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."
Notes on New Features (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone know if this is a new engine or just Squirrelfish renamed?
Looks like Safari might be the first Acid 3 browser to the market. Opera's version 10 is Acid 3 compliant, but it's still in Alpha testing.
I noted this feature in Opera 10. The results shown in the demos were rather impressive. The web pages had more of a print-layout look to them without the classic trick of relying on images to cover all the content. This has the potential to completely change the look of the web for the better.
I'm still trying to figure out how being able to use Canvas as a style to apply to web elements is useful, but the idea definitely sounds cool. I suppose one could always set a fixed web page background as a canvas, then make it look like they're on an acid trip as they scroll. :-P
I'm downloading the beta now. If it lives up to the hype that Apple is giving it, it will be an amazing piece of software.
Re:Notes on New Features (Score:5, Funny)
Nitro has more street cred.
Squirrelfish sounds like a slimy little douchebag trying to get out from under a last call chick who has him pinned at the end of the bar.
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.
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Which is why Privoxy [privoxy.org] Rocks.
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At least I have ClickToFlash [github.com] now.
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Scriptable plug-ins is listed as a feature.
SafariBlock (Score:3, Informative)
Been available here [google.com] for Safari for a long time.
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Actually, passing Acid3 at this point apparently means supporting the standard wrongly [whereswalden.com] because of a recent change in the spec. I think that illustrates why we shouldn't rely on tests like the Acid Tests too much when determining standards compatibility.
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That's ACID2, not ACID3. As the article says, they'll probably update the ACID2 test to match the spec change.
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CSS 3 Web Fonts
I noted this feature in Opera 10. The results shown in the demos were rather impressive. The web pages had more of a print-layout look to them without the classic trick of relying on images to cover all the content. This has the potential to completely change the look of the web for the better.
Am I the only one who _doesn't_ want this? The web is hard enough to read already with these 10px hard-coded fonts everywhere. Even Zoom in Firefox and Opera is not good enough to work around the problem because the images look terrible. For every site I need a different combination of zoom and text embiggenment (a very crumulent word, I know).
Re:Notes on New Features (Score:5, Informative)
The whole point of features like Web Fonts is to get away from using images. Thus when you zoom, the renderings look crisp and clean. Try these demos [alistapart.com] in Safari 4 to see what I mean. Zooming the reference image looks ugly. (What you're complaining about.) Zooming the actual rendering is helpful and actually looks better the closer the examples are zoomed.
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Nice rant, but you misunderstand how zooming works in modern browsers. All the browsers are moving away from the text-zoom scheme toward a full-page zoom. The full page zoom leaves the layout exactly the same while allowing you to inspect the page more closely.
This was an idea that was pioneered by Opera. They supported a variety of small-screen devices where zooming was a bit of an issue. By supporting full-page zooming
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Text reflow fails miserably once you get past a certain size. If your intent is to inspect the page close up, then text reflow is a problem. Why don't you just download Safari and try it out? I think you'll answer your own question fast enough.
Alternatively, go watch this video [youtube.com]. You can see how zooming allows you to focus on the areas of interest rather than dealing with a terrible layout. (Given the size of the screen, three column would work out to barely a word or two per line. I don't think there's anyo
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The web is hard enough to read already with these 10px hard-coded fonts everywhere. For every site I need a different combination of zoom and text embiggenment
It's called "Minimum font size". Both Firefox and Safari have easily accessible preference settings for this. Sometimes a minimum size will break menu bars with hardcoded widths, but overall it's a big net plus.
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If Nitro is just marketing speak for SFX (SquirrelFish Extreme) then Apple is guilty of the worst "up to" benchmark numbers crap possible:
http://summerofjsc.blogspot.com/2008/09/squirrelfish-extreme-has-landed.html [blogspot.com]
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2008
"In particular, the version of V8 used here is the bleeding-edge branch, which is a bit faster than the version that shipped with Chrome."
"As you can see, SquirrelFish Extreme is 36% faster than V8"
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If Nitro is just marketing speak for SFX (SquirrelFish Extreme) then Apple is guilty of the worst "up to" benchmark numbers crap possible:
Hey, at Apple, that's one of the great traditions !
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I noted this feature in Opera 10. The results shown in the demos were rather impressive. The web pages had more of a print-layout look to them without the classic trick of relying on images to cover all the content. This has the potential to completely change the look of the web for the better.
This wouldn't matter much if it wasn't for IE 8 also supporting it. Yeah, really! :) And Firefox 3.1 beta 3 too. So yes, this should be interesting.
Re:Notes on New Features (Score:5, Informative)
Right you are! I am a HUGE fan of web standards and the new features that HTML5 is bringing. And because I have experience with browser developers like Apple, Opera, and Mozilla, I trust that they'll do a good job in making the features a reality. Especially since they're the same people writing the standards.
For those who actually care, I've managed to pull up some demos in Safari 4:
http://webkit.org/blog/138/css-animation/ [webkit.org]
http://webkit.org/blog/176/css-canvas-drawing/ [webkit.org]
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/cssatten [alistapart.com]
I must say, I'm impressed! We'll see how well they work in real-world usage going forward.
The browser itself appears to be leaning more toward the UI design of Chrome. Which fits it well, IMHO. The new Coverflow feature is surprisingly slick and doesn't feel tacked on at all. The bonjour integration feels like a new management console for the network. I can surf all the devices and get important information on their location and status. I can even change the settings!
Which makes me wonder if the next version of OS X is going to use Safari-based widgets for network and printer management. Hmm...
At the very least, this is a nice way to surf the network on Windows. ;-)
More Fun Demos (Score:5, Interesting)
Falling Leaves Animation: http://webkit.org/blog-files/leaves/index.html [webkit.org]
Bouncing Box Animation: http://webkit.org/blog-files/bounce.html [webkit.org]
Rotate and Fade Animation: http://webkit.org/blog-files/pulse.html [webkit.org]
CSS Recipes for Effects: http://developer.apple.com/safari/articles/webcontent/cssrecipes.html [apple.com]
CSS Gradients: http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/InternetWeb/Conceptual/SafariVisualEffectsProgGuide/Gradients/chapter_2_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008032-CH7-SW11 [apple.com]
Video tag (requires Quicktime): http://webkit.org/blog/140/html5-media-support/ [webkit.org]
CSS Gradients: http://webkit.org/blog/175/introducing-css-gradients/ [webkit.org]
Background Shaped Clipping: http://webkit.org/blog/164/background-clip-text/ [webkit.org]
Local Database Example: http://webkit.org/misc/DatabaseExample.html [webkit.org]
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Check out
http://www.apple.com/safari/welcome [apple.com]
All done using HTML 5 and CSS 3
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Short Answer: Yes
I was on the WHATWG mailing list when this was discussed. Apple was very clear that anything supported by Quicktime would be supported in the browser. They singled out OGG/Theora support as a format they will support, but only through user-installed plugins.
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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
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I think you guys are both missing the point. Asynchronous means asynchronous. That's it. It doesn't imply preemptive threa
No so bold (Score:2)
Re:No so bold (Score:4, Informative)
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On the Apple Safari feature page:
Safari 4 introduces the Nitro JavaScript engine, an advanced bytecode JavaScript engine that makes web browsing even faster. In fact, Safari 4 executes JavaScript up to 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 8 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1.
As the article sucks, here's some better info [apple.com].
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Well, so far IE8's javasript performance is roughly 4x faster than IE7's (neowin [neowin.net]), so...little bit of math...Safari 4's javascript performance should be about 7.5x faster than IE8 (beta)'s.
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IE7 is actually getting a bit outdated as it is, so this claim isn't as bold as it seems. Why didn't they compare it to IE8? Or better yet if they really want to talk about speed, Google's Chrome is pretty fast.
Comparisons are most useful when done against something someone knows. Most people know IE7. It also adds to the switch to a Mac argument when comparing against IE specifically. Is this case, marketers ask themselves, "Why NOT compare it to IE7?"
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Saying you beat IE isn't much (Score:5, Funny)
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 per
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Two reasons:
1. Faster page loads. Unless a page uses the non-standard "defer" option for Javascript, the page load/render stops every time the browser encounters a Javascript file. Until the script is done parsing and executing (Javascript is loaded into the VM via execution), the page cannot finish loading. Thus a faster JS engine means faster page loads overall.
(A tip for web design: Put your unimportant scripts toward the
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I find it's much easier to go up against a lot of people. I haven't fought just one person for so long... I've been specializing in groups, fighting gangs for local charities... that kind of thing. You see, you use different moves when you're fighting half a dozen people than when you only have to worry about one. So just one person would give me so much trouble.
AdBlock and extensions (Score:2)
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Safari does have extensions... they call them plugins... though if you're on Windows I think you're out of luck.
Ad Blocking for you. [pimpmysafari.com] There are 7 options in this list. Most are free, I see one commercial offering.
And of course you could always just use a hosts file and personal stylesheet to do the work yourself. If fact with the new support for CSS3 animations you could have some fun... make those ads do a dance before disappearing ;-p
New look looks cluttered (Score:2)
I'm posting on it right now on a mac. It has some really innovative ideas and has made my day.
However the titlebar now looks cluttered. Also, when you click on the title bar to focus, you might not get the window you were (half-) looking at. This is a bug they should fix.
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From the horses mouth (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the actual claims from Apple's website:
"Using the new Nitro Engine, for example, Safari executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3 based on performance in leading industry benchmark tests: iBench and SunSpider.
In addition to superior JavaScript performance, Safari offers top-flight HTML performance -- the best on any platform -- loading pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost 3 times faster than Firefox 3."
I'm not too familiar with either of these benchmarking programs, so I can't really pick at the results too much, but the actual claim is 'up to 30 times faster' which means that for some function it's 30 times faster, but for most it's probably not at that level of magnitude. It seems as though some of this important information was lost in the game of telephone that is internet news.
Also, I'm more interested in how it stacks up against Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. Comparing it to IE7 is a little bit like Ford comparing their new car to a horse and cart. No offense meant to the browser, but from every chart I've seen it's the bottom of the barrel in terms of speed.
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Whenever I see the words up to I always mentally substitute no more than . For example: "No more than 30 times faster", "No more than 25% off", etc. You get the idea.
If more people would do this then the silliness might stop.
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Comparing it to IE7 is a little bit like Ford comparing their new car to a horse and cart.
Hey, a horse and cart can be faster than a Ford Mustang in an off-road race.
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Let me guess that iBench is an apple app designed to highlight every slow part of JS in every browser. Oh and to be quick and use anything that Safari actually does right. Seems like a fair test to me. I bet even MS could make IE7 30 times quicker in some tests than Safari if they wanted too.
Good guess. Unfortunately, you're wrong. It's an open source benchmarking app for Mac OS X. [sourceforge.net]
Re:From the horses mouth (Score:5, Informative)
This is about a completely different iBench. If you look at the the benchmark graphs, you'll note that
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Good guess. Unfortunately, you're wrong. It's an open source benchmarking app for Mac OS X. [sourceforge.net]
Good guess. Unfortunately, I'm wrong. That's (apparently) the wrong iBench. Mea culpa!
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Have you ever tried googling before opening your mouth?
iBench is an open source benchmark tool for OS X.
It's hosted on SourceForge.
http://ibench.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
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Let me guess that iBench is an apple app
No. Next?
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I doubt that. If you are trying to claim all of this is smoke and mirrors you're wrong.
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How does firefox maintain competitive advantage? (Score:4, Funny)
If IE and Safari can look at Firefox's source code and see exactly how FF implement's something, how can FF maintain a competitive advantage as a core browser. By core browser I mean without all the plugins/themes/extensions. IE/Safari already have a distribution advantage in that the browser comes with the OS. I'm going to a assume that the folks over at Mozilla would not declare victory if Apple/MSFT decided one day to reskin and rename FF and package it with their OS.
It's a unfair advantage that the OS vendors can see the source code of FF, however the reverse is not true. So if Safari has this great performance, how can the FF figure out how Safari does it?
Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:5, Informative)
So if Safari has this great performance, how can the FF figure out how Safari does it?
By heading over to WebKit.org [webkit.org] and downloading the open source rendering engine it uses?
Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:4, Interesting)
During the early days of Safari 3.0, I was in charge of making sure my companies product was compatible with Safari.
I have built WebKit from their xcode project. I have submitted bugs. And I know that sometimes the fix arrives in Safari months before WebKit.
I have much respect for that development team, but to say that Apple (as close-lipped and proprietary as they are) isn't holding anything back is just naive.
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Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:5, Informative)
As a developer working on WebKit, this is completely wrong and more than a little insulting.
The versions of WebKit included with Safari releases are built directly from the public tree. There is no secret version of WebKit that Apple fixes bugs in for Safari releases before eventually landing the changes in the WebKit tree. The WebKit tree is Apple's official WebKit tree, and is where all of Apple's development on WebKit for Mac OS X and Windows takes place.
For sake of reference http://trac.webkit.org/browser/releases/Apple/Safari%204%20Public%20Beta [webkit.org] contains the exact source code of WebKit that was built and released as Safari 4 Public Beta earlier today. There are no secret changes in the version of WebKit that Apple shipped. The changes are all there in the open for the world to see.
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> how can the FF figure out how Safari does it?
Man they'd have to like, use the Internet or something: http://trac.webkit.org/browser/trunk [webkit.org]
That's the source code to webkit, the rendering engine behind Safari. It's licensed under the LGPL.
The reason, in case you were wondering, is because it was started from an open-source rendering engine called KHTML, which was written by the KDE project. The LGPL made sure that when Apple started improving it their improvements would stay in the open.
And so you *can*
Re:How does firefox maintain competitive advantage (Score:3, Informative)
Safari has Webkit [webkit.org] @ it's core.
FF devs can look @ the Webkit source. FF devs can also look @ the Google Chrome Source, which is also based on webkit.
In fact, webkit is licensed under BSD + GPL, so IANAL, but I think this mesans FF can even *use* webkit's code directly in their browser ...
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BSD + LGPL actually. Which means *anyone* can use webkit's code in their browser, even a closed-source project. (And many do!)
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Er... sorry, that should read "webkit" not "webkit's code"
LGPL or GPL rendering engines can use webkit's code, but closed-source projects have to use the whole engine or publicly provide the alterations they make.
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How is it unfair? Firefox can look at Safari's code source and do the same things it does.
And who cares if Firefox can compete more? It already has a good distribution, and Firefox's point isn't to "compete" or gain a monopoly, or any such thing, but to deliver a good, standards-compliant browser to help foster more standards-compliance in the marketplace. The best situation is to have a number of web browsers that are all fully compliant and have a minimal popularity to be sustainable.
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By having different goals.
For example, Chrome could copy FF's adblock extension. But they won't, because they don't want to. FF (and probably Opera) is mostly for the user (though FF has arguably compromised the users' interest in favor of the commercial CAs); Chrome is for the
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And what if IE has great performance, too, how will Firefox ever be able to keep up with that?
Anyone believe that this will ever happen?
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?
Standalone versions (Score:2)
Furthermore, wouldn't Apple want developers to keep a copy of Safari 3 around for compatibility testing, even after Safari 4 goes out of beta? Yeah, I know that you can only have one official Webkit install that the rest of the system uses, but there is nothing preventing Apple from providing a standalone version of the the beta, or repackaging Safari 3 to be standalone when you install the Safari 4.
Anyway, Michel Fortin was nice enough to do that for all the major stable releases of Safari [michelf.com]. Enjoy.
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IIRC This includes a full new version of webkit.
While it's relatively easy if you know what you are doing to have different browsers, with different whatevers... based on WebKit/Safari kit when you are releasing something to the masses (where you want specific kinds of diagnostic feedback) your aim is for a simple process.
Why did you insist on installing this without verifying what it would do first? Why not run a nightly if you want both? If you are evaluating and "developing" then spend the 5 minutes to d
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Re:Removes existing installations (Score:4, Informative)
http://support.apple.com/downloads/#internet [apple.com]
Clearly labeled as "Looking for Safari 3? Download here" at bottom of the Safari 4 download page.
Classic Apple performance claim inflation (Score:3, Informative)
Apple loves to put in meaningless benchmarks with no real-world meaning to hype their products.
For example, the "3 times faster than a Pentium II" claims back in some of the older PowerPC days - this was true for a single Photoshop operation that at that point had Altivec optimizations on PPC but was running straight scalar code (no MMX) on a P2.
For nearly all other applications, the P2 was equal to or faster than the PPC. But Apple hyped their systems based on that one single meaningless-for-most-people benchmark. (As opposed to AMD's speed rating system which for the Athlon XPs was based on a suite of benchmarks and their average comparison to a similarly clocked P4, which was typically pretty accurate.)
Here, how is Apple magically eliminating network latency and providing infinite network bandwidth with browser changes? For nearly all users, the network is the bottleneck.
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Apple loves to put in meaningless benchmarks with no real-world meaning to hype their products.
For example, the "3 times faster than a Pentium II" claims back in some of the older PowerPC days - this was true for a single Photoshop operation that at that point had Altivec optimizations on PPC but was running straight scalar code (no MMX) on a P2.
If your going to spout blind FUD, do your homework. Altivec didn't even exist on PowerPC's back when the Pentium II was around. The current PowerPC CPUs were the PowerPC 604 and the newcomer was the G3.
Altivec didn't arrive until the G4 and by then the Pentium III was out and selling.
At the same clock rate, the PowerPC really was quite a bit faster. Not by rediculous "3x" margins but it really was quite a bit faster. The PowerPC is also a much cleaner and well-thought-out architecture. Anybody that sti
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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:Classic Apple performance claim inflation (Score:4, Funny)
Damn; you got served by a 5UID.
Mac and PC? (Score:2)
Ok, in this case PC is MS Windows. So it doesn't run on GNU/Linux. Considering the current Macs are build using almost the same components as any other PC (the only real difference being the lack of the old BIOS) they might as well drop the useless distinction and simply refer to MS Windows.
Kills Growl Mail.app Plugin (Score:3, Funny)
So it looks like the Safari 4 beta causes the growl plugin for the mail.app to crash the mail.app
great.
Impressions (Score:5, Interesting)
- Scrolling this /. page is extremely slow in safari.
- The tabs in the window's title bar is just plain annoying and feels really out of place.
- Just like Google's Chrome this browser also doesn't blend in well with MS Windows UI. It's feels alien to the other programs.
Re:Impressions (Score:5, Funny)
- Scrolling this /. page is extremely slow in safari.
- The tabs in the window's title bar is just plain annoying and feels really out of place.
- Just like Google's Chrome this browser also doesn't blend in well with MS Windows UI. It's feels alien to the other programs.
-No, it's 30x faster than anything you've ever seen.
-That's Windows' fault and yours. Windows should be designed around Safari, not the other way around.
-Again, the Windows UI is just a thin shell meant to blend nicely with Safari. If it doesn't, then it's Windows fault.
Yes but... (Score:2)
30x faster than IE7, so what... (Score:2)
We shave to design web sites for the lowest common denominator.
Re:30x faster than IE7, so what... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe you do, but I shave to keep my ballsack silky.
And just because you have to design for the LCD doesn't mean you have to always use the LCD. Life is short. Use a better browser. I don't care which one, but only stoop to the LCD when you absolutely have to.
Tabs on top? (Score:3, Funny)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
F*** you, Google, now everyone's going to start using this f***ed up idea.
This is now my default Windows browser (Score:4, Interesting)
For anyone that has both a Mac and PC, one of the minor frustrations you face is constantly having to remember to use different keyboard shortcuts when you move back and forth. Safari on the PC was an option for me for this reason alone. Sadly, the Mac-look, odd window handling, terrible font rendering and random long pauses (something to do with advertisements I think) made it an option only - I had to keep Chrome and FF around for some sites.
No longer. Safari 4 is now my default Windows browser. And not just because of the keystrokes, it's faster than any of the other (always up-to-date) browsers on this machine, renders everything perfectly (Chrome still has serious problems here), the font problems are gone (now Chrome is the one that looks bad), the random pauses are missing, etc.
So basically Safari now does everything any of the other browsers does, plus more, plus its faster, AND it has the same keystrokes.
Still not perfect though: I'm still trying to get the font sizes right (the readable text above is fine, but this editor has HUGE text) and I want to remove the Chrome-like tools menus (I like real menu bars, thanks), and there's some oddity when scrolling long pages. But nevertheless the problems are less than those in Chrome and the speed of FF in comparison makes me willing to overlook them.
Maury
In other news... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I gave safari a run on my web app, which uses a lot of clientside scripting and has been designed to "work" on FF, IE7, chrome. I did not optimize anything for any browser, it was just a test to make sure I would make mac users happy. I was amazed by performances, really. The JS runtime is way better than anything else I've tested, and even beats chrome which is also really good. More importantly, it seems almost immune from memory leaks, compared to ff3 which needs a restart when approaching 1GB.
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Safari still a memory pig? Crash protection? (Score:4, Interesting)
I switched to Firefox for two reasons. One is that Safari is a major memory hog. It can use like 3x the memory as Firefox for the same thing. (And I'm talking about fresh starts. I know all about how VMs can swap unused pages to disk.)
The other missing thing from Safari was something as basic as session saving and crash protection. You have to buy Saft for that. With Firefox, it's free.
I wonder if Apple has done anything about these issues.
Re: (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.
Firewire? (Score:5, Funny)
Requirements:
Mac with an Intel processor or a Power PC G5, G4, or G3 processor and built-in FireWireî
um, looks like the latest Macbook isn't up to spec. nice one, Apple.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think you should read that as:
(Mac with an Intel processor) or (a Power PC G5, G4, or G3 processor and built-in FireWireî)
and not
(Mac with an Intel processor or a Power PC G5, G4, or G3 processor) and (built-in FireWireî)
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.
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Is not trivial to innovate over what Opera do since years ago, at least in the meaningful features.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
>Chrome beat them to it.
Not on the Mac, they didn't.
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/mac.html [google.com]
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Meh. It is an issue at work. My top site is my company's intranet, thank god, but everything else is marginally work-related.
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The average user, is entirely unaware of this whole heated battle of the browsers nonsense.
To them, all they see is "new update to Safari available", and they install it, and suddenly they have all these new amazing features, because to them, they are new.
Stability and consistency is far more important than the latest and greatest toys. Personally, I have no real use or preference for Safari, but I'm not going to attack them for simply bringing in some features their users might like. Chances are pretty goo
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The latest safari nightly (r41176) compiles and runs just fine on my stock Ubuntu Hardy box. The only pain I encountered was the libsoup 2.25 library dependency which I had to pull down and compile myself instead of using the older library supplied from the Hardy repository.
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.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Opera still supports all the way back to Windows 95, which may be your only choice for a browser that's still being actively maintained. Otherwise, there is Firefox 2 which was maintained all the way to December 2008 so it's still fairly up to date. IE6 is still supported on Windows 2000 but I think 98/ME are S.O.L. as far as that goes.