Safari 4 wows web with speed

More browser wars, and another kick for all those still wedded to Firefox because they can’t let go of their extensions (I count myself in that number). Apple has released Safari 4 in public beta for both Macs and PCs, and early indications show that it’s fast. Lightening bloody fast.

Faster than IE, faster than Firefox and even faster than Chrome, it appears to leave speeding bullets trailing in its wake. That’s thanks to a brand new Javascript engine, which deals with Javascript three times faster than Firefox 3.

There’s more new stuff, in the form of Top Sites, which will auto load a tiled page of the pages you visit most often, and a coverflow-esque way of viewing your browsing history. Tabs have also been moved to the top of the page above the settings and url box, and searching your history is easier since you can enter any text you remember being on the page, rather than the url.

Download it here and settle the Shiny Towers argument as to whether it’s useful to have coverflow for your web history.