What I like About Apple's Safari 4 Web Browser

Let me make this point clear. I've never been a big fan of Apple's Safari web browser... neither for general web browsing nor for web development. When version 4 came out a few months ago I'd grown to love it! There was one feature that roped me into Safari 4 that grabbed my attention above all else... the Top Sites feature.

I FELL IN LOVE WITH THAT! Oh my goodness... oh... my... goodness! I was sold on that feature alone; forget about the rest of them. Let me tell you why I love this feature. With one click I'm able to see thumbnails of the sites I go to the most and I can easily click on any one of them at any time. I don't have to type in addresses anymore, I can just make it one of my top sites and then I have one-click access to it. That for me makes web browsing worthwhile. There are three sized thumbnails - small, medium, large - the small ones hold 24 thumbnails, medium holds 12, and the large holds 6. I usually utilize the medium thumbnails.

Outside of the Top Sites feature there are other features that make Apple's Safari 4 web browser cool... I'll list a few of them:

Cover Flow - flip through websites like you do album art in iTunes. You can pick out a website easily by flipping through your bookmarks or website history.

Smart Address Field - start typing a web address, Safari 4 will finish it for you. This is smart technology which provides you options for what site you're trying to go to as you start typing. The best match is displayed first, and you can click Enter to go a respective site.

Merge All Windows - consolidate all your open windows into a single window with multiple tabs

Spell Check / Grammar Check - Safari 4 can spell check in 14 languages and it's the only browser that offers grammar checking.

Built-in RSS - as the first web browser to have a built-in RSS feeder, Safari 4 you're able to browse your favorite blogs, news, and other articles without using another application. With RSS aggregation you can also view multiple feeds in one list. You're also able to bookmark RSS feeds the way you bookmark websites.

Inline PDF viewing - you can view Acrobat PDF files in the web browser. You don't have to download the PDF first to view it.

Full Page Zoom - take a closer look at smaller print on your website

PC and Mac capability - depending on which computer type, Safari offers a native look and feel based on that computer type.

I want to list a few other features that make Safari 4 cool from a web developer's perspective. Everyone may not care about these, but they help greatly in the web development world:

HTML5 Support - the next revision of the HTML language is supported in this browser.

Resources Pane - the Resources pane help you see how elements load over a network and lets you see how long it takes per element.

Change User Agent - gives Safari the ability to identify itself as a different browser.

Databases Pane - provides tools for managing offline databases and executing SQL queries.

Anti-aliased Fonts - now you can enjoy crisp, elegant fonts.

CSS3 Web Fonts - as a designer you're no longer restricted to "web-safe" fonts such as Arial, Verdana, and Helvetica.

International Web Content - Safari 4 is able to handle web content in 16 languages. There is also Unicode support as well.

IDN (International Domain Name) Support - you're now able to access websites with non-English website domains that include international letters and characters.

For more information about Safari 4, go to http://www.apple.com/safari/.

Source:

Apple - Safari - 150 Features
http://www.apple.com/safari/features.html