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Apple introduces Safari 3.1, with some HTML 5 support

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

March 18, 2008, 11:49 AM

Apple on Tuesday released version 3.1 of its Safari Web browser for both Windows and Mac. The incremental update does little in the way of introducing new features, although the company is using it to usher in the next generation of Web standards.

Safari 3.1 is the first browser to support some of the features of HTML 5, the new standard that was released in January. That update to the base coding of the Web includes new video and audio tags, which allow for built-in support of media without proprietary technology.

Offline storage is another part of HTML 5 also supported in Safari 3.1. By caching a portion of a Web page, developers would be able to make their sites load faster by not needing to re-download portions that haven't been changed.

In addition, the browser is also the first to support CSS animations, and CSS3 Web fonts are now supported, which allow Safari to download custom fonts as they are needed.

The Cupertino company claims that Safari 3.1 is far faster than any of its competitors. Apple asserts that the browser can load standard HTML pages at nearly twice the speed of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, and 1.7 times that of Firefox 2.

JavaScript is also said to load faster with Safari, which has become a common part of Web pages in modern sites. The coding would load about six times as fast as IE7, and four times faster than Firefox 2.

Safari 3.1 is available for download now for Mac OS X or Windows XP and Vista.

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By sumone

edited Mar 19, 2008 - 3:48 PM

Alas, if it could only give as much customizability and the plethora of options that Firefox, Opera or even IE give.

I can't even turn off the font smoothing completely on my CRT. I can't reset to default settings. I can't configure tabbed browsing exactly the way I want. There aren't any advanced settings.

And as for "That update to the base coding of the Web includes new video and audio tags, which allow for built-in support of media without proprietary technology", it was Apple (along with Nokia) who opposed Ogg Vorbis and Theora and called them proprietary. At least Vorbis, MP3 and MPEG-4 ASP should have been incorporated into HTML 5.

Score: 0

By lfmmoura

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 3:12 PM

If Safari stops crashing at all times, I'll be happy. No need for any additional support. Just give me stabily and I'll stop using Opera for Mac, which I have been doing since Tiger because Apple is unable to produce a stable browser. (Oh, and don't get me wrong, I love Apple - I just hate Safari's instability.)

Score: 0

By dogmo1001

edited Mar 18, 2008 - 4:06 PM

I vaguely recall some of the speed claims for the initial release of Safari for Windows.

Like the purported speed advantage of Firefox (which is my favored browser), much of that "competitive speed" comes from over-aggressive caching that causes the browser to miss changed content at times.

However, with caching turned off, Safari Win was the slowest of the three browsers on my machine. In fact, with caching turned all the way off, rendering was so slow as to be unusable.

Kudos to Apple for relatively good support for web standards so far -- and I'm definitely glad to be able to test the pages I develop in Safari, since the Mac version seems to amount for around 5% of int'l browser share. But using Safari for Windows even a little helps suggest why the Safari Windows int'l share is a negligible .07%.

(I also believe a big damper on adoption of Safari by Windows users is that Safari 3 for Windows came with a very, heavy, dark, and "smudgy" default font view, more suitable to the gamma level used by the Mac's Aqua graphic interface. But even with the fonts optimized for Window's darker gamma, Apple style fonts simply don't look nearly as clean or sharp to most Windows users.)

Score: 0

By AntiochMedia

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 2:23 PM

After having used each incremential version from v3.0.0 - v3.0.4 for Windows with Vista 32-Bit, I installed this sans-Bonjour and sans-Apple Update.

It launched and said it was missing components and that I would need to reinstall.

I uninstalled and reinstalled - wasn't asked about Apple Update, but had the option to install Bonjour. OK. Finished installing, same error. I'll need to reboot to see if it works.

Point being, Apple Applications are held to a higher standard in my books because they 'just work'. And the simplicity of the install followed by the application failing was a shocker.

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 5:48 PM

The Apple forced AND unremoveable UPDATE reminders(in spite of settings) is one of my pet peeves... they've sunk to a real low level...

Not only don't i want iTunes, QT and permanently running(& unstoppeable) iPod & other hardware detection; but what do they have to do with a browser?

Score: 0

By xyzcb1

posted Mar 19, 2008 - 12:02 AM

I would not install any Apple crapware on my computer. Last time I install iTune, it completely took over all my media extension w/o asking any permission to do so. I under thats most Apple fanboy will sell out their mother and girlfriend just to have the logo on it. But please, just make good software instead of marketing.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 10:36 PM

Ugh!

Between Safari and quicktime "Apple Update" reminders, I swear I want to find Jobs and give him a good ol' swift kick in the ass.

Red Foreman style.

Score: 0

By Paul Skinner

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 1:38 PM

"some of the features of HTML 5, the new standard that was released in January"

No it's not. It's a draft, as per usual.

Score: 0

By PC_Tool

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 2:10 PM

HTML 5, web 2.0, CSS 4, JScript 3649.1821.

How many numbers does it take to display a little porn FFS??!?!??

/sarcasm

Score: 0

By Paul Skinner

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 3:44 PM

I wouldn't worry too much. HTML 5 will never get finalised.

Score: 0

By bousozoku

posted Mar 18, 2008 - 12:32 PM

The speed is the real difference. It's certainly quite a bit faster than 3.0.4 and the current competition, from personal experience on both platforms. The Firefox 3 nightly builds are once again much faster than Safari 3.1, at least, on Mac OS X, so it could end up that Safari ends up in the same place 6 months from now when there aren't any browser betas.

Score: 0

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