Safari 5 didn’t get any stage time as Steve Jobs announced iPhone 4 but Apple slipped the latest version of its browser out just after the keynote. It’s a major overhaul for Safari with new Firefox and Google Chrome-battling extensions, some more love for Bing and the new ad-fighting, article-loving Safari Reader. Read on for a guided trek through the new jungle of Safari 5 features…
While Firefox and Chrome have both allowed developers to add extensions for ages, Safari 5 adds them for the first time. They’ll be built with HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript but like apps for iOS4, Apple will be keeping close control of them. Safari 5 Extensions will need a digital certificate signed by Apple to run.
One of the cleverest new features in Safari 5 is Safari Reader. It scans web pages to detect articles and give you the option to view them in a slimmed-down, scrollable view with ads removed. It’ll also put multi-page articles in one readable chunk and also gives you the option to print or share via email.
Steve Jobs gave HTML5 a big shout out during the iPhone 4 launch and there’s lots of new HTML5 support baked into Safari 5. It’ll now give you full screen HTML5 video-playback and geo-location among a host of other new HTML5 tricks. Chrome, Firefox and Opera all feature the same support with Internet Explorer lagging behind at the moment.
Apple’s big claim for Safari 5 is a speed hike. It says Safari 4 runs 30% faster than Safari 4 and is twice as fast as Firefox 3.6 and 3% swifter than Chrome 5.0. We’re still giving that a test but it does seem pretty speedy.
Finally, just as Safari Mobile on iPhone 4 has added Bing to its list of available search engines, Safari 5 has found a place in its heart for Microsoft’s search engine. You can now select Bing in Safari 5′s Smart Search box.
You can grab Safari 5 for Mac and Safari 5 for Windows from the Apple website right now. Let us know what you make of it and share any interesting discoveries in the comments.
Out now | £free | Apple
