San Francisco (CA) – Apple has released its long-awaited Safari 4 browser after introducing a beta verion in February. The new browser – powered by a “Nitro” engine – is reportedly capable of running JavaScript 8 times faster than IE 8 and 4 times faster than FireFox 3.
“The successful beta release helped us fine tune Safari 4 into an even better, faster version that customers are going to love,” spun Apple guru Philip Schiller. “Safari is enjoyed by 70 million users worldwide and with its blazing fast speed, innovative features and support for modern web standards, it’s the best browser on any platform.”
Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS effects. Other features includes:
- Top Sites – Offers a visual preview of frequently visited and favorite pages.
- Full History Search – Helps users search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages.
- Cover Flow – “Flip” through web histor or bookmarks.
- Smart Address Fields – Automatically complete web addresses from an easy to read list of suggestions.
- Search Fields – Fine tune searches recommendations frm Google Suggest.
- Full Page Zoom – Zoom without degrading the quality of the site’s layout and text.
Safari is expected to run as a 64-bit application in Snow Leopard, which will boost the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent. It should also be noted that Safari 4 limits protential browser crashes by running plug-ins in a separate process.
