Safari 4.0: better looking in beta

After downloading Safari 4, I am disappointed to see Apple not stick with some of the tab ideas they had in the Safari 4 beta. What they’ve returned to I find muddled and confusing. In the beta the tabs were above the address bar and this seemed quite radical for a number of people. I found it refreshing and ‘open’ – the pulling of tabs into new windows was clear and straightforward and the tools/arrows/buttons for adding a new tab, viewing the rest of your open tabs and viewing any other bookmarks in the bookmark bar were clearly positioned (see below). The beta, like Firefox, really felt like a ‘tool set’ rather than just a browser.

Now in the released version the tabs have come back to the traditional position and the position of the tools/arrows/buttons for adding a new tab, viewing the rest of your open tabs and viewing any other bookmarks in the bookmark bar are now close together, two with identical icon and, my small amount of testing, encourage mis-selection and confusion. And pulling a tab out into a window is not clear at all.

It would be interesting to know what occurred during any testing for Apple to step back from the some of the innovations of the beta.

Safari 4

Safari 4 beta