Safari 4 Beta thoughts

Like a lot of people I was surprised and excited to see news about the Safari 4 beta today. I recently had switched back to Safari from Firefox 3 as my primary browser (I tend to do this every 6 months) and so was excited to test drive the new version. While there are many things to like, there are also things that I’m not so hot about, and I thought I’d lay them out here.

Things that I like

1. Tabs across the top.


This is one of my favorite features of Chrome, and I’m glad to see it spread. Metaphorically it makes a lot more sense. It also frees up some window room and puts some of the typically unused title bar space to use.

2. Accessibility. VoiceOver, full-page zoom, and better keyboard navigation. Full-page zoom however can really slow the browser to a crawl. It’s a beta though, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.

3. Cutting-edge web standards and technology. CSS and HTML canvas, HTML 5 media (i.e. <video> and <audio> tags) and offline support (client-side SQL), and the new Nitro Engine for Javascript. All big wins here. JavaScript and AJAX-heavy sites feel fast and speedy.

Things I think need improvement

1. New Titlebar/Tab Interface.


Tabs expand to take up the entire width of the window, like a title bar. When you have multiple tabs open, the leftmost tab’s close button is adjacent to the window controls, and is visually messy. For starters, the button is smaller than the window controls, and not aligned vertically with them, so it looks out of place. I’d like the tabs to be a fixed width, similar to Chrome, and for the close button to match the window controls in size and alignment.

On the right-most portion of each tab is a handle for tab manipulation (moving, detaching). This is visually confusing, since it’s identical to window resize handles (commonly found in the lower right-hand corner of a window). I expect that when I grab this with my mouse that I’m going to be resizing something. This is just how I’ve been conditioned over the years using graphical user interfaces, and I’m not the only one. Personally, I think it needs to go, but without it, how will you indicate to users that a tab can be manipulated? A few options come to mind: 1. If the user clicks and holds for 0.5 or 1 seconds on a tab it can then become semi-opaque and float to indicate that it can then be moved or torn off. 2. Require the user to hold a modifier key (like Option or Command) in combination with a mouse click to manipulate tabs. Both aren’t the best options but I think they’re better than the handle.

And lastly on this point, the tab title font is smaller than the ’standard’ 13pt normal Lucida Grande used for window titles across the system, instead going for what looks like 11pt bold Lucida Grande. This should match the system.

2. New Tab Button


The new tab button is positioned in the absolute upper right-hand corner of the window. It reminds me of the new tab button in IE7, except that it actually indicates its behavior without requiring the user to mouse-over the button. I’d prefer either an actual toolbar button. It seems odd to separate this function from the remainder of the toolbar. It also feels odd to move my mouse cursor all the way up to the corner. I can’t complain too heavily, I typically just hit Command-T when I want a new tab.

3. Top Sites.


Really couldn’t care less. Opera has a feature like this, and the IE8 beta too, and I’m just not into it. What I would like to see is something more like Feedly.

4. SSL/https Indicator.


Apple has always paved their own path here. In Safari 3 the lock icon sat in the upper right-hand corner where the new tab button now sits. I’d prefer instead indication in the address bar.

My wishlist

1. Browser session saving. This is one of my favorite Firefox features, and also one that I enjoyed with Glims and Safari 3.x. Easily more important to me than Top Sites or the Cover Flow interface for bookmarks and history.

2. Rounded bottom window corners. This is extremely trivial, but Safari’s square edges at the bottom of the window drive me *insane*, while the Finder, iTunes, iCal, hell even Camino, all have rounded edges on all four window corners. Please, Apple, this seems like an easy one!

3. A Safari Extension framework. Before I could launch and test out Safari 4 I had to remove a few add-ons for Safari which are, essentially, Input Manager hacks. 1Password, Glims and PithHelmet (which uses SIMBL) all caused Safari 4 grief. If Apple had an official framework or API for developing browser extensions (ala Firefox) there would be much rejoicing.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m going to continue to use Safari 4 unless I run into any real show stoppers. Overall I do think it’s a very solid product and I’ll be looking forward to the next beta release with baited breath.