beta is another example how Apple leads the way with it’s innovative product offering. Safari 4 is simultaneously released for Mac, windows and iPhone/iPod touch. How many browsers have this credibility? This latest version of Safari browser has quite a lot of improvement as compared to the earlier version. We will discuss the features and improvements here and I will take you through the installation process in Windows (as I dun have a MAC) too.

Safari 4 is available as a free download from Apple. The size of the installation file is 25.5 MB. Once you download the file, double click on the SafariSetup.exe from the location where you saved it or simply click on run when the installation finished. On the third window of installation process it will ask you to choose to install Desktop shortcut and installation of Bonjour for Windows. This Bonjour helps the browser to detect any shared device in the local

network and make it available to you. Configuring a shared printer is the best example. For taking the full potential of Safari 4, select this bonjour for windows. At the end of installation it asked me to restart my PC (it was bit annoying for me).

I did not start my PC and double click on the desktop icon to start Safari 4. It asked me if  want to make it as default browser. If you do not want to make Safari the default browser Uncheck the option “Always perform this check” and click on No. Now I am looking at the coolest ever interface of a browser and it looks really really cool. Here is a screenshot of the image I took:

Yes, as soon as you open Safari for the first time it will populate some of the predefined sites in the initial window. As my internet connecton is not very fast (only a 512Kbps) it took some time for Safari to generate the preview images of the websites. But as you keep browsing Safari will update these nitial preview with the sites you browse the most.

I will write about the Safari 4 tips and customization in a later post. So for the time being let me take you through a round up of the features in Safari 4.

Top Sites:

This is the feature I told about earlier. The initial screen that appears as soon as you start Safari. Infact the first screen will show Apple Start page(http://apple.com/startpage). This topste feature provides at a glance preview of favorite websites which the browser learns on its own seeing your browsing habbits. Maximum of 24 webstes can be set to be displayed here. Another advantage with this topsite is it will let you know which sites have changed since the last visit and such sites will be sgown with a Star at the upper right corner. To return to the topsites window at any point in time during browsing, click on Show top sites on the bookmark bar.

Cover Flow:

If you have used iTunes 7 or later,  you must be aware of this feature. Like you browse through your titles in iTunes or iPod touch in Safari 4 you can start browsing all your bookamrks and visited site history. This offers a very high level of visual information of all visited sites. So it becomes very easy to identify if you atre looking for a site you visited in your history. Directional arrows let you browse forward and back. Or you can quickly flip through multiple sites using the slider.

Full History Search:

All the features like Top sites, Cover flow and history search is combined here. In the topstes window towards bottom left you can see the History search box. Just type a word or phrase here and Safari will start presenting you list of possble sites, as you keep typing the letters the results will be narrowed down. In fact, you can search for anything that was on a page you visited, even photo captions. To jog your memory, Safari presents the sites it finds in Cover Flow, giving you the opportunity to spot the right site on sight.

Nitro Engine:

Safari uses Nitro Engine and it helps in executing java Script upto 30 times faster than Internet explorer 7 and upto 3 times faster than Firefox 3 as per iBench and sunspider. In addition to Javascript, it gives superior html performance as cmpared to it’s competitor IE 7 and Firefox 3.

Windows Native Look:

If you are using safari 4 in Windows Vista or windows XP, you will notice that the color scheme and look of Safari 4 perfectly blends with Windows. To provide a consistent Windows experience, Safari now uses Windows standard fonts, but you can choose to use Apple’s crisp anti-aliased fonts if you prefer.

Tabs located on top:

The tabs are now located at the top (like chrome) so it gives more viewable space in the browser. With the click of a button new tabs can be opened (the + button at the top right). Each new tab has a close button located towards the left of the tab and a tab handle located towards the right. The close button at the left is bit inconvenient as we are so used to use the right hand close button. And the tab handle at the right can be used to rearrange tabs in the same window as well as to bring the tab to another safari window or to create a new window by dragging the tab handle to desktop or to the taskbar. You can create a bookmark from a group of tabs. Or even tell Safari to open a set of tabs every time you open a new Safari window.

Apart from these most talked about feature, safari 4 has over 150 new improvements like Full page zoom, text only zoom, smart address, smart search and many more. The complete list of features available in Safari 4 features page in Apple.

According to Chris Wilson, IE Platform Architect:

“This release contains some great advances in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and layout, programming model, performance, reliability, usability and service integration. We are eager to ensure that the transition to Internet Explorer 8 is seamless for you and your audience, and to give you a head start on using many of the new features with your sites and services. We encourage you to test your sites and services, and our platform implementation, and give us feedback!”

Some of the the new and exciting features are activities, Web slices, favorite bar and Automatic crash recovery. You can have a detail look about the new features in Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit site.

Download links for Internet explorer 8 beta 1:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows Vista

Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Windows XP SP2

These downloads dos not require a Validation. Many thanks to Microsoft for not blocking these downloads through a validation crap.

As it is a beta version and has been released as public beta, it is likely that you will find many bugs in it. You are encouraged to provide feedback and report bugs to Microsoft.