Apple today released a public beta of Safari 4 for Windows and OS X users. My initial impressions are quite favorable (although the new javascript engine causes issues with Tippy that I have yet to explore), though I do not like the position of the tab bar. I think it’s a mistake to put tabs at the top of the browser. I guard my screen real estate, but the amount of space taken up with the tab bar is excusable and I prefer having my tabs just above the page window rather than at the very top of the browser.

There is a fix, however. Users wanting the more traditional tab bar position can go to the terminal and enter the following:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

I was interested in early rumors that seemed to suggest that Apple’s iWork ’09 would include a strong online component, allowing users to create, edit, and share documents online. It turns out the rumors were partly true. All indications are that the only functionality of the online service will be to share and allow comments on documents. A bit disappointing, but oh well.

It is odd, however, that there does not seem to be a way to check out this service. iWork.com is being advertised as a public beta but you cannot try it without first purchasing the full version of iWork ’09. I guess this makes sense since the website will simply share documents written in iWork ’09 but it just strikes me as odd to have a public beta that first requires spending at least $80. Thus far I’ve seen no compelling reason to upgrade to iWork ’09 so I will have to wait for ’10 before trying out iWork.com. Hopefully I will be proven wrong as reviews and reports of iWork ’09 come in. There are a number if glitches in iWork ’08 that I would like to see corrected, and lots of room for improvement. Apple is new to the office productivity world and iWork marks some great early work, but it still has a bit of work to do.