I have chosen not to do a full write-up of Safari 4 beta which was released to the Mac and PC masses yesterday, as Ars Technica have covered everything beautifully and intensively. However, I will instead give my very brief thoughts on Safari 4 instead of doing a formal review.

I love it.

Okay, so I’m not going to be that brief. But, that pretty much sums it up. On first opening I wasn’t sure about the new tabs placement at all, which are now located at the top of the browser window as opposed to under the bookmarks bar as in Safari 3 and earlier. For a while I kept double clicking on the bookmarks bar to open a new tab out of habit, but in actual fact I adapted very quickly to the new layout. The + icon at the top right of the browser window to open a tab feels more natural and intuitive. I like it.

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The buzz on Twitter seems to be that people are missing the blue progress bar. Big time. Would you believe that I didn’t actually note it’s absence until I saw the masses of complaints. But yes, I think that might be something useful to have back as the little spinning indicator graphic isn’t really indicative of how much time we have to wait for a site to load.

Overall I’m very happy with Safari 4 Beta. Apart from the UI changes and some of the 150 new features, the speed increase is quite an improvement over an already speedy browser. I miss Inquisitor heavily as I can’t set GoogleUK as the default for my search results, but I’m sure there will be a new version along for Safari 4 soon.

So, have you tried Safari 4 beta yet? What are you liking and disliking about it?