Comments on: Safari 4 Public Beta Annoyances

By: Ricky

Ricky — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 21:34:33 +0000

shiretoko is gecko

By: atheos

atheos — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:52:37 +0000

I’d just like to point out (in case you haven’t found this info yourself) that:
- 1Password works with a little tweak
- The address bar (and/or tabs) can be reverted to Safari 3 style
- GrowlMail works just fine for me

And as stated, Webkit is used by many other applications so that’s why the reboot. Also the benchmark thing may be because Apple most likely doesn’t use the very latest nightlies but like 1-2 weeks old builds which they have verified stable enough.

By: Warren

Warren — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 19:26:49 +0000

The Webkit nightlies don’t update Webkit system-wide, they just run whatever version of Safari you have off that updated Webkit version.

By: Chris Latko

Chris Latko — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:57:23 +0000

Jeff,

I’d be interested in reading your post. I’m pretty sure Squirrelfish is only available for Intel which may be the reason you aren’t seeing the speed increase everyone is raving about.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:34:39 +0000

I just made a similar post about my annoyances with Safari 4. The main one has to do with performance. On my PowerBook (I know, I’m still using a G4 PPC), Safari 4 feels much slower than version 3. The whole app is slow, rendering is slow, and worse of all, it’s using CPU like nobody’s business. The “Safari Webpage Preview Fetcher” was using 90%+ of my CPU until I turned off the “Top Sites” feature with one of the plist hacks. Now, just having one site open is using 30-40% CPU, but spikes to 70%+ when rendering each and every page. Considering I spend so much time in my browser, and I normally have many, many tabs/windows open at once, this just won’t work. I don’t understand why a browser needs to use so much CPU and RAM, especially when there is no flash running. I’ve turned off CoverFlow via the plist hack in bookmarks because it’s taking up too much space (and resources). As far as the new interface, I like it, except for the lack of a top bar for window management. I’ve also noticed that the “Smart Bar” seems kinda stupid as well! Hopefully, Apple will take feedback and improve the interface and performance before final release. Otherwise, I may be jumping ship to Chrome when its released. For now, I’m seriously considering reverting back to Safari 3 if only for performance reasons.

By: Chris Latko

Chris Latko — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:59:55 +0000

I’m using it over Safari 4 Public Beta. But you have many options here:

Public Apple Releases – http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/releases/Apple/
Tags – http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/tags/
Branches – http://svn.webkit.org/repository/webkit/branches/

I’ve heard that the tags are sorted by OS. For example Safari-5xxxx.xx is for 10.5 and Safari-6xxxx.xx is for 10.6. I haven’t compiled any of the Safari-6 tags yet, so am not sure what’s in there.

I’m pretty happy with the Public Beta the more I use it.

By: GPSnail

GPSnail — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:47:18 +0000

Hi,

You say you continue using WebKit but is it over Safari 3 or 4 ?

Me, I used it over 4 but I’m not sure it is the best.

Thanks

By: Chris Latko

Chris Latko — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 13:13:35 +0000

I know that’s the case, but why do I have to reboot when installing Safari and not when I do a Sparkle WebKit update?

I guess it probably has to do with major releases.

By: Warren

Warren — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:12:30 +0000

Reboot is for Webkit, used also in Mail, Help, …