Why does my recommendation for Google Chrome gets deleted all the time? Chromium is *not* the same as Chrome as it lacks certain features including:

1) embedded PDF reader
2) H.264 codec
3) Auto-update mechanism
4) Official branding

and probably some other stuff I forgot about.

Firefox is still the old and loveable workhorse it used to be. Other browsers may be faster or slicker looking but when it comes to daily convenience during web browsing Firefox combined with the right extensions beats every other browser for me at the moment. The only other browser which I consider an alternative to Firefox 4 is Chrome but it still lacks some functionality I got used to over the years but who knows, in a couple of version it might be viable to do the switch.

I'll list some things which caught my eye during usage. This list does not contain all new internal and interface features by a long shot, so read the release notes if you are interested in a comprehensive feature list. :-D

Positive things:

* It's noticeably faster when loading pages, subjectively faster than Chrome 10.

* Cold and warm also improved noticeably.

* Tab Groups/Panaroma/Tab candy is a godsend since I tend to open a lot of sites for reference purposes and Tab Groups are more comfortable than having to use several separate windows (e.g. tab groups are searchable and can be arranged in a way that improves locating them in addition to simply naming them)

* "Switch to tab" falls into the same category as Tab Groups. In the past I used to open the same site repeatedly because it would have taken longer to locate the tab among dozens of others. Talk about needle in a haystack. Now I can simply jump to the open tab via the AwesomeBar.

* I already used Sync as an extension so it's not a big change to me but it's still nice being able to work on Windows and OS X and still have the most important data in synced. And I still feel better about it knowing that nobody other than me has access to a lot of personal data due to Mozilla decision to encrypt and decrypt data on the client with a private encryption key. Still won't persuade me to buy an Android Phone though. ;-)

* I love the new notification popups. One does not have to travel to the top with the mouse pointer anymore to dismiss them as with the previous notification bar but can just simply click anywhere onto the site.

Negative things:

* One has to roll a new profile to pick up some of the latest changes to extension packaging which improve startup time (unfortunately some of these improvements will not work with existing profiles unfortunately).

* The switching to and from Tab groups animation is not as smooth as would wish it to be.

* The interface still freezes momentarily when the browser is under heavy load (although it's better than in 3.6).

* Not really Mozilla's fault but some of my regularly used extensions have not been updated yet.

* One has to use the the status-4-evar extension to either get the old FF 3.6 status bar behavior back or move the link target and status messages into the location bar (like it used to be in earlier betas and which behavior I prefer compared to the current Chrome clone).

I'm sure I'll notice a lot of over stuff in the coming weeks, both negative and positive. But combined with many already existing awesome features (Awesome Bar, bookmark tagging, etc.) I can't help but to give Firefox the highest rating. It's just that good. :)

Scrolling performance noticeably worse on my MacBook Pro 5,1 when using the touchpad compared to Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. It feels very jerky even when there is only static content on the page. Hopefully Google will optimize before before the final sometimes later this year.

I have now used Safari 4 for a couple of days full-time and would like to share my impressions with others now.

Advantages:
+ Let's get the obvious out of the way first: It's fast, page-loading times are quite low and web applications like Google Mail/Reader and others load and feel faster than with Safari 3.
+ Memory usage is quite improved. Safari 3 was always for me quite a memory hog which could grab easily 500+ MB after *one* day and it still kept climbing. Safari 4 uses 300-400 MB of RAM (give or take 40). This seems still much at first glance but at least it *stays* in that range even after extended use (several days without restart). After a couple of hours non-usage with few tabs open it even reached 200 MB again. My best guess is that the fixed amount of memory is used for caching preview images (top sites, cover flow history) and indices for full-text history search. Anyway, good work, Apple.
+ Safari now stalls less when some tabs are active (beach ball). It's still present but not quite as distinctive as with the predecessor.
+ Full-text search is quite useful and the cover flow makes it easy to locate the page one is looking for.
+ Scrolling is always smooth even with complex layouts or lots of active content (e.g. Flash).
+ In case of a tab overflow (too many tabs) the tab drop down list features a divider which separates the visible from the non-visible tabs. It's attention to detail like in this case which I like Apple for.
+ Tabs on top has been removed. The implementation was stillborn with too many apparent usability problems. Since there are more ways to tackle the problem tabs on top tried to solve (more vertical space for content) Apple should maybe take tabs in a sidebar into consideration.
+ Snap back has been simplified. I know that some people will rightfully (!) complain about this reduction in functionality but senile people like me are overburdened with the old implementation. Now it's more apparent what it is meant for (go back to Google results) and I started to use it more often.
+ Better result arrangement for matches in the address bar (see also negatives).
+ Very stable. I only had one crash and that was when trying to open 34 tabs at once. Now, the browser should still be able to handle this but otherwise I had no problems with stability.
+ MailGrowl works with the updated WebKit component again without crashing Mail each time a new mail arrives. Maybe there are some Growl users in Apple after all.

Disadvantages:
- I was hoping that Safari's address bar would work like Firefox' "Awesome Bar". To my disappointment you still can't do arbitrary substring search in the URL and site title. In fact, the address bar works exactly as in Safari 3 (matching only the start of an URL) but the results are presented in a much improved way.
- Top sites are slow. I use top sites with the maximum amount of previews and sometimes I have to wait up to 5 seconds until it's displayed after opening a new tab. There's also a small delay after selecting a site before it's displayed. A new tab should be instantly usable, something both Chrome and Firefox (in an version after 3.5) have identified as a critical UI requirement. Hopefully Apple will tackle this problem in one of the subsequent releases.
- Top sites in general don't add much to my browsing experience compared to visual history.
- One thing that really baffled me is that Safari 4 still uses the modal dialogue when asking if a password should be saved. The non-modal dialogue in Firefox and Chrome is such an *obvious* usability improvement. Maybe Apple shouldn't have messed around with tabs on tab and instead concentrated on less debatable improvements.
- Another annoyance: When the address bar or a text field is selected in a tab you can't use the keyboard to cycle through the tabs (you have to deselect it first). Firefox does this better.
- You still can't sort bookmarks alphabetically. In 2009. :-/
- Still no maximize window functionality. Fit to content simply does not work in a tabbed interface where each site has a different width.
- It's visually not clear enough when surfing a site with encrypted connection (https). Firefox and Chrome are better in this regard.

Final thoughts:
This is a solid release, but it still has an apparent lack of ambition on the front end side. The major work was done on the WebKit site while the browser itself received mostly cosmetic work with some obvious improvements on other browsers being left out.

Reader notifier sometimes fails do check Google Reader periodically. The drop down menu only shows "Checked 1 minute ago..." but this number never changes. Manual checking still works but does not fix the aforementioned problem, only restarting the application does.