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    Safari 4 beta released, ads a bunch of new features we’ve seen before

    Safari 4 beta

    Today we’ve received yet another browser update, this time it’s not IE, Firefox or even Chrome, but rather Apple’s Safari. It’s currently still in beta, but arrives with a bunch of new features appears to be quite stable.

    New Features

    Top Sites – Not unlike Opera’s home screen, Safari 4 offers a 3D wall of your most commonly used sites. This view can be customized to contain 6, 16 or 24 thumbnails. Users can also pin a site to ensure it remains in the Top Sites view.

    Safari 4 betaSafari 4 beta Safari 4 beta

    Tabs – While tabs are not new to Safari, the way they’re handled is. They’ve now got the chrome-esc above the address bar look. Even better they’ve also picked up the ability to drag tabs from one Safari window to another. This is a great feature especially when viewing 2 windows side by side in Windows 7. As normal these days, tabs can be re-ordered.

    Safari 4 beta

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    Before
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    After

    Coverflow History – Borrowing from iTunes, Safari now uses the Coverflow to Safari’s history. This provides a preview of the website in your history, so if your a heavy browser, finding a site you’ve been to in the past should be all that much easier. 

    Unfortunately the Bookmarks don’t go and grab a thumbnail of the site, this should be fixed before the final version.

    Safari 4 beta

    Full page zooming – Another feature that’s been around in IE since version 7, Safari have added zoom not only to the text, but to the full page. This means the layout isn’t broken when zooming.

    Overall there are some changes in Safari 4, but pay no attention to Apple’s claimed 150 features. What they call a feature is mostly fixing things and borrowing features from the existing browsers.

    There’s a full list of the “new” features, over at Apple.com. Safari 4 beta is available for Mac or Windows.

    Jason Cartwright
    Jason Cartwrighthttps://techau.com.au/author/jason/
    Creator of techAU, Jason has spent the dozen+ years covering technology in Australia and around the world. Bringing a background in multimedia and passion for technology to the job, Cartwright delivers detailed product reviews, event coverage and industry news on a daily basis. Disclaimer: Tesla Shareholder from 20/01/2021

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