Safari 4 beta: A First look

So we’ve all heard about Safari 4 beta, and maybe you’ve tried it yourself. In this article I want go over the first impressions of safari 4, so lets get right into it.

The User Interface

One thing that I initially noticed was the similarities Safari 4 has with Google’s Chrome. Although Chrome certainly didn’t invent the wheel with their browser, but I thought it was worth a look.

Heres a look at Safari 4, Chrome, and Safari 3. At first glance you will see that the design has changed from the “apple” interface, to cleaner, more “xp” look and feel. I personally like the change-I think it helps usability, and gives new users and interface they may be more comfortable with.

Next you may notice the addition of these two little icons to Safari 4, which is almost identical to Chrome’s.

I like this new menu style. Browsers are starting to get cluttered, and I prefer a clean look, and these definitely provide that.

The Browser Speed Tests

As I mentioned in my previous article “Apple upping ante with release of Safari 4 beta“, Safari 4 claims to be about 3x faster processing Javascript, which can really eat up load times. Lets take a look at some statistics done by lifehacker.com..

As you can see (hopefully) Google’s Chrome is the winner of the Javascript speed test. This leads me to the conclusion that Safari was using a play on words claiming their new “speed”. Although their speeds have certainly improved. Here’s a look at some other tests from lifehacker.com

Cold and Warm starts by browser

Chrome also wins this one.. hmm…

Multi-tab load by browser

While technically IE was the winner here; it isn’t very fair because IE has a lot less eye-candy and features. The real winner here is again… Google’s Chrome, With Safari 4 coming in close.

In conclusion Safari 4 is still creating its presence in the browser race. In my personal opinion, I’m still not switching over my default browsers from Firefox and Chrome. I generally use Firefox for web development (for its extremely useful plugins) and Chrome for casual browsing (its fast and clean). In the next Safari 4 article I’ll get more in depth about the browser and take a look at all of the new features.