Alex’s Journal

Yesterday, Apple announced the release of Safari 4 at it’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Of course, I upgraded immediately from Safari 3 on my Mac. It seems like a pretty good update so far, but there is one major feature that Apple previewed in the beta version that didn’t make it to the final release.

One of my favorite features of Safari 4 Beta was the tabs on top, which Apple promptly got rid of in the final release of the browser. This feature I liked because I tend to overshoot the tabs quite often and, instead of selecting the tab I want, I click on a bookmark in my bookmarks bar. With the tabs on top, the problem was thus solved. Unfortunately, Apple did away with that feature with no option to change it back. I have to say that I’m fairly disappointed with that.

I realize, of course, that there are many good changes that came about in Safari 4. One of them being the better JavaScript performance through the new JavaScript engine, Nitro. I also really do like the way the new address bar looks. The changes were very subtle, but it looks better in my opinion. Apple, for some unexplained reason, removed the progress bar that was embedded in the address bar and was replaced with a small blue rectangle at the end that says “Loading…”.

Overall, it was worth upgrading despite the tabs now being in their traditional location underneath the bookmarks bar.