari you are presented with “Top Sites”, which is a paneled/skewed thumbnail collection of the sites you visit the most.

The panels are clickable, obviously. And yes, Apple thought enough to put an “Edit” button at the bottom left to edit out sites you don’t want to appear here.

If you’re saying to yourself, “I’ve seen this feature somewhere else..”, you’re right. The Opera browser has had this for a while. Safari’s Top Sites is just a fancy version of Opera’s Speed Dial, with the difference being Safari fills in the panels automatically whereas Opera doesn’t (and if I’m wrong there, feel free to comment and correct me).

Tabs in Safari are placed on the very top of the browser. You will either love or hate this. Users of Safari on OS X give mixed reviews on the above-bar tab placement, so you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you like it or not.

The Flash plugin works fine and I didn’t have to install/reinstall anything from Adobe. Browsing YouTube or any other Flash video-enabled site won’t be a problem.

The menu bar, like in Internet Explorer, is hidden by default and is accessed by pressing ALT. However you will probably never need to do this since everything important is accessed via the sprocket-looking icon.

From that menu is all the necessary stuff, like preferences, Private Browsing and so on.

Speaking of which, Safari’s Private Browsing is nice to have but the problem is that there is absolutely no confirmation to let you know it’s enabled after the OK, other than going back to the menu and looking for the checkmark next to the phrase.

By comparison, Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 8 make it very obvious you are have private-mode enabled.

If you used Safari on Windows before, you’ll immediately notice the browser now uses Windows font smoothing (OpenType/ClearType) by default and not the thicker Apple-style font rendering. Is there a way to enable this, which was arguably its best feature? Yes. Go to Preferences and then Appearance and you’ll find it there:

Compared to previous versions there are now several different types of smoothing to choose from. Windows Standard is the default choice, but if you want the fatter/thicker style, use Medium or Strong. Light (at least to my eyes) tends to be too “fuzzy” looking.

If you have bad eyes, you will really like Safari set on Strong. Here’s an example:

“Windows Standard”

“Strong”

It does looks a bit “smudgy”, but for those with bad eyes this may really make a big difference when reading web pages.

If you use “Strong” in combination with increasing the size of a web page (CTRL and plus-key to enlarge, CTRL and minus key to reduce), the larger the font, the better it looks.

Will this browser switch anyone off of what they normally use?

Save for Mac people who want a Mac look in Windows and people who want a browser that renders thicker fonts, not really.

Safari is a decent browser but is trounced by other offerings. It’s not as extensible as Firefox (FF is king of the add-ons, no question). It doesn’t have as much support as IE 7 (and soon to be 8 once more market share is gained). It doesn’t have any super-whiz-bang features no other browser has like Opera does (such as voice  recognition).

Simply put, Safari is at the back of the pack. But as said above, it is decent. Version 4 brings good new stuff to the table.

Try it out, you may like it.

And by the way, the claim of “world’s fastest web browser” isn’t exactly true. That honor belongs to Lynx. A GUI-based browser cannot outrun a text-based one, period.