The new version of Safari features a host of improvements to its bookmarking and favorites features. The application now displays bookmarks as a series of animated, scrolling preview pages, which any iTunes user or iPod owner should immediately recognize.
As with previous versions of Safari, the browser comes with a feature called Private Browsing, aka the porn mode, which lets users surf all they want without collecting any cookies, cached information or history.
In addition, users can choose to display their favorite sites as a grid of dynamic preview pages. Searching through the browser history also promises to be easier with the inclusion of preview screenshots.
The Apple engineers have also tweaked Safari's tab functionality. Tabbed browsing lets users open multiple web pages in the same window. Safari 4 divides the very top of the application window into tabs — a change that one tech critic doesn't like.
"Unfortunately, what's going to happen is you're going to touch the tab, and you're going to close something," wrote John Biggs for CrunchGear.com, although he mostly gave the browser a positive review.
Although Safari comes bundled with all Macs, it still commands only about 8-10 percent of the market share for the browser market. That hasn't stopped Apple from aggressively promoting it on its computers. On the iPhone and iPod Touch, Safari was the only web browser available until recently.
Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said that Safari 4 includes support for HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards.
“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” he said.
To download Safari 4, visit Apple.com.