Apple’s Safari Beta 2 Goes Tabbing

Taking a note from Opera’s power-browsing capabilities, Apple Computer on Monday released a new beta of the Safari
browser, adding tabbed page-switching and an AutoFill feature aimed at
speeding up Web browsing.

The new Safari beta, an OS X browser first released in January and based on the KDE Project’s KHTML code,
will now allow users to see and switch between multiple Web pages in a
single window via tabbed browsing.

Also new is the ‘AutoFill’ feature which lets users auto-complete Web
forms with information from the Address Book or previous forms. The feature will allow users to
automatically fill in name, street address, city, zip code, email and other
information. The updated beta also provides the option of automatically
filling in user names and passwords, which are securely stored in the Mac OS
X Keychain.

The latest Safari add-ons resemble the move by Norway’s Opera Software to
add speed-browsing buttons on its Opera 7 browser and comes at a time when
both Apple and Opera are aggressively challenging Microsoft’s Internet
Explorer for market share.

The free browser, which has counted 2 million downloads since January 7,
is being styled at the “fastest Web browser ever created for the Mac,” and also
introduces a new “Reset Safari” option for the protection of personal
information, especially on public computers.

The new “Reset Safari” feature lets users erase browsing history, empty
the browser cache, clear the Downloads window and remove cookies. It can also
be used to clear Google search queries and remove any saved names and
passwords or other AutoFill text.

Additional Safari Beta 2 features include the ability to import Netscape
and Mozilla bookmarks, support for AppleScript, standards compatibility for
improved web browsing and expanded language support for Japanese, French and
German.