It’s funny, Firefox started out as a lean, mean alternative to bloated browser suites like Mozilla/Netscape. No built-in mail or IRC clients, just a blazingly fast (and secure) browser. It’s still my default browser no matter if I’m on a Mac, Windows or Linux machine but lately I’ve started to notice that Firefox actually feels a bit sluggish compared to some competitors – mainly Opera and Safari.

Apple released the public beta of Safari 4 yesterday and I’ve spent a bit of quality time with it (on Mac only so far). Conclusion? I’m impressed. They’ve taken a bit from Google Chrome, a bit from Opera, a bit from Firefox and thrown in a whole lot of optimizing. According to Apple Safari 4’s new Nitro engine renders HTML almost three times faster than Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 7 as well as executes Javascript 30 times faster than IE 7 (3 times faster than Firefox 3). I tend to take numbers like that with a grain of salt but Safari 4 does offer a fast browsing experience. Really.

Safari 4 offers 150 features: Like Google Chrome the tabs now reside on top of the browser instead of below the address field. It takes some getting used to but I think that placement makes more sense – now each tab gets its own address field instead of the other way around. Another new visual feature is Top Sites, like Operas quick dial you get nine fields containing thumbnails of websites that you either pin-point manually or let be added automatically depending on your browsing. Also, browsing through your bookmarks and history now brings up cover flow (á la iTunes) if you want to. Windows Vista users will find that Safari 4 now has a Vista look and feel (anyone heard of they’re planning a Vistafied iTunes as well?).

Also, one of the reasons I’ve never wanted to (or been able to) let go of Firefox is the Firebug plugin, but the built-in developer tool (activated through the advanced preferences tab) actually looks like a decent alternative so far.

Apple.com: Safari Download