Comments on: Safari 4 Beta Browser: Why Is Everyone Hating It?

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:49:27 +0000

If lots of people are saying “Opera can’t do this or that” when in fact it can, it sounds to me like the UI needs a bit of a rethink. If it has features that lots of users can’t find, that’s almost as bad as not having the features…

Overall I quite like Opera, but for me it’s competing with Safari for title of “slowest browser I’ve ever seen”. Maybe it’s just me, but the ones that claim to be mind-abusingly fast are always the ones that take 2 minutes to load a mainstream homepage like http://www.apple.com. It was the same as far back as Netscape 2 if I remember rightly.

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:41:02 +0000

Having a global “allow popups” option is no bad thing per se. More options is always good IMHO. But yes, ONLY having a global option, and failing to provide a site-by-site option to complement it, is pretty slack in this day and age.

And by the way, do any other Windows users notice that it’s now using the standard Windows UI for the window borders (a.k.a. the “chrome”, thanks Google for pinching that term)? My Safari 3 was using a Mac-based chrome and I happened to like it! (And please don’t tell me “start using a Mac then”, I can’t afford one!)

By: Safari 4: Is It Time To Switch From Firefox? | DodaPedia

Safari 4: Is It Time To Switch From Firefox? | DodaPedia — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 22:39:18 +0000

[...] can also read my review of the Safari 4 beta as well as other posts related to Safari. Tell us in the comments what browser you use, why you [...]

By: pavlo

pavlo — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:09:32 +0000

I tried Safari 4 yesterday and I was not impressed. They’ve done away with the blue progress bar! That’s a backwards step. There’s no way of knowing whether your page is actually progressing in its download -and if it is – how fast it’s loading. That alone was enough to send me back to Safari 3. My perception was that it was very slow to load pages.

By: Ashok

Ashok — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 08:37:26 +0000

compare with firefox safari beta taking too much of memory.

By: Chowder

Chowder — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:57:38 +0000

I heard that it wasn’t secure as other browsers.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:42:57 +0000

>there’s no way to “Open in a New Tab in the background” in Opera. This seems like a no-brainer for a configuration option.

Middle click. Don’t remember if it is default, Shift+Middle click to configure.

I am so tired of people saying Opera can’t do this, that… Opera can.

By: Derek

Derek — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 14:38:20 +0000

I’ve been having a lot of problems with Firefox crashing daily on my Macbook Pro, so I’ve started using Safari 4 beta instead. Firefox started using way too much CPU while sitting idle, and its CPU usage would skyrocket to 99% indefinitely; I would have to kill it and restart it once a day.

With the SafariBlock (ad blocking) and SafariStand (I use it for keyword searches right now), there’s nothing I miss from Firefox yet. It’s a little heartbreaking, personally, since I’ve used Firefox since it was called Phoenix several years ago. Recently, it’s just become too unstable for me to use.

For the record, I tried Opera for some time before Safari4, but a couple things annoyed me: I really like 1Password (no Opera support) and that there’s no way to “Open in a New Tab in the background” in Opera. This seems like a no-brainer for a configuration option.

Also for the record, I believe Opera’s Speed Dial predates Google Chrome’s “top sites” by some time. I prefer their Opera’s to it a bit better: you add your own sites instead of showing the sites you visit the most.

I’m looking forward to trying out Google Chrome on OS X when it’s released.

By: Michele

Michele — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 11:35:16 +0000

It’s very shameful that Safari has a “popup allowed” ON/OFF.
Real browsers have an allow/block list for this purpose.

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 05:51:54 +0000

RAM memory has consistently cheapened over time. Earlier versions of Safari used more memory than Safari beta 4 and I’ve got the screenshots to prove it. From the Safari perspective, it’s an improvement. It’s like saying that a VW Beetle is faster than the previous version but not faster than Mercedes SLK. If you’re looking for extreme performance, you should use WebKit or Chrome.

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:49:32 +0000

Holy crud! “Uses slightly more memory than Firefox” is a performance improvement??? I thought Firefox was the most bloated, most memory-leaking browser out there. Now you’re telling me that Firefox-levels of memory use are an improvement for another browser? O_O And you’re pointing to 150+mb of memory usage as good.

With Firefox 2, wasn’t it 80mb of usage and everybody up in arms? And now the memory usage doubles and it’s considered low? What?

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:11:07 +0000

Well, I can’t really agree with you on this. Safari looks much better than Firefox for example; it’s more streamlined and I like the elegance of the two tone look.

“Beauty is in the beholders eye”

By: 1c3m4n

1c3m4n — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:54:56 +0000

Safari 4 is the ugliest browser I have used. The native system look on XP is really bad. I can’t belive that this was made by Apple. By trying to ape Chrome’s look, Safari 4 looks like a pile of crap.

Aside from the looks, I find it really fast and easy to use. I would like to use this more but only if the look gets fixed

By: ZOOM

ZOOM — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:42:50 +0000

I use Safari for 5 minutes after then i unisntall it.Dislike it very much

By: Rahul

Rahul — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:05:13 +0000

I loved Safari beta 4.

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:49:14 +0000

Rarst, you make a good point. They shouldn’t have touted Safari as being the innovator.

By: BCK

BCK — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:58:49 +0000

I hate it. Sure its nice but it pisses me off to no end in one re-guard, opening links in new windows instead of new tabs. The Mac version from what I am told has an option to allow links to open in new tabs, but the windows version requires you to do ctrl+click any time you want to open in a new tab. As a person who uses google reader and the keyboard I end up with 20+ windows open.

I also don’t really see a need to use it one windows, as none of the extensions that work on macs work on windows. Might as well start using chrome and wait for extension compatibility to show up.

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 15:41:50 +0000

Thanks for your comments Alfa, yes, I’m using windows. and if I untick the “Ctrl-click opens a link in a new tab” then the option “Ctrl-Alt-Click: opens a link in a new tab” is enabled. And that is even worse than the first option. Thanks again for your help anyway.

By: Rarst

Rarst — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 11:10:12 +0000

Safari’s giant list of features and claiming some of them as new and original got plenty of people pissed. Anything wrong with angry about being lied to?

Copying and improving features is all nice until you summon marketing bubble and try to take credit for things that were done years before you.

By: Windows Guy

Windows Guy — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:04:28 +0000

I don’t say I love or hate safari bacuse it’s still in Beta. Yes, many features are similar to Chrome or ripped of Chrome. But there are a few good features like history with thumbnails and show top sites.

Every browser is copying at least something from other browsers.

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:09:45 +0000

Did you try reporting that to Apple? Maybe it is a bug they’re going to fix.

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:03:50 +0000

I personally am saving money to buy a Mac by the end of the year. Wish me luck!

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:02:20 +0000

“taking Safari 4 and repackaged it as Chrome” — You can’t really say that since WebKit is open source.
What happened here isn’t exactly copying because they use the same framework, I understand that; the discussions is about who implemented the feature first.
If you read the license you’ll see that Apple, or Google, aren’t binded to contribute back all of their changes. They could still have different code.

By: Dallas

Dallas — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 02:10:51 +0000

Well, I love Safari, and cannot stand Firefox. I love it’s fastness. However, you should have used it on a Mac instead of a Windows machine.

By: Alfa

Alfa — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:56:54 +0000

You should be able to configure this. I know it can be done on the Mac version. Go to preferences, click tabs, the first line on Mac says “Cmd+click opens a link in a new tab”. Probably Ctrl+Click on Windows, but unclicking that should make links open in a new tab, while Ctrl+Click makes it a new window.

By: Jochen

Jochen — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 22:22:25 +0000

I love it too — if it wouldn’t crash my Mail.app on my Mac.

By: redwall_hp

redwall_hp — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:08:07 +0000

“It’s too much glitter, it ripped off Chrome, this that and the other, all in all very nasty comments.”

For the second time in as many days…oh I’ll just quote from the email I sent the other day:

Chrome and Safari are both based on WebKit. If you go to WebKit.org, you’ll note that the project’s logo looks very much like the Safari logo, save for the gold border around the compass, due to it’s ties to Apple.

There’s no “copying” going around. If anything, Google was the one doing the “copying,” taking Safari 4 and repackaged it as Chrome. The tabs and thumbnail are most likely part of the main source, which Apple has been contributing to as Safari 4 has been in development. When Google built Chrome, they used WebKit and implemented those parts of the source in their browser. (I’m sure the features are controlled via some sort of API call.)

By: Adi

Adi — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:31:20 +0000

I think these reviews are just out of hatred.
I don’t think Safari is that bad either…

By: Kris

Kris — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 20:01:22 +0000

I love it. It looks great on my mac and I’d switch to it if I could use extensions.

By: Stefan Neagu

Stefan Neagu — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:48:49 +0000

Here are some of the reviews that influenced my position on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/paulthurrott1 ; http://tinyurl.com/arstechnica1 ; http://tinyurl.com/informationweek1 ; http://tinyurl.com/CRNcom1 ;

Everyone is entitled to an opinion – I merely expressed mine. Like you said, maybe it’s just Windows.