New "Nitro-powered" Safari 5 is the fastest, says Apple

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 08 June 2010 11:41

Your IT - Home IT

Apple has released a new version of Safari for Mac and Windows claiming it to be faster than either Google Chrome or Firefox.

Apple says that Safari 5, is "the world's fastest and most innovative web browser'¦Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari 5 on the Mac runs JavaScript 30 percent faster than Safari 4, three percent faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6."

Web page loading has been accelerated using Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching, which also improves the caching of previously viewed pages to return to them more quickly, according to Apple.

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."

Apple says it has added "more than a dozen powerful HTML5 features [to Safari 5] that allow web developers to create media-rich experiences, including full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video."

Other new HTML5 features include HTML5 geolocation, HTML5 sectioning elements, HTML5 draggable attribute, HTML5 forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, HTML5 AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket.

Apple has also launched a free Safari Developer Program that "allows developers to customise and enhance Safari 5 with extensions based on standard web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript."

The Extension Builder, new in Safari 5, "simplifies the development, installation and packaging of extensions." For enhanced security and stability, Safari Extensions are sandboxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.

Safari 5 for Mac requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 or later. Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7.