Thanks for finding this. I really hated the tabs on top. The browser looks cleaner with the tabs underneath. I hope the formally place this option in the preferences.

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I second that!

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Me, I prefer the tabs in the title bar. Maximize efficient use of the screen real estate - that's my motto. When Chrome first came out I thought, "That's clever, why doesn't EVERYONE do tabs that way?"

That said, I agree that, if you want to go back to the old way of doing things, you should have that option readily available as a radio button choice somewhere instead of being forced to run a sketchy terminal command that frightens unsophisticated users.
g

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For those who don't want to use terminal, there are two other options: Apple's Property List Editor, or the following AppleScript. Running the script allows you to toggle the tabs position. As with the command-line solution, you have to quit and restart Safari to see the changes.

-- begin script--
set oldtabs to "defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO"
set newtabs to "defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool YES"

set option to (button returned of (display dialog ¬
"Set Safari 4 tabs to old or new." buttons ¬
{"Old Style", "New Style", "Cancel"} ¬
default button "Cancel"))
if option is "Old Style" then
set tabs to oldtabs
else if option is "New Style" then
set tabs to newtabs
end if
do shell script of tabs
-- end script --

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Michelle's script works like a charm. Saved it as an application and put it in my Scripts folder. Thanks, Michelle.

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Be aware, I'm using 10.4 and performing this hint made Safari revert to a brushed metal look.

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I'm gonna try and get used to it. So far it hasn't been too much of an annoyance and I like having the new "add tab" button.

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Note that in Safari 3 (and presumably in Safari 4 with the tabs moved to the window) you can always just double-click to the right of a tab in the tab bar to open a new tab.... which I find even more convenient than having to locate the little "+" add tab button.

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Also note that Safari 4 allows you to drag tabs to other Safari windows. I don't recall that Safari 3 could do that too. (Dragging a tab out of a window will create a new window with that tab, just like earlier versions.)

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Safari 3 does indeed allow dragging tabs. You have to take care to drag up/down or left/right depending on whether you want it in another window or just reordered in the same window.

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Safari 4 does not seem to offer the Cmd-Click (or Ctrl-Click in 9 and since 10.5) on the title any longer, as now the title is part of the tab? :-(

As for dragging: I just tried on another Mac with Safari 3, but I cannot drag a standalone window into another Safari window. I simply wouldn't know what to drag if there's only a single page (which does not show a tab in my settings) in that window.

You are right though: if a window has multiple tabs, then dragging a tab to another window does in fact work (if the target window has no tabs, then tabs will appear while dragging). But if there's no tabs in the source window, then what exactly should one drag into the other window? One could use menu Window, Merge All Windows of course. In Safari 4 even a window without tabs still shows the drag handle. Nice.

I wonder why Safari never used draggable "proxy icons" next to the title bar, though of course the favicon can be dragged if one needs the URL.


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It's good that Apple left in the option to choose... but I'll be willing to give the new tabs style a try.

Why?

Because it's said to be easier and quicker to just push the mouse pointer all the way to the top edge, then down a bit to find the tab, than it is to maneuver the mouse to the narrow tab bar beneath the Bookmarks bar.

I'm betting that small change will save time and mouse movement, though admittedly a tiny bit.

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I think it's always a good idea to TRY the new UI before immediately trying to revert back to the old way. I'm not used to it yet, but I do like the fact that the new way of displaying tabs doesn't take any space away from the main browser window. IMO, this is a big plus!

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... and don't change their size upon selection (which moves the other tabs around). With a lot of tabs favicons are really useful and I hate things moving around (or hiding) while I try to hit it with the cursor.

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I'd much rather the bookmark bar be on the menu bar. Any idea whether that is possible?

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Call me fussy, but the old tab style was just plain wrong. I never liked the fact that whichever tab was on top was graphically linked to the address bar and window title area, but the page you were actually viewing was not attached to the tab. IT was displayed at the same level as the inactive tabs.

The new method makes much more sense from a visual point of view, and as they are visual elements that's how they should be judged.

That said, I very much doubt that Apple are going to keep this option in place, remember this is a public beta so it has things like the debug button on by default. At some point they are going to take this option away so you're better off just getting used to the change now.

---
Brought to you by S C Johnson, a family multinational conglomerate.

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> I never liked the fact that whichever tab was on top was graphically
> linked to the address bar and window title area, but the page you were
> actually viewing was not attached to the tab.

Agreed. And in Safari 4 even the (Google) search is part of the tab: any characters typed in one tab, are not visible in another tab. Well, when switching tabs while typing then things are a bit confusing, but if you don't switch until you've hit Return it behaves like I'd expect it to do :-)

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Just noticed that in Safari 3 the (Google) search box also could have different text for each tab.

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An anonymous reader submitted the following as a hint, but it really belongs here as a comment:

With this tip, nobody has mentioned that when you move the tab bar, you lose the ability to start typing to search on the current active page.

When you do this after doing the above, it starts a Google search. So, you're NOT just messing with tabs in this hint!

-rob.

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Anybody know if there are similar tweaks for the final release of Safari 4 since Apple got conservative by the way of mass consumer irritation for change?

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