ChrisPosterous

The all new Safari may not have been a topic covered in the "Stevenote" this afternoon, but it has been released today just like the rumors indicated it might. This new version is even better and faster than 4.0, is optimized for HTML 5 and has improced Javascript performance. Cross platform for Mac and PC.

One of the cool new features that has been a big negative in previous versions is the handling of new tabs. In version 4 and earlier, opening some links would spawn a new Safari window instead of a tab. Now, you can set a preference to automatically open a tab instead. This is more in line with the behavior of Firefox and Chrome and makes the Safari experience much better and consistent with other browsers (especially on a Windows PC).

Another interesting addition is the appearance of Bing in the search engine selections under Preferences. In the past only Yahoo and Google were available. This is in line with the new iOS4 selections shown today at WWDC. I have not had a lot of play time with Bing but a lot of folks seem to like it and I may give it a try to see what the experience is like in Safari.

Safari is also being touted as the best browser to view HTML5 content. In fact, a recent post by Apple which I featured here on ChrisPosterous highlights the use of HTML5 for advanced web functionality and requires Safari. With 5.0, that experience is noticeably faster, at least on the Windows platform.

Though I have not played with it yet, the new Safari is also said to sport an improved RSS reader. To be honest, I have never been a fan of using Safari for RSS reading. Going back to version 1 the experience has been odd. When I click on an RSS feed link, I expect to get a subscribe dialog so I can through the feed into Google Reader. The fact that Safari just opens the same site in an ugly window is horrible. I will try the new reader feature, but I don't expect I will be giving up my Google reader any time soon.

The last thing that was supposed to be in Safari but has not been released yet is support for extensions. According to Apple, developers can begin developing extensions for Safari now and this summer a new Extensions Gallery will become available for all users.

So far the overall experience is great. Safari has taken another step toward being a great fast browser and frankly, the performance on my PC is as fast if not faster than Google Chrome. I no longer use Firefox or IE as they are just not even close in performance to the two Webkit based browsers. For now, Chrome has the advantage with its outstanding bookmark sync, extensions management and user interface (yes, I actually like the Chrome interface better under Win 7 than Safari - although font rendering under Safari is still superior in some respects). But I may find myself using Safari more with version 5 and certainly I am looking forward to seeing what happens in that Extensions space.