“Apple released Safari 3.1 on March 18 with an updated rendering engine that makes the fastest Internet browser even faster,” Seth Weintraub reports for Computerworld. “On top of that, Apple’s new browser includes some features that reflect the future of the HTML 5 specification: offline storage, media support, and CSS animations and Web fonts. It also adds some needed compatibility and bug fixes, as well as some other new features that really make it a great everyday browser.”
“The interface and the user experience are largely unchanged from those in Safari 3.0. Under the hood, however, Apple has made some significant changes that it has pulled from the latest builds of the open-source WebKit engine,” Weintraub reports. “WebKit is the framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari. It is also the basis of the Web browsing engine in iPhone’s Mobile Safari, Symbian’s browser, the Google Android platform and Adobe’s new AIR platform.”
“I tested Safari 3.1 on my first-generation 2-GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM. In MooTools’ SlickSpeed speed/validity test suite, a series of tests that use popular Javascript libraries, Safari came out on top in almost every category on both Mac and PC,” Weintraub reports.
“Apple’s Safari 3.1 allows Web sites to specify fonts outside the seven Web-safe font families; these new fonts can be downloaded by the browser as needed,” Weintraub reports.
“With the 3.1 release, Safari has become the fastest browser you can use. If that isn’t enough reason to make a switch, its strong adherence to Web standards and rapid adoption of new technologies might make you think again,” Weintraub reports.
Full article here.
More info and download links for Apple’s Safari Web browser here.
Great, it is the fastest browser at rendering websites. Now if only we could customize the UI with a custom skins. No option for icons in the bookmark bars is a deal breaker for me.
Does anyone know of a web browser that uses the Webkit engine but has a skinable interface?
@razor, I got rid of the delay you are talking about by switching to OpenDNS:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
Give it a go, you won’t be disappointed.
JK
And it still crashes too often… back to Webkit.