5 reasons to upgrade to Safari 5

Although not mentioned at the recent WWDC, Apple has launched a new version of the Safari web browser for Mac OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6.2 or higher, as well as Windows XP. SP2, SP3, Vista and Windows 7 . With this new release, Apple has patched many security holes, increased performance levels, introduced many useful features that can compete with Chrome and Firefox in terms of performance and core features.

However, what makes the user most interested is the 5 new features as well as upgraded below.

Browser extensions

The most significant addition to Safari is support for browser extensions. For many users, browser extensions do not seem to be a major event. Indeed, other browsers like Firefox, Chrome, and IE have all supported extensions for a long time.

Extension does not seem to be a big event but it is an important event because it shows that Apple finally wants to keep pace in the race with other famous browsers. Even so does not mean that developers will not be constrained to the scope of activities. Extensions will be sandboxed (a security mechanism for stand-alone programs) to help increase access for Safari itself or for other parts of the computer or user data.

Apple also requires extensions to be signed, similar to what is required for mobile applications in the App Store. That is to ensure that an extension will not be changed by a third party or any upgrade from the original developer.

Extensions can be written using standard web techniques - HTML, CSS and JavaScript - like extensions built for Firefox and Chrome. Apple has provided a tool called Extension Builder to make it easier to pack, distribute and install extensions. In addition, Apple has a free program called Safari Developer Program, which provides resources for developing iPhone / iPad web applications, and developers can sign up for signatures. number to implement with their extensions.

Only a few extensions are available on the web, which is not surprising that Safari 5 has just been released. When developers join the Safari Developer Program and create extensions, Apple adds them to the gallery on the web.

One thing that has yet to be satisfied with this Apple addition is that the extensions are disabled by default. To activate them, you need to use Safari's preferences to activate the Develop menu (there is a checkbox on the Advanced tab), then click on the Develop menu and select Enable Extensions.

Readers mode

The first thing we listed in Safari 5 is its new Reader mode. This feature uses a site discovery scan to determine if the text can be displayed as an article. If so, the address bar will display the Reader button. Click this button and you will see the text of the page in another window. This window will not display images and ads, but it still contains internal links.

The text display is very easy to read, bright, reading newspapers becomes much easier, almost like reading newspapers. It also recognizes articles that are divided into multiple pages (as is the case we still meet at most news or magazine sites today), then load all the pages and compile them as a flow of text. This version makes it easier to read because the reader just drags the scroll bar down and reads, turning the reading of a multi-page article as if read on a single page.

When in the Reader view, you can print the page in a printer-friendly format, email it or adjust the screen size or print.

Surely this addition will be a favorite feature for many Safari users and it really is a different feature from other browsers. However, scanning techniques may not work really well, sometimes not recognizing some articles. When this happens, the Reader option will disappear. Hopefully Apple will have better improvements on this issue over time.

Improve the performance

I myself am using Chrome as the default browser on Mac OS X, the stable and full-featured version was released a few months ago. One of Chrome's great advantages over Safari 4 is the performance of loading web pages and rendering JavaScript code.

With Safari 5, Apple has caught up with Chrome's performance issues, they have somewhat pulled lessons from Chrome and other browsers. Like Chrome, Safari currently has a DNS preloader to speed up loading web pages. Improvements in Safari's cache habits also speed up loading images and previously viewed websites.

In addition, Apple has upgraded its Nitro JavaScript engine to provide a high level of performance. According to Apple, this upgrade will allow Safari to execute JavaScript code up to 30% faster than Safari 4, and 3% compared to Chrome (Chrome uses Google's V8 engine).

All of these improvements show that Safari now offers comparable performance levels with Chrome on Mac OS X. Obviously, different sites and different system configurations will produce results. different for each browser, however, with browsing in general, we have seen Safari's overall performance as current as Firefox, not to mention dealing with heavy JavaScript pages is much faster. tell.

Tops Sites and History

Sure, you'll love Apple's Top Sites feature, which appeared when Safari 4 was released as a trial last year. Top Sites will perform the task of rendering frequently accessed and newly accessed websites on the 3D 'wall', along with a blue star for sites where the browser detects new content. This feature is easy to use and has many benefits.

Apple has upgraded Top Sites with an option to view standard Top Sites or to graphically log pages that have been accessed. (Previous History page was available but not shown clearly). The History view allows you to see the screenshots of previously visited sites and sites as well as search for words or phrases in these pages. That only allows to display pages that contain the searched string.

In Safari 5, Apple added dates to the displayed information about pages when dragging through the History view. This is a useful feature if you want to search for something you saw or read the previous day, last week, or the previous month, allowing you to keep a long record of what you have done before.

Safari now also supports pinning certain websites to display Top Sites by dragging the site URL from the address bar into the Top Sites display. It adds a set of previously available features such as the ability to exclude sites or pages from Top Sites and pin sites to a specific location in the display.

Address bar

Apple has refurbished the address bar in Safari in several ways. The first is to restore the progress bar displayed in green with the address bar when loading pages. The blue bar has been removed from Safari in version 4.

More importantly, Apple has expanded the matching feature of the address bar. In Safari 4, when you start typing a URL into the bar, Safari tries to provide a complete URL based on the sites in your bookmarks or history. However, that matching action is restricted only to certain parts of the URL. Mostly domain names or domain names plus the back part of the URL if they match exactly with what you're typing.

For example, when typing 'quantri' in the address bar, Safari 4 will automatically fill out http:/// www. quantrimang .com ; meanwhile, if you type 'bring' it will not automatically fill in the quantrimang.com URL for you.

In contrast, in Safari 5, it can search the entire URL regardless of where the word or phrase is located in the domain. This is a small adjustment that adds to an already useful feature.

another problem

Certainly, it will not be possible to say all the recent changes to Safari - at least if you compare what we present here with what Apple is promoting on their Safari site or in newspaper releases. lice. However, after working with Safari 5 for a while, we have selected some really impressive features for me and in my opinion it is the changes that will be made by the majority of web users. first mind.

In addition, we will mention three more interesting features for those who are deeply technical.

HTML5 - Apple introduced HTML5 technical standard with their browser from Safari 4 beta. Certainly in the recent dispute with Adobe about Flash, Apple will include their HTML5 as a video standard, working. Next generation photo and interactive web design.

Not surprisingly, Apple has incorporated a lot of HTML5 media features, including video, animation, and full screen media playback, into Safari 5. It also supports other HTML5 components such as geo-location. properties, attributes and categories can be drag and drop, support components for forrm processing, Ruby on Rails and AJAX. This can be called a big change, but HTML5 is still in development.

Safari's Bing - Preferences now supports setting up Bing as a default search engine instead of Google. (And the option to use Yahoo is still maintained.)

Security patches - Safari 5 currently patches 48 vulnerabilities in previous releases. For Macs using Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4.x), Apple patched these vulnerabilities in an upgrade to Safari 4.

Overall, Safari 5 is a revolutionary upgrade to Apple's browser sector. While it does not provide changes that stunned the whole world, these changes have proved that Apple will continue to be interested in HTML5. More importantly, with the battle of the browser increasingly fierce, Safari 5 has provided many improvements that long-term users will appreciate and bring it closer to other browsers such as IE8, Chrome and Firefox.