Apple unveils Safari 4 beta download

by Stevie Smith - Feb 24 2009, 18:00

Offered up as “The World’s Fastest & Most Innovative Browser,” the tech gurus at Apple Inc. have today officially announced the availability of the Safari 4 beta, which arrives boasting a new Nitro engine promising users increased performance.

Released as a free download for users of both Mac and PC systems, Apple is lauding the Safari 4 beta and its Nitro engine for its ability to run JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.

Other new features categorised by Apple as ‘innovative’ and expected to “make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable” include visual previewing through Top Sites, as well as Full History Search to sort through titles, Web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages, iTune-esque Cover Flow for easy flipping through Web history and bookmarks, and Tabs on Top to make tabbed browsing even easier.

“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” enthused Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”

Looking to put rival Web browsers in the shade, Apple is keen to point out that Safari 4’s Nitro engine executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 and more than three times quicker than Mozilla’s Firefox 3. The new beta also loads HTML pages three times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3.

With offline support for HTML 5 for application storage when not connected, and support for enhanced graphics performance through advanced CSS Effects, the Safari 4 beta is also the first Web browser to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test.

Not quite finished yet. Other new additions include: Smart Address Field for automatic Web address completion; Smart Search Field for search fine-tuning alongside Google recommendations and recent search listings; Full Page Zoom for a closer look at any Web site without visual degradation; built-in Web developer tools, and a new Windows-native aesthetic.

Mac owners looking to grab the Safari 4 beta should be equipped with Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 (with Security Update 2009-001), or Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11, and a minimum of 256MBs of memory. Windows users need XP SP2 or Windows Vista, and a minimum of 256MBs of memory.

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