Safari 4 First Impressions...
Friday, February 27, 2009 at 8:39AM 
I like it!
Have to admit I've been pretty impressed with Safari 4 in the few days I've had it. It's still a bit of a struggle getting used to the tabs at the top of the window but I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually. Hopefully you've read my blog post on my theory behind it. Might be worth spending the time getting acclimatised to it now, just in case they decide to adopt this for other applications in Snow Leopard - new Finder design anyone. It does seem very modern and clean and I can well see them moving forward with this UI change.
I've seen a few comments about Apple ripping off the tabs placement from Chrome but unfortunately, as Google never released a Mac version of Chrome, I've never played with it. Call me a fanboy if you want but I realy didn't want to fire up my Windows virtual machine just to play with a browser!
Top sites is sort of OK but I'll have to admit to being a little bit perplexed on how to configure it? I mean, can you actually add sites to it manually? I know in edit mode you can delete and re-arrange but how do you add?
Have I missed something?
The adoption of Coverflow within history seems reasonable enough and does actually add to the experience so no issues there. I just hope that the lone developer who created Coverflow, which Apple then bought, was suitably compensated for his efforts when you consider just how much of a cornerstone Coverflow is to many Apple applications.
There is one aspect of Safari 4 which I don't like however and that's removing the progress bar and replacing it with a circular indicator. Whilst it tells you something is happening, there is no feedback on how long it's going to take. I may have to switch that back to the original behaviour but I'll see how long before it really irritates.
On the whole though, I think this is a really solid release from Apple and one that bodes well for the future. Now I must check if my on-line Bank supports this new version!
UPDATE - Yes it does! Result :-)
Reader Comments (3)
Don, Yes you can add actually add sites manually to the Top site section. Open a browser window and ope Top Sites. Now open a new window and browse to the site you want to add. Then drag the adresbar into the Topsite section wish is in edit mode and now your site is added.
Not the best approach, but it works
Best Regards
Roger
Roger, you've made my day!
Excellent :-)
Hi there Don,
thanks for your great work!
I really felt I needed to post a quick comment about Safari 4 and the fact that I can't use properly the hotmail account I have... I can't see the emails when I click on them! Maybe I'm doing something wrong?
I reported it to Apple with the new icon on the Safari 4 interface... See how long it takes! Cheers