Apple has announced the public beta of Safari 4 web browser for Mac and Windows PCs.
Apple maintains that the Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3.
Innovative new features in Safari 4 include:
• Top Sites, a display of frequently visited pages in a stunning wall of previews so users can jump to their favorite sites with a single click;
• Full History Search, where users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages to easily return to sites they've seen before;
• Cover Flow, to make searching web history or bookmarks as fun and easy as paging through album art in iTunes;
• Tabs on Top, for better tabbed browsing with easy drag-and-drop tab management tools and an intuitive button for opening new ones;
• Smart Address Field, that automatically completes web addresses by displaying an easy-to-read list of suggestions from Top Sites, bookmarks and browsing history;
• Smart Search Field, where users fine-tune searches with recommendations from Google Suggest or a list of recent searches;
• Full Page Zoom, for a closer look at any website without degrading the quality of the site's layout and text;
• built-in web developer tools to debug, tweak and optimize a website for peak performance and compatibility; and
• a new Windows-native look in Safari for Windows, that uses standard Windows font rendering and native title bar, borders and toolbars so Safari fits the look and feel of other Windows XP and Windows Vista applications.
"Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications."
Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies so web-based applications can store information locally without an Internet connection, and is the first browser to support advanced CSS Effects that enable highly polished web graphics using reflections, gradients and precision masks. Safari 4 is the first browser to pass the Web Standards Project's Acid3 test, which examines how well a browser adheres to CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG web standards that are specifically designed for dynamic web applications.
Safari for Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPod touch are all built on Apple's WebKit. Apple developed WebKit as an open source
project to create the world's best browser engine and to advance the adoption of modern web standards. Most recently, WebKit led the introduction of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards and is known for its fast, modern code-base. The industry's newest browsers are based on WebKit including Google Chrome, the Google Android browser, the Nokia Series 60 browser and Palm webOS.
Safari 4 is a public beta for both Mac OS X and Windows and is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/safari.
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