The release of El Capitan has been met with steady acclaim and one of the contributing reasons is the all-new Safari 9, which parades a number of new and enticing capabilities.
So far, Safari has lagged horribly behind in terms of usage behind rivals Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and even the widely despised Internet Explorer, according to numbers posted by Stat Counter. You might even be reading this with a different browser. Anyway, the new features in El Capitan supplemented by the changes brought by OS X Yosemite are designed primarily to make the browsing experience a tad more convenient.
If you’re wondering if it’s worth closing your open Chrome and Firefox for, we tested Safari for El Capitan out.
Airplay
Safari 9 brings allows you to play videos straight from your browser to your Apple TV and yes, this only shows the video, not everything else in the screen. Compatible videos, like those on YouTube and Vimeo, can be streamed to your TV screen. So yeah, you can now watch comical cat videos on your large, flat-screen television set.
To stream the video to Apple TV, simply click on a video with the AirPlay icon and select the appropriate option.
Pinned Sites
A long overdue feature that is already present in most web browsers, Pinned Sites helps you easily access the websites you regularly visit, like your e-mail account, comedy websites, Facebook, and other social networking websites. To pin a website, simply go to it and select Window. There you will find the Pin Tab option: select it and voila, you’ve successfully pinned a website. The Pinned Sites’ icons will appear: the huge F for Facebook, Larry the Bird for Twitter, and the P for Pinterest.
Pinned Sites appear on the left side of your tab bar. You can remove them easily by right-clicking them and selecting the Unpin Tab option.
The unique thing about Pinned Sites (which is not present in other browsers) is it stays active in the background, letting them stay updated – perfect if you’re buffering a YouTube video.
Mute Tabs
We have all been in situations wherein websites ANNOYINGLY play videos and audio clips automatically. You will likely end up with audio from a tab you’re not currently viewing. Sometimes, it’s even impossible to locate which tabs play videos. Fortunately, Safari has this awesome feature which lets you know which sites are playing audio/video files by showing a sound icon on the right of the tab.
If you spot a tab playing audio, you can simply click on the sound icon and it will immediately be muted. You can also click on the sound icon wherein a menu will appear, allowing you to pick the option to mute all other tabs.
Other new features include the Responsive Design Mode, which comes in handy for web developers checking if the website they are handling are compatible with mobile devices. It gives you the option to select different devices, like the iPad and iPhone. Keyboard shortcuts have also been overhauled, which means you’ll need to get used to them from scratch.
Overall, I would say that you might as well try Safari for El Capitan out. I’ve been especially liking the muted tabs as a lot of high traffic sites automatically play annoying videos (you know who are) and when I have a million tabs open, it is a mind boggling experience. So thanks for the muted tabs, Safari.
