Safari 4.0 Developer Preview

Since I have an ADC membership I figured i'd log in, and grab the latest Safari 4.0 Developer Preview. I wanted to see what improvements if any they had made over the 3.x series of Safari.

Normally, when I install an update from Apple everything seems the same, until you start testing. JavaScript performance is better in this version, and pages seem to load even faster than before. It still eats RAM like there is enough of it in the world to go around. I very much like the speed improvements, they are very welcome to Safari.

Now, normally an upgrade does not break any part of my work flow, however in Safari 4.0 they have made a change that I can not appreciate, and will be complaining about loudly. That is, when you open a new tab, instead of just opening a blank page, and putting your cursor in the title bar, they open up your homepage. While that would be all fine and dandy, my homepage is my Google.com/ig account. Which means that the cursor moves from the address bar, to the search box. Thereby negating any typing I have already done.

For example, a common workflow for me is to:

open a window click address bar digg.com <enter> Apple + T slashdot.org <enter> Apple + T telegraaf.nl <enter>

Thereby opening up three websites that I care about, and I am able to do it in quick succession without having to touch the mouse. However, with this new improved new tab opens up homepage feature it breaks that work flow, and I have to go for my mouse, and double click the address bar, to then enter the address I want to visit. They have slowed down my work flow considerably.

It is hard to break a force of habit, especially when this works across multiple browsers and platforms. I see two ways this can be fixed, one is to not move the focus of the cursor to the input box when a new tab is opened, but instead leave it in the address bar to replace whatever is in the address bar, or go back to the old style of displaying a white page until the user entered an address and hit enter.

Update:

Filled a bug with Apple, bug report number #6026993