Safari has never been very formidable in the browser wars, always holding just a few percentage points of the browser share on the bottom of the list.

Of course, now that it’s no longer a Mac-only browser, it’s share has grown as a few (admittedly brave) folks downloaded it for their PCs. Even still, the vast majority of Safari users were Mac users who used Safari by default because they were too lazy to actually choose another (better) browser.

On Tuesday, Apple announced the beta for Safari 4 for both Windows and Mac. Apple has pulled out all the stops to make Safari an attractive browser that people will actually want to use. Heavy on new technical features as well as eye candy, this is quite possibly the first time Safari has resembled a browser that has the brilliant minds behind Apple’s design. Granted, most of the features just appearing now have been in other browsers. This time, however, Apple has put its own spin on them to make them, well… just work.

The first difference greeting users (after a brief, yet fancy, intro movie) is that Safari now offers better visual integration with the Window’s OS, featuring a standard title bar with buttons. While the chrome of Apple’s applications remains on the rest of the window, it is less distracting than before. Also, instead of a tab bar, tabs show up in the title bar like in Google Chrome (a feature Apple calls “Tabs on Top”). While I’m not a personal fan of this style because it prevents tab rearranging, it does take up less screen real estate.

The address bar and search box now have “AwesomeBar” like features, suggesting visited sites and bookmarks. When typing in addresses. The new home screen for empty windows and tabs shows the users’ most visited sites, a feature that Opera users have had for a long time, and intrepid Firefox users can add via plug-in. The screen is constantly updated over time, but can be customized by pinning or hiding links. Clicking on one of the tabs animates it as it moves to fill the window, a small piece of eye candy that is utterly cool to watch. Actually, the browser is full of these small animations that the average user doesn’t notice consciously, but make for a better visual experience, something Apple has always incorporated into its products.

Users can now look through and search their histories and bookmarks using Coverflow. Each entry has a screen shot saved for it. I find this interface for viewing bookmarks and histories actually to be more intuitive for both the average user who is likely to be a bit daunted by the system file structure as well as for native OS X users.

Something I found interesting and rather unique is the built-in RSS viewer. The in-browser RSS reader allows users to scroll through the stories, adjust them for length, sort them by any number of descriptors, and even search them, all from the same window. And while most users who know what RSS is will likely keep using a separate reader, these features are still very useful for quick browsing.

On the technical side, Apple claims that the new Nitro Engine renders Javascript faster than every other browser, and includes benchmarks to support their claims. In a completely biased and unscientific survey, I thought surfing through AJAX heavy sites like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Facebook was indeed snappy, so I’m likely to believe Apple assertions.

Safari still lacks an add-on architecture, which is perhaps Firefox’s best attribute, and the largest thing to keep Safari from gaining significant browser share. Otherwise, Apple has picked the best features of the browsers on the market and wrapped them up in a slick package that certainly deserves a look.

Microsoft is losing ground after Internet Explorer lost seven percent of its hold on the web browsing market in the last year. This adds to the pressure of Windows Vista, which is only used by less than 15 percent of PC users, according to Internet research groups.

Jand the IT Productivity Center recently released a white paper finding that IE’s marketshare fell to 58.5 percent in August versus 65.48 percent last August and about 83 percent in 2005.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser remained a distant, yet rising second with almost 19 percent of the market. Google Desktop has captured about 4 percent, and some Netscape users remain, despite the fact that AOL dropped it months ago.

“Both Vista and Netscape show that large companies make huge blunders in technology,” said Victor Janulaitis, CEO of Janco. ”In the case of Microsoft, they no longer count on moving users to new products as quickly as they want.  Time Warner’s short-sighted decision to abandon Netscape shows technology decisions are long-term ones, and companies that want to create value in that market need to look beyond quarter-to- quarter earnings.  But the real story is the continued erosion of Microsoft’s market share.”

A summary of Janco’s browser market share data can be found on their website and the IT Productivity Center’s website.

Apple announced Tuesday that Safari 3.1 has been released for Mac and Windows systems.

“Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2,” Apple said in a statement. “Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers, and is the first browser to support the latest innovative web standards needed to deliver the next generation of highly interactive Web 2.0 experiences.”

“Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “And best of all, Safari supports the latest audio, video and animation standards for an industry-leading Web 2.0 experience.”

Safari 3.1 is the first browser to support video and audio tags in HTML 5 and the first to support CSS Animations. Safari also supports CSS Web Fonts, giving designers limitless choices of fonts to create stunning new web sites, Apple said.

Download it now at http://www.apple.com/safari