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Today saw the full release of Apple’s latest web browser, Safari 4. The public beta has been around for a couple of months, so has Apple address the issue that appeared? Is Safari 4 enough to bring you back from Firefox, and enough to make you upgrade from Safari 3? From what I’ve seen so far, I’d say yes.

If you’re currently using the Safari 4 public beta, have a look at where your tabs are positioned. They’re right at the top; the idea was to give each tab a full window. If you tried to move the order, you’d need to select the small corner, otherwise the entire window would move. Not very useful. Now, take a look at the images posted of the full release. You’ll notice the tabs are back where they belong—below your bookmarks. It seemed the majority of users prefer their tabs lower down. It’s usually your first port of call to open a new page, although some people have shown a dislike to this change, and seem to prefer their tabs at the very top of the window.

While a page is loading, you’ll see a new icon in the URL field on the right telling you the page is loading, and giving you the option to cancel loading the page. If you’re visiting a blog or website with RSS feeds, the loading icon will change to one that reads “RSS” once the page has loaded, giving you a direct link to the RSS feed itself. Nothing’s changed here from Safari 3, other than the design of these icons.

Of course, the “report to Apple” icon has been removed in the full version. You can still report any problems you may have with Safari from the Safari drop-down menu, and selecting the “Report Bugs to Apple…” option.

There’s no doubt that Safari 4 is fast; it’s faster than Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE 8. A new JavaScript engine allows pages to load and render quickly—even with a flaky WiFi connection—and it’s also the first and only cross-platform browser that achieves full marks (100/100) for the Acid 3 tests.

Top Sites and viewing your history in Cover Flow have stayed the same in the full release. We’ll have to dig deep into Safari 4’s files to see if its still keeping an eye on you, but otherwise, things look great in Cover Flow.

Apple didn’t miss much with Safari 4. There are 150 new features that make the everyday user and developer happy using Safari 4. I stayed away from the public beta because of issues around Wordpress and consistent crashing. I’m happy to say the issues around Wordpress have been cleared up, and Safari 4 hasn’t even lagged, let alone crashed.

Grab the download from Apple, and let us know what you think.