Safari 5 - POST WWDC release

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muzzle79

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http://www.apple.com/safari/

I Did not see it mentioned in the WWDC presentation, software update just popped up and indicated an install.

ENGADGET
Apple has just outed a press release for Safari 5, which curiously didn't get a mention during the company's WWDC10 keynote, but should be ready to download any minute now. Safari Reader is making its debut, as we'd heard it might, alongside a claimed 30 percent performance improvement over Safari 4 and -- mirroring the iPhone 4 -- Bing as one of the preloaded search engine options. Google and Yahoo are still around, don't freak out. Apple is also adding in Extensions (think Firefox's Add-Ons) to the browser, allowing devs to use HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to pretty up the browsing experience. The Reader feature intrigues us most, as it auto-detects articles within webpages and pulls them out for an unencumbered text-only view. The idea sounds great, but we'll naturally need to see how well it works in practice. Apple's been doing a bit of benchmarking too and boasts that Safari 5 runs JavaScript a whole three percent faster than Chrome 5.0 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6. Internet Explorer is presumably still working on finishing that test.

P.S. We're hearing the current release might be for devs only, hence the lack of a public download.

Update: Okay, now it's available for public consumption.

Update 2: Okay, we've been playing with Safari 5 for a few moments and here's what we've noticed:
Reader is pretty gorgeous -- think Instapaper on the fly. It's hard to tell when it'll kick and show the Reader button in the toolbar, though -- it works on Engadget posts, but not in Wikipedia articles.
Yes, Netflix is broken. It seems like it's doing a browser detect and failing with the new build number, so we'd guess it'll be fixed soon.
It's much faster at everything from launch to rendering times. We haven't clocked it yet, but it's noticeably snappier on our quad-core i7 iMac.
We're dying to try out some Extensions and see how they work, but we haven't seen any yet. Same with the new HTML5 features -- hit us up if you see anything!
Bing Search integration is... Bing search integration. What else is there to say?
Click to expand...
 
Just downloaded it. Reader is pretty slick, although I rarely click into an article on a blog-style site so I'm not sure how often I will use it. Glad to see extensions, if there's an adblock equivalent that works well I may ditch firefox on my Mac.
 
IcedEmotion said:
Glad to see extensions, if there's an adblock equivalent that works well I may ditch firefox on my Mac.
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There's been one for a long time. Doesn't use the new extensions framework, but that's because its existence predates Safari 5.

Anyway, I've been playing with Safari 5 for most of the evening, and it's a pretty solid release. Haven't been able to crash it, and I've noticed some performance improvements, especially when using the Reopen All Windows From Last Session command. Seems like a very snappy update. Best part? Animated GIFs no longer suck in Safari.
 
Smart Address Field is pretty disappointing. Still not nearly as good as Chrome's omnibar. Would be nice to see it merged with search and the addition of keywords. I really wish they would add find-as-you-type navigation one of these days. :|
 
As soon as ClickToFlash gets updated for Safari 5, I will switch.
 
Downloaded it earlier. Only had a few minutes to use it, but trying to open up the reader six or seven times on multiple sites crashed safari every time.
 
Terpfen said:
1.6b9 works just fine.
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Hmm... thanks for the heads up. I had looked yesterday and there is a ticket in there system saying that both stable and beta releases didn't work with it. I'll try it out though.
 
Tried S5 out last night and part of today; Chrome is still noticeably faster for me.
 
sap said:
Hmm... thanks for the heads up. I had looked yesterday and there is a ticket in there system saying that both stable and beta releases didn't work with it. I'll try it out though.
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1.6b9 works perfectly for me. I'm not sure what aspect of 1.6b9 the ticket claims doesn't work, because all my normal usage is still, well, normal.
 
The adblock port is available. Unlike Chrome it prevents content from loading instead of just hiding it. Early library up for porting between Chrome and Safari as well: http://safariadblock.com/
 
Ankle said:
The adblock port is available. Unlike Chrome it prevents content from loading instead of just hiding it. Early library up for porting between Chrome and Safari as well: http://safariadblock.com/
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Might consider editing that post as discussion of adblocking software or browsers for any reason is against the rules here... hate to see this thread get itself locked down quick which is exactly what will probably happen if that post stays as it is.

Just a suggestion...
 
On windows anyway, safari doesn't stand a chance against chrome... it's very efficient.


Haven't used 5 on my mac yet... but who would ruin their mac with chrome?
 
Verge said:
On windows anyway, safari doesn't stand a chance against chrome... it's very efficient.
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Totally agree. I think Safari now stands to do well against Firefox for Windows, but then you have Chrome, so why would one use Safari?

In any case, it's good to see other browsers nipping at the heels of Chrome a bit. Maybe Mozilla should try doing the same.
 
Looks like Safari 5 is as leaky as ever:

safari5-4windows-26tabs.jpg


4 windows with a total of 26 tabs together. It was around 500Mb the night before and is now at 2Gb the afternoon after.

Rather surprised Webkit 2 wasn't part of Safari 5. Guess we will have to wait for Safari 6 for any notable improvements. :(
 
Ankle said:
Looks like Safari 5 is as leaky as ever:

safari5-4windows-26tabs.jpg


4 windows with a total of 26 tabs together. It was around 500Mb the night before and is now at 2Gb the afternoon after.

Rather surprised Webkit 2 wasn't part of Safari 5. Guess we will have to wait for Safari 6 for any notable improvements. :(
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I've noticed it being very sluggish after a while of use. I went back to Firefox because it's much speedier. Imagine that! Safari slower than Firefox! I've always used Safari for when I just need to quickly open a browser.
 
CKMorpheus said:
I've noticed it being very sluggish after a while of use. I went back to Firefox because it's much speedier. Imagine that! Safari slower than Firefox! I've always used Safari for when I just need to quickly open a browser.
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I tried a webkit nightly and it seems a lot better so far but in the end I went back to Chrome betas. I'd switch to Safari in a heart beat for it's RSS support, better extension API, native look and feel, PDFkit and many other reasons if it was running webkit2 under the hood and it had something like the omnibar with the automagical keyword search.

I've always used Camino in the past over Firefox as I couldn't stand the lack of keychain integration among other issues but the latest Camino builds do not have find as you type anymore and the new address field lags incredibly bad as you type. :\
 
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