Apple Safari browser was the favorite of
mine as soon as version 3 was released
for its unique features and really good
speed for the time version 4.0 has been
out for a while now and even though it
improves on its predecessor in many ways
it's lost a lot of its best features
such as the progress bar and Mac styled
brush metal look that said it's still a
solid browser and nearly every area you
can think of in the last browser speed
test safari 4 was in a dead heat with
chrome but since then the competition is
stepped up their game in the SunSpider
JavaScript test it is outrun by both
Chrome and opera although by a fairly
small margin using Mozilla's Dromio test
suite gives Safari a very slight edge
over chrome though it still finishes
behind opera 10.5 if you look at Celtic
Kane's
JavaScript test then the Opera and
chrome swapped places with Safari
remaining in a solid second place when
you use Google's v8 benchmark however
both chrome and opera get a good lead on
safari which does maintain a nice margin
over firefox 3.6 the acid3 test which is
less of a test of outright speed ends in
a tie between opera Chrome and Safari
all with the perfect score of 100 using
the wide-ranging peacekeeper benchmark
which focuses on many aspects of a
browser's performance and is a good
general test opera and chrome beat out
Safari apparently from a speed
standpoint Safari is no longer the
fastest but there's no denying that it's
still very very good of course this
isn't just a speed test factors such as
startup also matter and Safari is no
slouch either colt starts which simulate
how fast the browser will open as soon
as you boot your computer are a bit
slower than most at about 4 seconds but
warm starts which represent opening the
browser again after it's been opened
recently quite good it just a bit over
one second
memory usage is mixed however with only
a single tab open it uses the least
memory of all the browser's but once you
load 8 tabs up it uses more RAM than all
the browsers except Chrome Safari is
primarily a browser for OS 10 and it
shows while it looks quite good in the
standard brush metal look of Snow
Leopard it adopts the general graze of
Windows you can easily turn it down to a
very small form-factor
but that makes it look even blander
where it doesn't look land however isn't
gorgeous cover flow that is sprinkled
around in the top sites menu which is
automatically what you will see when you
open a new tab you get a very cool 3d
looking page fill with your most visited
sites it auto updates as well so you can
actually look at the updated front page
of the websites in the list color flow
extends to the history as well where
Safari saves a full-page screenshot if
every page you go to and allows you to
easily search all the pages in your
history it's an excellent way to look
through your history and I certainly
wish other browsers would have borrow
this feature Safari is a solid browser
it's very fast elegant in sports the
excellent Cover Flow interface
unfortunately it's bland both in looks
and in features add-ons really just
aren't supported nor are themes it may
seem like a small deal but didn't
today's browser the world that just
doesn't cut it
unless you just love Cover Flow there
are better choices three in fact which
is why safari 4 gets a fourth place
finish now feel free to go back to the
main video via the annotation on your
screen to see how the rest of the
browser's did
you
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