I just downloaded and installed the Safari 4 browser from Apple and it is, well, ugly! The ugliness is particularly bad on the rendering of its' tabs. The tabs are integrated into the window title bar with clumsy 3-D affects. It also eschews the former brushed aluminum theme for drab beige. I find this particularly disturbing since the software comes from one of the few technology companies that actually pays attention to design.
I was able to mitigate the ugliness a little by hiding the menu, bookmarks, and status bars. However, there's no changing the tabs. At first I rationalized the look in two ways. One, the software is beta so the appearance of the UI may change And two, Apple may be taking digs at Microsoft's Windows XP operating system. On further thought, neither makes sense as Apple should never risk its' reputation for design by releasing ugly software, especially on the most common desktop OS in the world.
That's not to say that Safari isn't a great web browser, it is innovative on a few fronts. First among these is speed, but does the average web surfer notice the speed of their browser? Maybe not, but the speed of Safari allows its' top page and history features to display and scroll pages. This works much like the CoolIris add-in (for IE and Firefox). I've only had Safari for a couple of hours, and I've already found the history search very useful.
The browser wars are heating up again and it's getting interesting. Internet Explorer 8, Chrome, FireFox, and Safari are all great software each with a compelling story. As for me, I use Explorer for all our intranet applications and Chrome as my default browser.
