A Life Reset

Last night I downloaded the beta version of the Safari 4 web browser for my Mac. Preliminary discussion of the browser was that it was a definite must try sort of application as it introduced many new interface features as well as giving it a speed boost for rendering web pages.

For someone who lives and dies by the web, checking out the various versions of web browsers out there is a must. My introduction to web browsing happened way back in 1995 when I first started with the Mosaic browser which soon morphed into the first Netscape browser. Recalling how those first web pages looked then as opposed to know, we have made great strides in web design and interactivity.

So over the years, with the advances in web technology, I tried various browsers that came my way. The various versions of Netscape before it went away, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Sun’s Java browser, Spyglass, Opera, Firefox and more recently Safari. The essential role of the browser, to render webpages, never changed but how it did, how it rendered, and how it enhanced the web browsing experience did.

For the most part, I have been a Netscape/Firefox user. I use Internet Explorer only to check how the pages I design for living look on that browser as opposed to Firefox. In my business, you can not ignore how 70% of the Internet users view web pages using Internet Explorer and it is important because Firefox tends to be more compliant with web standards than Internet Explorer which means that a page I design for Firefox users will look much different to IE users.

Safari has been as good as Firefox for rendering webpages and up to now, has been only superficially different from Firefox for my web browsing so I have tend to stick with the browser I have been most comfortable with for the past several years.

Safari 4 is a major step forward in several ways, enough to warrant a closer look.

The first thing that hits you literally is the Top Sites home page which is the default page for Safari. Basically, it showcases the top sites you have visited and rank them accordingly in a Coverflow-like view with thumbnail views of web pages arranged in a concave viewing wall. If you have not use the browser enough to generate many page views, then there are some default sites like EBay and CNN that are show instead. But there is flexibility to the page in that you substitute your favorite bookmark sites for the top view sites. Pages can be rearranged at will so that you can view your sites in a particular order or pin them to a fixed location.

Now, this feature is a nice bit of chrome and for some sites that update content only occasionally, it is a nice shortcut to see if they actually have been updated. But functionally, it is just a nice looking shortcut to you bookmarks so unless you have arranged your bookmarks in a very deep hierarchy, you not have saved much effort. But it sure looks nice.

Another next feature update is the rearrangement of the tabs. Tabs are now located on the top of the window where the title bar was once was. This is a feature that is prominent on the new Chrome browser from Google.This may be effective for those, like myself, who run several tabs at a time. This makes it a bit easier to access those pages. So that is useful.

That is the thing with the new version of Safari, lots of new little things that in themselves are not major changes from doing things but as a whole, makes web browsing much more enjoyable. Things like a better search function, a smart address bar like Firefox’s and so on.

Yet, the one big feature that is not readily apparent and one I am not really able to test is the upgrade of the Javascript engine for Safari. In a web world that is increasingly being dominated by highly interactive sites (think Google Maps with its myriad of scrolling views) that rely on Javascript to power them, having a Javascript engine that render pages quickly and is more responsive is definitely a good thing. Right now, I am doing a site upgrade for a client that is using Javascript intensively to run several new interactive components. It is suppose to be the fastest one out there.

For sites that have only minimal Javascript functionality, the difference may not be noticeable but for more complex web pages like Google Maps or my Portfolio Manager, it may make a difference. Running Google Maps on Safari gives the impression that it loading faster as I load the map and start scrolling around and zooming in and out of the locations. But there are a variety of factors that must be considered when gauging one browser to another based on Javascript so I will have to rely on the test benchmarks by other people to tell if it is faster.

Question is, are all of these changes enough to make switch? I am pretty loyal to Firefox and know all of its abilities and foibles. When I use a browser, I pretty much stick to it and never need to switch back and forth. But I am intrigued by the Safari browser upgrade and I know too that Apple leverages its OS and their applications for maximum integration. For example, downloading a music clip in Safari, automatically adds it to my iTunes account whereas with Firefox, I have to download it to a directory and then manually add it to iTunes. It’s touches like that which makes using a Mac so pleasurable, more than using a Windows PC.

I guess the best way to test this is simply to use Safari exclusively for a week and then take stock of how it worked and make a judgment if it is truly the best browser out there. The so-called browser wars, thought to be over years ago, have never been more intense or competitive.