The New Top Sites Interface of Safari 4

About a week ago, in the midst of the Apple announcements at WWDC (which we covered here), something that may have slipped in through the cracks between all the hype around new MacBook Pro’s, Snow Leopard, and a little something called the iPhone 3G S,  was the release of the final version of Safari 4. I had been using the beta version of Safari 4 for a while, and now spent the last few weeks using the final build.

So, should this be your go to browser on both Windows and Mac? Read on for the answer.

Ok, so first off, it’s fast. It opens pretty quickly, sites load fast, but lets face it – today, between all the browsers, speed differences are measured in such small margins that it’s almost irrelevant which one you use. So, what then merits Safari 4 to be my web browser of choice? A few things:

1. Top Sites – similar to Google Chrome, Apple has added in a Top Sites index (pictured above) to Safari in new windows. Of course, Apple did it a bit more stylishly the Chrome does, as added the nifty feature of letting you see which sites have been updated or not, which is useful for seeing when say, new posts have been added to a blog.

2. History Search – History in Safari is now fully searchable – so if you’re looking for that cool site you saw a month ago, or that source you used on your last assignment, its all easy to find. Also, a Cover Flow view of all your old pages are shown, making it easy to see if the page you have is the right one.

3. It’s Apple – alright, so that reason kinda sucks, but its true. I’m a Mac user, and I happen to like keeping it all in the family – an Apple browser on an Apple machine. Things just work – the widget integration, all the menu and interface stuff being familiar.. but that’s just personal preference.

Other minor cosmetic changes were made, in the moving of the refresh button to the right edge of the address bar, and the removal of the blue loading bar, instead having a small loading indicator appear in the address bar.

Overall, I like Safari 4. It works, it’s simple, the new Top Sites and History features are cool and useful. Are the new features enough to get someone to switch from say Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer or Opera? Probably not; but for those already using Safari, it’s a nice update. Interested? It’s free and you can download it for yourself here (again, it’s available in for both Windows and Mac).

Also, feel free to share in the comments what type of browser you use for surfing the web, and if there is a reason behind it, why you use it over the others.