Safari 4 fast, but only minor tweaks from beta

From CNET News.com: The public version of Safari 4 came out Monday amid all the iPhone noise at WWDC, and Apple confirmed what those who played around with the beta version already knew: Safari is now a serious browser for serious Windows users, and its position on Macs has been bolstered.

If you're unfamiliar with Safari 4, I strongly recommend checking out Stephen Shankland's analysis of the Safari beta version that was released in January. The biggest overall changes are the graphics improvements including the new interface and the new JavaScript engine called Nitro, but since the beta little else is dramatically different.

Users of Safari 3 will be hard-pressed to not notice that the interface is completely new, with a look and feel much more in line with the other major Webkit-based browser, Google Chrome. The browser launches with the menu bar, tab bar, and status bar all hidden, presenting you with the location bar, bookmark bar, and the slick Top Sites interface. Top Sites is essentially Opera's Speed Dial feature, presenting your most commonly visited Web sites, with a Cover Flow-style skin. The black background, curvature, and reflective window bottom make this the most professional-looking Web browser around. A blue star and an upturned corner indicate that a site has been updated since your last visit to it. Tap the Edit button in the bottom left corner to remove a site or pin a site permanently to Top Sites.

One major change to the interface from the beta involves tabs. In the beta, Apple experimented with a Chrome-style "tabs-on-top" that it has abandoned in the public release. The font for the tabs was often hard to read, and made Safari look excessively like Chrome. The new tab style now looks much like the old tab style.

Cover Flow is now available as a graphic way to browse your bookmarks and history, however, if you've got a somewhat older computer you still won't be able to use any of these graphics improvements.

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