Safari Browsing Experience Changed

Hi, please forgive my ignorance, as I'm still fairly new to the wonderful world of Macs. I'm using a MacBook Pro with OS X (10.7.4), and recently my web browsing experience changed. I've tried poking around the internet to find info, but to no avail. The most notable changes are at the top where the toolbar is. There used to be one window for entering a URL and a smaller Google window to the right for searching the web. Now, there is only one large window that spans the width of the toolbar and it can be used for either entering a URL or search terms, and to the right of the window it says "Reader". That's fine, but I still don't understand how the change occurred, and everything seems to have slowed down DRAMATICALLY. I get the spinning wheel of waiting much more often now. Also, under the "Safari" drop down menu, the option to "Clear Cache" has been removed. That too is fine, as I've researched and found that I can find it under the "Develop" drop down menu I've now selected to be shown. What concerns me is, how and why have these changes occurred? And I'm sure there may be other things that have changed that I just haven't discovered yet. I may have been spoiled with the previous speed of browsing with this machine, but I'm very disappointed and annoyed with how much it has slowed.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

You must have upgraded to Safari 6.0 which has just been released as these are new features included with that release.

DavidH

Interesting that you are experiencing slowdown though. Since the update Safari has been the same or slightly faster for me. I have been running more on 10.8 than 10.7 though.

I agree with Sly. Safari 6 seems faster and easier to scroll than before. The only thing I don't like is they did away with the search box and integrated it with the URL field. (Similar to Chrome.)

The only thing I don't like is they did away with the search box and integrated it with the URL field. (Similar to Chrome.)

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The best feature ever! For me anyway

McYukon said:

The best feature ever! For me anyway

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I love it, but I'm not used to it yet. I keep hitting tab to go to the search bar that is no longer there.

Thank you all for your input. I'm not sure if there's something else going on, because I am definitely experiencing a marked reduction in not only browsing speed, but speed of applications and everything in general. It feels like my MacBook Pro is thinking about everything before it acts, whereas before it was so beautifully fast.

I did notice on mine that Safari is faster in ML than Lion.

I think I discovered my problem! I am using an AirPort Extreme and sometimes I've been getting some sort of error message related to it, but I couldn't remember my password

I did some long-overdue research on how to use Keychain and was able to find the password! As it turns out, there was a firmware update waiting for me. So far after the update things seem a lot smoother.

I did find another notable change that my apparent Safari update brought: I can no longer use the "delete" key to go back a page while browsing the internet. At first I found this very annoying and started to see if there was a way I could get it back......until I had an "aha" moment and realized all I have to do is two-finger swipe to go back and forth through web pages. So slick! Obviously I still have a lot to learn about Macs!