Head in the Clouds

Safari’s team apparently didn’t want to stick with the top tabs. This release drops them like brushed metal. Gruber will happily find that the horizontal drag gives way to a vertical (omnidirectional) drag with enough pull. A nice update of the previous implementation but a strange step “forward” from the top tabs.

I love the look of the new load end cap… but what’s it for? How does it improve over the progress bar set behind the address field or the useless but compact indeterminate loader from 4.0. Instead it sprawls functionlessly like a very very pretty tumor.

Also the new RSS button is a lovely subdued Apple blue-grey instead of the bright blue. Perhaps this is a 4.0 change and it’s subtly had eluded my notice. Still it’s nice.

They still haven’t figured out how to deal with a mass of tabs (and “Reopen last closed tab” is still absent from the history menu) but I wasn’t expecting a behavior change like that from a 4.0.1 release. I’ll bide my time and hope somebody fixes this.

Lastly, Safari 4.0.1 feels snappier. Moving from 3.2.3 to 4.0 felt like stepping into molasses, a strange experience since I knew it was supposed to include squirrelfish (renamed Nitro by Apple) along with other rendering improvements. 4.0.1 fixes that and seems to load web pages before you realize they’re loading. I had a heck of a time getting a screenshot of that new loading bar as it flashed up and away.