As Safari 4 shipped yesterday we scattered around trying to find out what’s changed in our beloved browser. There’s a whole lot changed since version 3.0, but there’s also many changes since the 4.0 beta. Here’s a few things not plastered on the Safari page.
Tabs stay at bottom
When 4.0 beta showed up, there was a huge outcry against the tabs on top. The new user interface was confusing and klunky to the point that it was unusable. Many switched back to the 3.0 tabs. However, over these last two months those who stuck around using the Tabs on top did get used to them, and found them a wonderful change. They not only saved space, but there was something about them that actually made them more usable than tabs at the bottom. Apparently Apple just listened in to the initial criticism and fell back to the old tab designs, albeit with a few minor UI changes.
Is there a way to get the old new-tabs back? Currently, no. We’ll have to wait until some genius finds a terminal hack that puts them in their rightful place, which I highly doubt is possible.
While we’re on tabs, they’re not all the same. You can now drag tabs across, and still be able to tear them away from the window. They’re also much cleaner now, with the close button only showing up when you hover over that tab. They’re also rounded, and have a deep shadow to better show you which is the currently selected tab. Also, after you run out of real estate, the tab list feature from the beta has been brought over.
More Toolbar Buttons
Apple has decided to fulfil everyone’s wishes by adding a whole lot of buttons to the toolbar. They’re not there by default, but if you go to “View » Customize Toolbar…” you will be able to drag in buttons for New Tab, Downloads, Show/Hide Bookmarks bar, Top Sites, Email page, and spring up the Web Inspector.
Address Bar
While Safari 4 beta brought in the tiny spinner in exchange for the blue loader, the final version adds on a ‘Loading…’ right next to the spinner. The tab is initially dark blue, but changes to a light grey once the page elements start loading. It then disappears to reveal the RSS icon.
The RSS icon has also changed from bright blue to light grey, more in line with the window colour.
Safari Complete?
While some are still hung about the Tabs at the bottom change, overall Safari 4 feels like a complete browser, full featured, and there’s no reason you should not use it.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
the only thing that is gone but needed is…once you tear out a page from the tab…you cant put it in again…im disappointed…
How anyone (and specially Mac users) can prefer the tabs on top design, I’ll never know. It went against the very grain of Apple’s own human interface guidelines and was extremely unusable. You actually had to be careful where you where clicking on the title bar in order to be able to successfully drag the window, for crying out loud! That just screams bad design to me.
I’m glad Apple’s designers have recovered from whatever hangover induced state they had been in when they’d designed the tabs on top feature of Safari 4 and have set it right again.
That said, I’m also disappointed that they didn’t go all the way and reverted to the blue background progress bar as well. Oh c’mon, that was such an ingenious design idea—why do we need to have change just for the sake of it. Last I heard, it was Microsoft that pulled antics like these.
@Ohri: Don’t know what you mean there. You can very well put a tab back in after dragging it out. You can even drag it between multiple windows. Also, Window » Merge all Windows.
@Aayush: I got real used to them at the top. Besides they saved a whole lot of space especially on a 13″ MacBook.
And you’re welcome.
how do you get all those symbols for your bookmark folders?
Just renamed my bookmarks and folders with stuff from the character palette (Cmd+Option+T). It’s confusing at first but saves a lot of space. And doesn’t work well when synced over to Windows Safari.
I’m interested in those characters too. However, when i try to insert a special ‘glyph’ character, i get the message that glyph variants are not supported. Do you have any other suggestions?
About Safari 4, i’m not sure if i like the old tab postion. To save some space i hide the bookmarks bar using the new toolbar icon
No idea what’s happening. I just go to my bookmarks pane, get it into rename mode, and double click the character from the character palette.
Found the Apple icon in the Symbol font category from which you can indeed copy it into the bookmark name field. Before i had looked in the Apple Symbol font category from where you can’t copy.
Thanks.
Aayush, I disagree, I never used the tabs before on my 13” Macbook it limits my screen size. with the top design I used them all the time, infact I am not updating Safari just yet solely because of the tabs issue, never thought I would say that. I had no issues with moving screens or anything like that. and sometimes even forgot about the tabs.
@Rob: Inquisitor is a cool add on to search window which directly shows the results in the search window itself. Get it here http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/index_en.php for free!
OK, that didn’t last long. “Notify me of followup comments via e-mail” seems to have been enabled by default again.
A couple more things:
1. Not that it’s significant but one more slight change is the way the URL fades out at the right end of the address bar now; and
2. After having used Safari 4, I’ll reiterated what I said before: I vastly prefer this design to the tabs on top one and still wish they would have reverted back to the old progress bar as well. And yes, I am on a 13-inch MacBook.
@Rob: Dumb question indeed, but never hesitate in asking one of those. We love em cause they’re so easy to solve!
@Aayush: For how long did you use the tabs on top? A day? A week? Just because something goes against some design GUIDELINES doesn’t mean it’s bad. I used them the entire period and now I miss them.
*I’m not that attached to avoid the final version altogether though.
I used it enough to know that it sucked. If the tabs were just below the title bar (like they are on Google Chrome), instead of being on it, I wouldn’t have minded it (but that would have defeated the purpose).
But in its implementation in Safari 4 beta, there was actually points on the title bar that you could inadvertently click on while wanting to drag the window and you would drag out the tabs instead. And the probability of that happening would increase as the number of tabs increased. And this is something you have to do several times a day.
I’m so shocked to see that people want that back. The title bar was actually cut up into little pieces, the sizes of which changed throughout the day. Whether or not you could see the full title of the active tab depended on how many tabs you had open at any given time.
It was absolutely riddled with design and usability flaws and had only one tiny saving grace—it saved ten pixels of vertical space. Big deal!
FYI, you can use Safari with no toolbars at all if you really want to save space, as long as you know a bunch of keyboard shortcuts. I did that for several months and had no issues at all.
Add me to the “sad to see top-mounted tabs removed” list. The first day I thought it was a terrible design, but once I started using them I got very used to them, and the space regained was a vast improvement over bottom tabs. I’m on a 15″ MBP and I miss them now.
Please let us know if anyone finds a Terminal hack to revert to top tabs.
Thanks!
I didn’t try the beta because I didn’t like the “look” of the tabs placement and thought it was heresy to change the progress/address bar. I did update to 4 though and dear oh dear, what have they done? I like the new colours and general look (Marble I’m guessing) but that loading bar is useless – will they change mobile Safari too? The new curvy tabs are a mindless change too. Given that Snow Leopard is infamously a performance upgrade, why couldn’t 4 be?
I’m hoping Apple receive enough backlash to push through changes, I’m considering downloading an old version of WebKit so I have 3.1 with the extra performance!
Apple really are loosing touch of late actually, I’m underwhelmed every time they make an announcement, sad times.