Comments on: Safari 4: New look, but what about the engine

By: YangombiUmpakati

YangombiUmpakati — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:26:47 +0000

nice list of updates but it definately isn’t good for older machines.. takes like forever just to load itself

By: ck2

ck2 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:55:34 +0000

Oh and Opera 10 alpha jumps to 28+ FPS

So Firefox is being left in the dirt with 3.1 :-(

By: ck2

ck2 — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 17:41:12 +0000

cromwellian your results seem to differ from mine:

Chronoscope FPS Benchmark (on AMD X2 @ 2.5ghz)
Chrome 2.0: 39.4
Chromium 2.0: 37.9
Safari 4.0: 28.7
Firefox 3.1: 15.3
Opera 9.5: 15.2

But firefox’s renderer is long overdue for a serious overhaul.

By: drlongghost

drlongghost — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:52:44 +0000

“Speculative Loading

Safari loads the documents, scripts, and style information required to view a web page ahead of time, so they’re ready when you need them.”

Hrmm…. I wonder how (if at all) they’re guarding against the browser inadvertantely loading a “delete all” link on a page and helpfully erasing all your data. I recall this was a “feature” with some “web site optimizers” in the 90s that google or someone had to later remove.

Adding CSRF checks on links such as “delete all” should be standard practice and hopefully this would prevent this sort of problem with Safari 4, but the browser shouldn’t really assume that all web sites are aware of and have implemented web security best practices.

By: mdmadph

mdmadph — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:43:38 +0000

Apple products should not look as ugly as this thing does on Windows XP.

I mean, I know it’s beta, but seriously. It’s hideous.

By: DanielN

DanielN — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:03:42 +0000

I’ve been using the beta for the past day after reading about it here – and I have to say it’s great. The first shock of seeing the window’s top used as the tab area quickly converted to the sense that “man, that makes sense. Thanks for not wasting my monitor’s real-estate anymore.”

It also feels much faster than I expected. It might be like getting a scheduled oil change for your car – it feels like it runs smoother, but it’s mostly in your head. But I’m really pleased at how responsive the interface is.

In addition, Firefox has for some time supported true zoom support. It’s very nice to see Safari join the game. Command – +/- is instinctual for me, and most websites aren’t layed out with ems. So real zoom is a huge plus.

I have not had one problem with the beta – no unexpected behavior, no crashes, etc. Very good job.

By: Jordan1

Jordan1 — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:19:39 +0000

@Malic:

I prefer the tabs at the top, Chrome style. Since I switch in between tabs rather frequently, having the tabs right at the edge of the window allows me to use Fitt’s Law to change tabs.

That being said, before I used to use a Firefox extension (called MileWideBack) that also takes advantage of Fitt’s Law.

By: pkenoyer

pkenoyer — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:20:46 +0000

I’ve been using it most of the day today. I have to say that this is the best browser that I’ve ever used. I love it.

and Safari Stand still works, so that’s a plus. I just can’t browse without my thumbnail tabs. I’m constantly jumping from window to window. I have 6 spaces with three browsers running. Each with more that four tabs. So, yes, I use the heck out of it.

By: jgw

jgw — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:26:57 +0000

It makes me incredibly happy to finally see the tabs on top. Tabs underneath the URL bar *never* made any logical sense when you think about it — we just got used to it because it’s been that way for so long. Now if they can just get it multi-process so that one crash doesn’t bring down all 20+ things I’ve got going on at any given time…

By: nathany

nathany — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:39:19 +0000

It definitely feels speedy. I do use a few Safari plugins like Web Snapper and 1Password, so it is certainly possible to extend. But such extensions are written in Objective-C, quite unlike FF using XUL/JS. One the plus side, Safari bundles in the essential developer tools, the equivalent to Firebug.

My biggest issue with Safari, as a web developer, is that I would like an obvious Apple-supported way to test with older versions of WebKit.

By: sos

sos — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:38:36 +0000

For me, Safari isn’t appealing at all. The fact that WebKit is getting faster is great news, as it needs all the speed it can get in mobile browsers (where it really shines).

However, until Safari makes it as easy as FF to write extensions – speaking as someone who likes both writing and using extensions – I really see no reason whatsoever to move from FF3 to Safari.

I know the Chrome team is working on an extensions framework, which is great. Is there anything like this on the horizon for Safari?

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:51:36 +0000

After using Safari 4 today, I went back to Chrome. Chrome gets a million tiny little details right.

By: Jadet

Jadet — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:13:43 +0000

The more they take from Chrome the better, love the tabs on top. So now that they pass Acid3, what’s next? Besides whining over who got there first.

By: WillPeavy

WillPeavy — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 21:02:07 +0000

@Malic – my initial impression is that the Safari 4 interface isn’t as good as Chrome’s.

By: Malic

Malic — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:51:21 +0000

Love the performance claims (which I DO seriously believe), not sure about tabs in the title bar. It saves vertical space but seems like a real OS X HID violation. To those who have more experience in Chrome, what’s your opinion? How does it “feel”/look have tabs there?

By: cromwellian

cromwellian — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:11:48 +0000

My gods, the performance destroys Firefox 3.1 TraceMonkey and Google Chrome! My benchmark (http://api.timepedia.org/benchmark) renders at a staggering 88 frames per second on my system, 4-5x faster than FF3.1.

By: ialexi

ialexi — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:55:30 +0000

@Simmerl: Actually, WebKit passed just hours after the internal Opera 10 Alpha (not available to public), and further, it turned out that there was a bug in the test itself, and after that was fixed, for a brief time, only WebKit passed. So, one could argue, Webkit passed first — especially if one includes the “animation smoothness” part of the test.

See: http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1206578003&count=1

Finally, Safari is currently the only beta+ browser which passes. Opera 10 is still only available in alpha.

By: Nosredna

Nosredna — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:27:30 +0000

I love the CSS multicolumns.

By: Simmerl

Simmerl — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:08:20 +0000

>> Safari is the first — and only — web browser to pass Acid 3

That´s wrong. Opera 10 was the first one.

By: LeaVerou

LeaVerou — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:05:44 +0000

Don’t you just LOVE Safari? :D

I hope it’s new features make it appealing enough for end users as well – we badly need that.