Chicago (IL) - Safari 4 Beta, which Apple unleashed into the wild yesterday, brings several new features that are not everyone's cup of tea. Some would like to turn off the flashy features because they eat up a lot of CPU time on an average system. Others are simply annoyed by the eye-candy and want it gone so they can "just browse". Unfortunately, Safari doesn't let you turn new features on and off through easy-to-use dialogs. However, with a little hackery you can change hidden preference settings to selectively turn on or off many new features, as well as control how those new features work.

If Safari 4 Beta is any indication of the final product, then we're in for lots of new features and visual treats rarely seen in a web browser. Safari 4 Beta brings the arrival of Cover Flow mode, which is used for visual flipping through bookmarks and history. In addition, it has a similar visual Top Sites feature which presents up to 24 thumbnails of sites regularly visited in a stunning 3D wall. But, what if you don't want those CPU- and bandwidth-hogging features? Of course, expecting Apple to provide Safari users with a way to selectively turn the new features on and off to their liking is a waste of time. Other browsers also lack such controls as their respective vendors want you to use the new features, not switch them off.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't a backdoor to access preference settings usually hidden from us mere mortals, but one actively used by programmers during the development phase. In the case of Safari 4 Beta, we have compiled a list of top ten hacks that allow you to turn off Cover Flow and Top Sites, two key graphically-intensive new features that require lots of CPU time. In addition, you will learn how to tweak the behavior of the address and search fields by turning on/off Google suggestions, preventing recent searches from auto-populating the list, and so on...

KILL THE COVER FLOW
Cover Flow technology first appeared in iTunes but was quickly deployed in OS X Leopard's Finder, iPods and iPhones. It also arrives now in Safari 4 Beta where it is used to visually flip through a list of bookmarks and history items. It sure looks nice, but some users out there hate its guts. Fortunately, there is a hack to kill Cover Flow entirely in Safari.

Windows and OS X

These hacks work on both the Windows and OS X versions of the browser, and are invoked in a similar manner -- although the details differ slightly due to differences between the two operating systems. This article covers both platforms and provides detailed information for both OS X and Windows would-be Safari hackers. To change Safari's hidden settings we are tampering with the com.apple.Safari.plits file, an XML-formatted file that stores Safari's preference settings. By adding several lines of new preference values that aren't normally there (but are recognized by Safari), we can change some settings that aren't normally found in the Safari preferences dialog.

Changing the com.apple.Safari.plits file won't damage your Safari installation in any way because Safari will re-create it if it's missing. Before changing anything, backup the file so you can revert to your original settings if something goes wrong. As a rule of thumb, exit Safari when tampering with the preferences file, and then re-launch it to see how it affects the browser's appearance after editing.

Readers who know their way around their operating system and have the knowledge of its inner working can immediately jump to the Top 10 hidden Safari preferences section. Others are advised to read a little bit of theory that follows. Happy hacking! Oh, one more thing. If you find a new hack, make sure you share it with us in the comments section.

Top Sites, another eye-candy feature of Safari 4 Beta, puts high-quality thumbnails of your most visited sites on a 3D wall. However, calculating thumbnails and rendering the wall can eat up 70 percent or more of CPU time on a 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-powered Mac and Windows systems. If you're not willing to pay the cost, kill Top Sites entirely.

Read on the next page: Where to find Safari's preference file, How it is formatted and How to edit it...