Apple on Monday released Safari 5, the latest version of their homegrown web browser. The update promises a faster browsing experience, a new feature dubbed "Safari Reader", support for extensions, and a whole lot more.
A funny thing happened yesterday, and no, I’m not referring to the network problems that stifled portions of Steve Jobs’ keynote yesterday. Early Monday evening, a press release hit the wire announcing the release of Safari 5, Apple’s latest web browsing effort. That’s all well and good, but users looking to download the update were out of luck – it was nowhere to be found. Some even theorized that Safari 5 was pulled late in the game, but that a press release was erroneously issued regardless.
Well, lucky for us, Apple was just a little slow on the uptake. Late Monday, Safari 5 went live and it brings with it a significant number of improvements and enhancements.
Safari 5 on the Mac runs JavaScript 30% faster than Safari 4, and 3% faster than Chrome 5.0. Helping to speed up load times, Safari 5 implements DNS prefetching as well as improving caching of previously loaded web pages.
Not surprisingly, Safari 5 is HTML 5 friendly and includes over 12 new HTML 5 features such as full screen playback, closed caption functionality, and geolocation. With respect to search, Microsoft’s Bing search engine is now an option if users prefer Microsoft’s offering over that of Google and Yahoo.
One particularly interesting new feature in Safari 5 is called “Safari Reader”, which Apple describes thusly:
Safari Reader makes it easy to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a new, scrollable view without any additional content or clutter. When Safari 5 detects an article, users can click on the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field to display the entire article for clear, uninterrupted reading with options to enlarge, print or send via email.
In other words, readers are presented with article free of all of the linkbait and advertisers that far too often can make reading on the web a distracting and subpar experience.
One additional new feature worth mentioning is that Safari 5 will finally allow developers to create “secure Safari Extensions to customize and enhance the browsing experience” via a new extension framework. I think I can say without much dispute, “It’s about time!”
You can check out an entire list of Safari 5’s new features over here.
