macnn
06/11/2008, 9:15am, EDT
Wednesday, June 11th
Apple seeding Safari 4 to developers
Developers are already receiving a seeding of Apple's Safari 4 web browser, according to reports. The build is listed as 5526.11.2, and represents an early version of the same browser intended to ship with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. The software is expected to make a variety of enhancements, namely a 53 percent speed boost for JavaScript, which should help smooth out the performance of Web 2.0 sites and related applications. It is believed that this will be accomplished using WebKit's SquirrelFish rendering engine.
Safari 4 should also support saving webpages as local, stand-alone web applications, launched in the same way as apps running in native code. This appears to be an extension of the WebClip concept used on the iPhone and iPod touch.
Critically, Safari 4 will likely not be tied to Snow Leopard, as the current seed includes versions for Tiger, Leopard and Windows. This also suggests that the browser could release before Snow Leopard, if it exists on a separate development track.
Filed under: software, developer, Apple
Other story tags: Safari, Snow Leopard
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good news
Yeah, Java could definitely use a boost. Now if only they could integrate a way to block or pause flash ads.
Flash ads
Safari does a pretty great job of keeping me from seeing them now, when it starts consuming 100% CPU while loading them and I end up having to force quit Safari.
re: danviento
I didn't see any reference to Java, only Javascript. Did you see this mentioned somewhere else?
re: good news
I think you're confusing Javascript with Java, which are two completely different things.
download it now
You can download webkit with SquirrelFish now: http://webkit.org/
like Fluid
"Safari 4 should also support saving webpages as local, stand-alone web applications, launched in the same way as apps running in native code."
Sounds a lot like Fluid, or the Prism project from Mozilla. I've used Fluid and it's pretty useful & cool. Would be nice to have that functionality basically built right in to Safari. But I wonder what will become of Fluid and similar products?
Security?
Anyone heard if Apple even addressed Security Concerns w/ Safari? Like Phishing, et. al??