Safari 4 Released, Claimed "30 Times Faster Than IE7" 465
CNETNate writes "Apple has released the beta version of Safari 4 for Mac and PC, with claims that its Nitro rendering engine is '30 times faster than IE7,' and three times faster than Firefox 3. Other new features include 'Top Sites,' which shows users the most frequently visited Web pages, 'Full History Search' for searching through not only the URLs and titles of visited pages, but also the complete text within the page itself — something Opera has been doing for a while."
Re:Notes on New Features (Score:4, Insightful)
If it lives up to all the hype Apple is giving it, it will still be lacking Noscript and ABP.
The CSS 3 Web Fonts seem rather neat, though.
Removes existing installations (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that this alleges to be a beta version and according to its own EULA:
why do Apple insist on removing any existing Safari 3 install when installing?
If we are supposed to evaluate and develop, then surely it would be prudent to allow a stable version to also be installed alongside for mission-critical usage.
Surely it's a TERRIBLE idea for non-stable, evaluation software to disallow the use of an alternative stable version?
Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:1, Insightful)
Firefox wins over users by offering a better product.
Let's say IE8 was a repackaged Firefox, what would we learn?
Firefox is where innovation happens. IE could not compete with Firefox. People who use IE8 will now have a better browsing experience because of Firefox.
Why would anyone already using Firefox switch back? There's no reason. But a real reason still exists for IE8 users to move forward to Firefox.
That's the magic of open source. The competitive advantage is that they want people to copy them. Who chooses the copy over the original?
Re:Top sites (Score:2, Insightful)
Safari 4 actually has SLOWER JavaScript... (Score:0, Insightful)
since Opera and Firefox with Noscript can run JavaScript at infinite speed. Until Safari has this capability, along with ad blocking, it is Full Of Fail.
It's worse than that. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like all those things but in a contest that doesn't even matter, like the kid who can eat the most worms or something.
Okay, maybe I'm just being ignorant, I guess there are people who it matters to but personally I've never come across a website that I couldn't "run" because my browser wasn't optimised enough. Even IE7, the supposed slowest of the bunch has run every website I've ever been too fine although I nowadays always use Firefox.
I guess it's more about future potential though? as Javascript performance improves then maybe we can see it become more useful for more things too.
Anyone know why Javascript performance is repeatedly mouthed off as such a big deal? Is it to do with future hopes for Javascript or is it about making existing sites work on even the most low end of systems- would that even matter to Apple when they don't really even sell particularly low end systems?
Re:Notes on New Features (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Classic Apple performance claim inflation (Score:3, Insightful)
For what most people use a computer for, a single-board 1.6Ghz atom machine with a GMA950 is more than they'll ever need for web browsing, e-mail, playing youtube videos and running Word. A faster machine doesn't make you type faster or make web pages load faster.
I'm typing this on a 1.2GHz G4 Mac. I promise you that any browser improvements that make the new AJAXey Slashdot load faster than frozen molasses will be quite welcome.
Re:Safari 4 actually has SLOWER JavaScript... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More Fun Demos (Score:4, Insightful)
That depends upon what you mean by "confused".
I've gotten the state out of sync. Where clicking open closes something, and vice versa, because the data model is out of sync with what's rendered in the browser.
Is that a question? Because no, it's neither a feature nor is it correct. GMail is a multithreaded application.
Cite? Because seriously, I don't do a lot of Javascript programming, but I'm pretty sure all the major browsers only give you a single javascript thread per tab. And there are countless tutorials for 'simulating multiple threads' in browsers (meaning they work more or less like windows 3.1 and meaning they aren't really multi-threaded.)
Chrome separates each tab into its own process. A random site should not crash the GMail tab
And yet it can and does.
Now that you've had your peace, allow me to fire a few salvos in return:
(fyi: piece not peace)
Does your local email client support having messages in multiple folders?
I presume you mean one message in multiple folders at once, not copies of the same message in multiple folders?
Even so, yes. OSX's mail.app does this, Thunderbird's 'Saved Search' is this and even supports message tagging (though not as robust as gmails). I'm pretty sure even the new outlook has this.
Do you still have access to messages in your IMAP folders when you lose connectivity?
Of course. Sync features from server and client are old hat.
Does your client have integrated IM and video chat making it a complete communications platform?
What if I use yahoo for IM? Is ICQ still around? Does gmail let me stay in touch with all the networks trillian supports? My standalone IM client lets me transfer files, and share a whiteboard... does gmail?
But that's all beside the point ... IM and video chat are not a core feature of an email client, and suggesting that you need them to be a 'complete communications platform' is misleading.
After all... we can run around all day about bolt on features that we need in a 'complete communications platform'... If I used twitter (I don't) then does gmail store all my twits like emails? If I used myspace or facebook (I don't and I don't) then does gmail store all the messages I get through that as email? Does gmail store all my incoming/outgoing phone calls and voice mail? What about feedback I leave in web forms on random web pages? My calendar? Shared calenders? Shared calendars with people using Outlook? What about to-do lists? Shared to-do lists? How about a calculator? Does it keep track of the urls I vist? I guess it needs a web browser too? Can it keep track of my passwords? Does it store my bookmarks? Does it reconcile my checking account with my paypal confirmation messages? Index transcriptions of the web based support chats offered by ebay? What about my WoW and EQ2 group chat? Internet faxing?
To me all of those should be extensions or external apps. Maybe to you, IM is a native feature of an email client. Its not to me. And even if it was, none of my friends/family use gtalk; unless it supported ichat/aim, msn, and yahoo it would be useless.
Ditto for video chat...
Does your client automatically thread related messages?
It actually does if I wanted it to. But I usually don't. I like new mail on top, sorted chronologically, not in threads. If I need to see the thread together I can, but most people simply leave the thread in the message body, so its not that common I need to see more.
And I actually find threads quite annoying for email, because they only work within a thread. I prefer to filter to messages to/from/cc the recipient so I can see the entire communications with that person in chrono order regardless of whether it's in a thread or not.
For example: If someone sends me a message, I reply, and then sends my boss a separate message, and my boss replies and cc's me, and then he replies back to me. And then he replies to my boss a
Re:Safari still a memory pig? Crash protection? (Score:3, Insightful)
The session *is* saved, and you can restore it using History - Reopen All Windows From Last Session.
If you want this to happen automatically when Safari starts up, you could install SafariStand [hetima.com], which does this and a whole lot more for free.
As for the memory issues... I don't know which browser uses more memory, but I sure know which one feels slow and unresponsive on my machine, and it's not Safari.
Re:Why is Session Restore still not an option, god (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand why Safari still offers no automatic session restore.
Safari 4 does have a restore session. Also since safari 3 there has been a prefernce for autorestore session.
Tabs on Title Bar still make no sense on Mac. (Score:3, Insightful)
Friend, I'm on a Mac.
The toolbar and bookmark bar are ALSO logically above the tab bar in the hierarchy. They do not change: the content of one toolbar widget, the location box, changes... but the rest of the widgets are fixed and the location box itself is fixed. They should be above the tab bar.
So, no, it makes no sense from the Mac side either.
Not what the summary says (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple isn't claiming their entire rendering engine is 30x as fast as IE's Trident and 3x as fast as FF's Gecko- they're saying their JavaScript implementation is 30x as fast as IE's and 3x as fast as FF's (that would be the SpiderMonkey 3.0.x JS performance, not the 3.1 Tracemonkey performance which is also a lot faster than 3.0.x). That's an entirely reasonable claim.
Re:Notes on New Features (Score:1, Insightful)
Aside from Apple posting a website and saying the usual "it's wonderful" market-speech there, it is the tech media that is giving it all the hype. The media does more to hype Apple products (for the better or worse) than Apple has ever done. Let me know when they start posting ads on TV, magazines and websites for Safari 4.
Sorry, I hate to sound like an Apple fanboy but it just struck me as a nit that needed picking.