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Safari 5 Released

pknoll writes "Apple has released the fifth version of the Safari web browser, which adds several new features. Reader mode detects multiple-page articles and displays them in their entirety at the click of a button, and most importantly, there is now an official extension API."

42 of 308 comments (clear)

  1. It's fully functional. by JustinRLynn · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yes, but will it block porn? I wouldn't want my Apple(TM) experience ruined.
    -- Begin program section
    Sarcasm++

    1. Re:It's fully functional. by dangitman · · Score: 3, Funny

      Opera is the best porn browser.

      I dunno, that singing fat lady kind of turns me off.

      --
      ... and then they built the supercollider.
    2. Re:It's fully functional. by jayspec462 · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's how you know it's over...

      --
      $comment =~ s/($verb)\s+($noun)/IN SOVIET RUSSIA, $2 $1s YOU!/g;
  2. "The worlds fastest browser" by dsavi · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just like Opera! I think that I'll stick with Firefox and Chrome.

    1. Re:"The worlds fastest browser" by Rockoon · · Score: 2, Informative

      The difference is that while the webkit boys are making their javascript engine faster.. the opera boys are also making the browser faster.

      webkit has a slight edge on javascript speed, I guess.. some benchmarks say so anyways..

      ..but opera (and chrome) are so much snappier than safari, at least on windows, and its not even a contest. We don't need benchmarks to see how poorly safari is running on windows compared to opera and chrome... the difference is visually apparent.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  3. Same as Readable App by magister159 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The content extraction feature sounds a lot like the Readable Bookmarlet that I've been running across browsers for the last year.

    1. Re:Same as Readable App by Theaetetus · · Score: 4, Informative

      The content extraction feature sounds a lot like the Readable Bookmarlet that I've been running across browsers for the last year.

      With the addition of being able to extract data from a multi-page article.

  4. Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5 by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And Chrome 5 is a speed demon itself. The difference is only 3 percent, and those are Apple's numbers.

    Man I love this relentless focus on browser speed over the past few years. If it keeps up for a little longer, I might even be able to browse Slashdot.

    --
    Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
    1. Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5 by Jackie_Chan_Fan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Firefox still beats them all with Adblock.

      Chrome still lacks any real download filtering. Chrome's add block still downloads ads but it simply doesnt display them. I like chrome, but this kills it. Firefox actually performs much better because of this.

      Firefox scrolls much better than chrome or safari.

    2. Re:Apparently it's even faster than Chrome 5 by makomk · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Amazing how the two can be so different, given that they're using the same engine... You would almost think it had something to do with the Placebo Effect, or the Confirmation Bias, wouldn't you ;).

      Except they're not. The platform-independent bits are the same, but the platform-dependent code that actually draws to the screen is completely different in Chrome to that in Safari for Windows, and that does have big effects on performance. In particular, the Windows version of Safari traditionally used a rather slow and buggy closed-source library that emulates the Mac OS X APIs for drawing etc. Chrome on the other hand is optimized to run well on Windows.

  5. It also adds an "option" for searching using Bing by I'm+Not+There+(1956) · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Such a shame for a browser in 2010 that it needs an update for adding a search engine to the available search options.

    --
    "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
  6. For your safety by Trufagus · · Score: 4, Funny

    You can only view pages that have been pre-approved by Apple - and Apple gets 30% cut of anything revenue generated by the page.

    As an added bonus, any media gets re-routed to iTunes - where Apple will take their 30% cut and wrap it in a container that prevents you from mistakenly trying to use it on a non-Apple device.

    But this is all just to protect you and preserve the user experience (patent pending), of course.

  7. Re:Safari Speed & Chrome Speed by Thinine · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Gee, I wonder if Chrome had the site in cache, since you've used it before. Reset both browsers to a clean state and then you may have a valid comparison.

  8. Re:OK, so extensions... by armanox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've found that just blocking sites in my hosts file works much better.

    --
    I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
  9. Refuse to test it by Enderandrew · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Since Apple decided to push Safari out via an iTunes update without asking people, I've refused to ever install it on my box.

    If I really want a Webkit browser, I'll run Chrome and/or Rekonq. Chrome already has tons of extensions, is FOSS, and runs amazingly fast.

    If Chrome supported a proper adblocking solution, I'd never need another browser. And yes, I know they had an Adblock extension, but it still renders ads in the background. I want to stop the ads from being downloaded or rendered at all.

    --
    http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
    1. Re:Refuse to test it by SassyDave · · Score: 2, Informative

      Chrome does have adblocking now. Does it not work for you?

    2. Re:Refuse to test it by Phroggy · · Score: 4, Informative

      Chrome does have adblocking now. Does it not work for you?

      Another poster explained that Chrome's ad-blocking still downloads the ad, but doesn't display it. This is a problem for anybody on a metered or low-bandwidth connection (e.g. tethering through a cell phone, as I'm doing now) who don't want to download the ads, regardless of whether or not they get displayed. Of course, most people have broadband connections and don't care what gets downloaded in the background, as long as they don't have to see it.

      In theory, web sites could try to detect whether an ad was downloaded or not, and refuse to display content unless you've also downloaded the ads. In practice, this isn't normally done, but if it were, with Chrome the web site would still work.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    3. Re:Refuse to test it by baka_toroi · · Score: 2

      Way to be an idiot.

  10. sendmail by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Have you ever seen a sendmail config file?

  11. Re:Bye bye input managers by Spad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The extensions will be very nice

    But only if they get approved for publication in the App Store.

  12. Re:Haha by JustOK · · Score: 3, Funny

    I think emacs has a macro for that.

    --
    rewriting history since 2109
  13. Okay, so Cached vs Cached by neoshroom · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Possibly, but here is an even better comparison with two cached pages. When you click "back" in Safari it loads the page layout and text first and then loads the images. Chrome loads the entire page at once, which is a lot less visually jarring. You can also notice this in the scrollbar which in Safari will keep changing sizes and in Chrome will stay the same same size upon hitting "back."

    Additionally, activity monitor consistently shows Safari takes up more virtual memory and percentage usage of the CPU than Safari does. Don't get me wrong, they are both great, speedy browsers and I'm not exactly anti-Apple, being that I'm on a Macintosh, but Chrome 5 really is fast.

    --
    Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
  14. Re:Haha by TheKidWho · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, that's what happens when you suffer from feature creep.

  15. Re:Haha by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Any sufficiently advanced program is indistinguishable from Emacs.

  16. Re:Haha by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Text files aren't 'complicated'. Writing the Javascript and CSS to make them work the way you want is.

    I've written a few GreaseMoney scripts, but I know how to program. To the lay user, I doubt they even know what 'GreaseMonkey' or Javascript is.

    I know people that would like to customize their 'browser experience' but would get lost at UserScripts.

    Knowing Apple, its most likely a pretty GUI around some basic text files. I know it may come as a shock to the Slashdot crowd, but Linux, GUI, config files, etc are pretty intimidating to a newbie.

    If it wasn't for OS X, I wouldn't have ever gotten into Linux, OpenSolaris, PHP, C, etc.

    Terminal was always there, just never opened. I opened it a few times to move files around. Used some hints from Mac OS X Hints. Enabled SSH, learned PHP and C through copy and paste coding until I understood how to write it on my own. Years later I run a SheevaPlug (do you honestly think a complete newbie would figure out uBoot and such?), OpenSolaris server, XBMC. Installed Ubuntu on my Girlfriend's laptop all because of Terminal.app and some natural curiosity.

    If this "Simple GUI" gets some middle/high schooler or college student going "I wonder what this Plugin builder does" opening the auto-generated text and tinkering. Good for them.

  17. Re:Haha by LaminatorX · · Score: 2, Informative

    ctl+meta+shift+/+.

  18. Still no volume control by line-bundle · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I still want a volume control to shut the web up. But still want to be able to listen to my music.

    1. Re:Still no volume control by TheCycoONE · · Score: 4, Informative

      Per-application volume control is typically a sound system option; supported through Vista, Windows 7, Pulse Audio, OSS, and I assume OSX. Putting a volume control in the application itself would be redundant at this point.

    2. Re:Still no volume control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Per-application volume control is typically a sound system option; supported through Vista, Windows 7, Pulse Audio, OSS, and I assume OSX.

      Wow, you're wrong on so many levels. You presume OS X has per app volume controls outside of apps, but didn't bother to check? Guess what, it does not. Each app is responsible for it's own sound controls and Safari has none. And even if it did have a control in the OS configurations, that's not very useful. Would you make the same argument that Songbird should not have a volume control, because you can just go turn it off in the OS config? That's more than a bit inconvenient don't you think?

    3. Re:Still no volume control by macroexp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, you can use JackOSX - but that doesn't give you per-app volume out of the box. You'd have to have another tool also communicating with jack to do the amplification/attenuation. (I use Ardour but that's a little heady for a typical user - and no, I don't just use it as a fancy volume control)

      The real deal-killer is that audio in Flash videos doesn't work properly through Jack. (On Snow Leopard at least) It's a known problem with no fix in sight. Oddly enough, HTML5 videos work flawlessly...

    4. Re:Still no volume control by prockcore · · Score: 2, Informative

      OSX doesn't.. but Linux and Windows both have per-application volume management... and using chrome, that becomes per-tab volume management.

  19. Re:Apple, take your proprietary browser and stuffi by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is a joke, right? HTML5 is a W3C standard, and WebKit is an open-source rendering engine with Apple contributing the most development. Get a clue.

    --
    Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
  20. Re:Crashes a lot ? by cbackas · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I skimmed the entire page with Safari 5 (cause the math content made no sense to me!) up and down several times, and reloaded a bunch of times without any issues. Obviously I haven't had it for long, but I've observed no stability problems at all. Is it possible that page is using a special font for the math symbols that may be corrupt on your system? (Wild guess) Did/do you have any Safari "enhancers" installed? Those probably aren't compatible between releases.

  21. how about long-term performance? by _|()|\| · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Although Safari benchmarks well, it degrades severely over time. Memory usage climbs, even after closing tabs, and the beach ball becomes a constant companion. Firefox is a little better, but I've had the best luck with Chrome. I'll try Safari 5, but I'm not optimistic that it will be any better than previous versions.

  22. Re:OK, so extensions... by vlueboy · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you don't like the adverts on a site, don't go to the site. Just spare the couple of KB, and get the site you admittedly appreciate some revenue to offset the bandwidth costs they incur to give you the information you want.

    Sadly, this was OK 10 years ago. These days, websites have 1-3 flash ads with unoptimized animations. The result is that my laptop heats up and performance degrades considerably even when I'm not watching the ad.

    All my local OS's block a few like ads.doubleclick.net, clk.atdmt.com, qksrv.net and ads.x10.com.

  23. Re:If you're not on OSX by soppsa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Safari 2 maybe. Safari has not had 'funky rendering problems' in a *long* time. Where do you think Chrome's rendering engine comes from?

  24. Re:OK, so extensions... by NatasRevol · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well plugins like ClickToFlash still work.

    Extension details can be seen here:
    http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tools/Conceptual/SafariExtensionGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html

    An awesome demonstration of what they're capable of:
    http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/06/coda-notes-previe/

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  25. Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari by Myopic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Agreed, adblockers are the killer app for the web. Without them, the web is almost -- not quite, but almost -- completely useless. And AdBlock Plus is the gold standard, even though it could stand improvement.

  26. Reader Mode Will Get Broken by 16K+Ram+Pack · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not sure why Apple is doing this, but publishers aren't going to like it. They'll find ways to scuttle it or to embed ads.

    Right now, ad-blocking is a fringe activity. Places like Ars Technica suffer quite badly, but most sites don't. But Apple are giving people a heads up that lots of Safari readers won't be looking at ads - they'll be just getting the content.

    I know a lot of people don't like ads, but it's what keeps a lot of sites running and "free". Without the revenue from ads, a lot of them will disappear.

  27. Re:Extensions and Mobile Safari by Myopic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thank you for your sympathy. I probably wouldn't use the word "miserable" but it's close. I am indeed constantly annoyed at the pervasiveness of commercial messages. I do what I can to reduce the intrusion, such as enjoying radio and television programs as recordings (podcasts, DVDs, etc) so that I can skip ads; using adblockers online; discarding the extraneous packaging around many food products; declining to wear clothing with ads on them (such as the Nike swoosh and whatnot); and simply not participating in some activities which are ad-supported. It's limiting in some ways and a relief in other ways; I try to find the best balance for me.

    Indeed, the "simple" way to avoid website ads is to avoid websites with ads. But you might be interested to know that with a small amount of additional effort I can also enjoy the websites *and* avoid the ads, by using an ad blocker -- thus getting the best of both worlds as it were. (I'm surprised you don't realize that, since it's exactly the topic at hand.) So, that is obviously better for me than not visiting at all. For most of those sites, I'd gladly pay the fraction of a cent per page that the advertisers pay, but I don't know many sites which offer that level of subscription.

    As a last thought in regards your suggestion that websites wouldn't exist without advertising, I am reminded of the saying "...and if my aunt had a mustache, she'd be my uncle". That means, "and if everything were completely different, then everything would be completely different." I proffer that if 90% of web users used ad blockers, then almost all sites would have a micropayment option or some other kind of business model.

    Anyway, I appreciate your sincere words. Be well.

  28. Safari 5 fixes 48 security holes! by 200_success · · Score: 2, Informative

    Users should also be aware that Safari 5 fixes 48 security holes in Safari 4.0. Therefore, if you are using Safari 4.0, you should upgrade as soon as possible. For Mac OS 10.4, there is Safari 4.1 available instead of Safari 5.0.

  29. First official ad-blocking and auto-paging browser by Mandrel · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yes, this seems to be the first time ad-blocking and auto-paging have been built into the standard release of a browser.

    Perhaps it's an Apple ploy to push publishers to iPad and iPhone apps, where their content cannot be altered.