As those of you with older PCs may have noticed the hard way, some of the new features in Apple's Safari 4 beta for Windows require a graphics card with at least 64MB of on-board RAM that supports at least DirectX 9. This makes it the first browser I've heard of with an explicit graphics card requirement, but is this really a big deal?
Missing from next to the Bookmark icon is the toggle for Top Sites.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)DirectX 9 has been around since 2004, and you can pick up a card for your desktop that supports it for around 20 bucks. This isn't quite analogous to Windows requiring a massive hardware upgrade for Vista, although it is definitely annoying.
What is strange is that Cover Flow on iTunes will work on these older machines, including the main Windows XP computer I use at work. The graphics card is older, yet, as you can see in the screenshots, Cover Flow works in iTunes and doesn't in Safari 4. This leads to my other complaint about the beta: Safari offers no notification when your graphics card is not compliant. Top Sites and Cover Flow merely don't appear. So if the browser must require an upgrade, when iTunes doesn't, the least Apple could do is include some kind of warning.
Taken on the same Windows XP machine, Cover Flow in iTunes works fine.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)This isn't the biggest deal in the world, and Safari 4 is still in beta so there's plenty of time to work out the kinks. But this strikes me as a seriously annoying problem, if nothing else, when you consider that the graphics and design elements of Apple software are one of their big attractions.
Apple suggests that one solution could be to upgrade your graphics card drivers, which didn't work for me. Apple had not returned my call requesting comment at the time of publication.
If you have other problems or solutions to problems in Safari 4 beta, tell me about them in the comments.
Safari's currently the third-most popular browser for Windows, but is Apple aiming for number two? The Safari 4 beta debuts a completely reworked program, from the Nitro JavaScript engine to the Chrome-styled interface and Top Sites.
Some users are already swearing by the faster speeds in the beta, while others won't touch a browser without extension support. Let us know your favorite browser and why in the comments.
Safari 4 will use the Cover Flow interface to let users search their browsing history.
(Credit: Apple)Apple on Tuesday announced the release of a public beta Safari 4 for Windows and Mac, promising a much faster browser with improved navigation and searching.
The company said the newest edition of Apple's browser for both Mac OS X and Windows will run JavaScript commands 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, and also claims to deliver better JavaScript and HTML page loading than Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla's FireFox 3. Apple also added the Cover Flow interface now found in almost every piece of its software to let users scroll backwards through browsing history as if they were flipping through album covers, and what appears to be Apple's own implementation of FireFox's Smart Location "awesome bar" called Smart Address Field.
The new beta version is available for download at Apple's Safari Web page with both Windows and Mac OS versions ready for testing. Mac users need to be running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 and Apple's latest security update or Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 on an Intel Mac or a G3 or better Mac. Windows users need Windows XP SP 2 or Vista.
Safari is used by about 8 percent of Internet surfers, according to Net Applications, trailing Internet Explorer and FireFox.
Update 6:50 a.m. PST: Apple senior director of system software Brian Croll said the performance improvements are the result of a new JavaScript engine called Nitro. Apple used the SunSpider benchmark to post the JavaScript results, and the iBench benchmark for the HTML numbers, he said.
Croll emphasized Safari 4's support for Web standards like HTML 5, which allows Web applications to work while offline, and CSS 3 for adding graphical effects. Safari 4 has passed the Acid3 test developed by the Web Standards Project, while FireFox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 have yet to do so, he said.
As far as changes that will be more visible to average users, Safari 4 moves the tabs from below the address bar to the very top of the window, and allows you to add a new tab by clicking a "+" sign in the uppermost right-hand corner of the window.
Apple added some new history browsing options, such as the aforementioned Cover Flow interface in the basic history view as well as a new feature called Top Sites, which checks the various Web sites you visit most frequently and arranges them in a grid pattern. If one of your Top Sites has published new content since the last time you visited, a white star on a blue background appears in the upper right-hand corner of the view for that site.
Windows users will notice a new "Windows-native look," according to Croll, that uses the standard Windows font rendering. Safari has been available as a Windows browser since June 2007.
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