Gears of War Lancer, originally uploaded by stgermaniac.

This is my favorite photo of my mom… we own the All Game store up in Duluth, MN. Christmas is the best. :)

I put off trying out the new beta because I just never really got into using Safari.  As a developer I find all kinds of handiness right in Firefox.  Plus, with plugins like Firebug, I can make little tweaks and see the results in real-time.  It all works really well together.

I installed the Safari 4 Beta a couple of hours ago, and here are my first impressions.

1. It’s QUICK. Startup times and rendering times are very fast.
2. It’s ACTION PACKED with features that are for the most part pretty useful. I’m still reading through the official site telling us all what they are.
3. It has a “Develop” menu (activated under Advanced preferences).  This has what they call “Web Inspector”, which is basically a cleaned up and kicked up version of Firebug.  You can analyze every byte on the web page – you can see structural elements and view their layout metrics, which is an awesome feature.  You can also get any CSS and DOM structure info on individual elements.  There are even meters that show proportions of web content (code, images, css) using the same visual cues as the iPod content meter in iTunes.  Very clever Apple, very clever.  Overall, BIG win. [..]