Are you ready to go on Safari?

Apple's release of a new beta of the standard free Safari browser has divided loyalties among fans, although most like the speed.

Safari 4 Beta was released simultaneously for Mac and PC with, amazingly for 'just' a browser, 150 new features. Immediately it looks different, with the tabs now loading along the top - awkward for habitual tab-grazers like myself.

However, the cosmetics is only the face. Safari uses the latest development of WebKit, an Apple-initiated open source web browser engine which began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE.

WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine used by Safari - and it's also used by Apple's OS X Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications including Apple's professional photographic program Aperture.

WebKit is open source, which means it has been used by others - notably, recently, by Google's Chrome browser, making Mac users wonder why Chrome came out in PC-only versions when it debuted a few months ago.

WebKit has a Developer Connection site hosted by Apple for you to learn more from, then if you're game - there's a specific part of it just for Safari development.

If you're into developy stuff (or you like people to think you're geekier than you are), you can add a Develop menu. Just open Preferences, click the Advanced tab and turn on 'Show Develop menu in menu bar.'

Speed is up - Safari 4 Beta uses a different JavaScript engine that can execute JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7. The Nitro Engine is supposed to be three times faster than Firefox 3's.

If you know what speeds your browser currently achieves, try running a few tests using the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark.

Those funky looks though ... they really are mostly cosmetic, as it turns out. They are mostly overlays you can turn on or off. I initiated the code to revert the tabs to where I was used to having them. I'm not averse to change but I use Safari a lot and I found the new interface just too frustrating after two days.

It slowed me down. I will also put the blue progress bar back. In Safari up to v3, when a site was loading the bar with the URL title in it had a blue progress bar going left to right. With 4B, at first I thought pages weren't loading at all and it was stalling until I realised there was a new, little spinning disc thing I can't see without looking for it. I much prefer the easy visual check that things are loading, thanks, so I aim to flip my Beta back to that, too.

If you're confident to run a few UNIX commands, all the hidden preferences are detailed at Swedish Campground (I know, it's not the kind of name you'd expect. Trust me.) You can actually copy and paste the commands into Terminal, by the way, and press return to initiate them - just follow the directions.

For the rest, though, it's pretty good. I like the 'Command' and 'Shift' and ']' combination to select the next tab (has that always been there?) and the same except plus '[' to go back one. It saves a bit of mousing.

The new Top Sites feature may find fans - it's a new view for visual types. You can turn it on by pressing the grid button that appears next to the bookmarks button at top left of Safari 4 Beta.

Top Sites offers a 3D gallery view of what Safari decides are your favourite websites, displaying them in thumbnails on a grid. Choose from six, twelve or twenty-four thumbnails - just press the Edit button at bottom left while you're in Top Sites.

Top Sites live updates those that are dynamic as you watch. If sites include an RSS feed, Safari 4 Beta can alert you that new content is available with a star icon on the appropriate thumbnail.

Perhaps more important is the History Search that the Top Sites view gives S4 Beta users. Click on that at bottom right to search, using a Cover Flow interface, through your recent history.

And for those of you using Windows, the 4 Beta features a 'native look' for you. That means a native-lookin' title bar, borders and toolbars. Safari 4 Beta also uses Windows standard fonts, but for a glimmer of Apple goodness, you can choose to use Apple's superior (ooh, did I say that?), crisp anti-aliased fonts.

Apple says Safari 4 Beta for Windows delivers the same lightning-fast performance provided by the Mac version.

Download the Safari 4 Beta for either platform here [http://www.apple.com/safari]

- Mark Webster mac.nz