Apple releases Safari 5, adds extension system


Late Monday Apple unleashed Safari 5, the company's Web browser based off of the Webkit system. Apple says version 5 features up to 30% increase in javascript rendering using the Nitro JavaScript engine. The improvement is over Safari 4, and Apple states that Safari 5 edges out Chrome 5.0 by 3-percent while twice as fast as FireFox 3.6 on a Mac. Chrome 5.0 itself has seen dramatic increases in javascript performance, so Safari appears to have closed that gap.

"Safari continues to lead the pack in performance, innovation and standards support," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. "Safari now runs on over 200 million devices worldwide and its open source WebKit engine runs on over 500 million devices."

Probably the biggest addition for developers and soon for users is a new extension system. The system allows users to install signed extensions into their browsers. All extensions will have to go through Apple's Developer program, where Apple will securely sign each extension. The system appears to try and ensure integrity in the distribution of extensions so that users may be confident in installing items. Safari 5 extensions are also sandboxed, meaning extensions should be blocked off from other resources of the browser for greater security and perhaps stability.

Other improvements involve updates to Web rendering. Safari 5 adds greater support for HTML5, adding support for a number of new technologies. Such items include geolocation, full screen video, and closed captioning among others. It appears most of these items have already been available in Chrome and Firefox, so Safari 5 is adding parity of the developing Web standard.

The other major rendering feature is a new Reader function. Using Reader, Safari 5 will attempt to make Webpages more readable by removing much of the formatting and extra graphics such as ads and navigation.

Safari 5 is available for Mac OS X 10.5.8/10.6.2 or later and Windows XP SP2, Vista and 7.

Safari 5