Tuesday, Apple Incorporated announced the release of a public beta Safari 4, which promises to offer a much faster browser and enhanced navigation and searching features.

Apple stated that the new browser for both the Mac OS X and the Windows operating system would be able to run JavaScript commands 4.2 times faster than Safari 3 and also to allow better JavaScript and HTML page loading than rivals Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla’s Firefox 3.

Moreover, the company said that it had also added the Cover Flow interface to the Safari browser, which enables users to scroll backwards through browsing history, along with a feature called Smart Address Field, which is FireFox's Smart Location’s opposite number.

The Safari 4 public beta has been made available for download at Apple's Safari Web page, with both versions-for the Mac OS X and the Windows OS-being set for testing.

In order to benefit from the perks of the browser, Mac users need to be running Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.6 and Apple's latest security update or Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11 on an Intel Mac or a G3, while Windows users need Windows XP SP 2 or Vista.

Brian Croll, Apple senior director of system software, stated that the enhancements brought to the Safari 4 had been the result of a new JavaScript engine called Nitro, adding that the company had used the SunSpider benchmark in order to post the JavaScript results, and the iBench benchmark for the HTML numbers.

Furthermore, Croll said that Safari 4 could support Web standards like HTML 5, which enables web apps to work offline, and had passed the Acid3 test that had been developed by the Web Standards Project, which neither Internet Explorer 7 nor FireFox 3 have passed yet.