Hands-On with Safari 4 Beta

Traditionally, browsers haven’t been the sexiest software on the desktop, but with the high stakes battle between Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla, now more than ever we’re seen slicker designs and richer feature sets. Case in point is Safari 4 beta, a browser that only adds a few new features, but may entice many with it’s Mac OS X Leopard-inspired eye-candy.

The first thing you’ll notice upon installing Safari 4 Beta is the influence of Cover Flow, and it’s gorgeous. It utilizes Apple’s trademark minimalist-chic design, which consists of a black background and slick reflections, but with a touch of Windows flair with the native title bar, toolbar, and borders.

When we first fired it up, we were  introduced to a 4 x 3 grid that contains thumbnails of a variety of popular sites (Apple startpage, Yahoo, Google Maps, YouTube, Wikipedia, CNN, eBay, New Your Times, Amazon, Flickr, CNet, and Expedia), that you can customize by clicking the edit button. A star icon appears  in the upper-right corner of a thumbnail indicating that the site has fresh content–very cool.

Like Google Chrome, Safari 4 learns from your surfing habits, and displays your most frequently visited sites. When we clicked on a Web page thumbnail, the it zoomed forward and filled the entire browser, allowing us to dive into its content. Safari’s tabs have been revamped to be a bit sleeker; in fact, they’re reminiscent of Chrome’s. Each time you open a new tab, you’re presented with the new Cover Flow interface, so  your favorite pages are always just a click away. Apple includes a “Search History” button that enables you to type in a word or phrase, which returns visited webpage on the fly.

Under the hood, the most notable new feature for everyday users is Full Page Zoom (activated by clicking an icon or with multi-touch gestures) , which lets you take a closer look at pages, and the new Nitro Engine which is designed to render pages faster. In our tests, CNN.com and Laptopmag.com loaded in 5.9 and 3.8 seconds, respectively.

Safari 4 Beta may not be revolutionary, but the new design element certainly gives it the definite Apple feel that it lacked in the past.