Apple released a new, much improved version of its Safari browser that competes better against Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome and integrates more HTML5 features.
Although capturing actual browser-use statistics is an extremely challenging task, most data places Apple's Safari fourth or fifth in the ranks of popular browsers behind Firefox, Chrome, and the corporate favorite, Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE). In the past, the Safari browser has been a source of innovation (the <canvas> tag, for example), but generally suffered from being second best in nearly every category. In fact, there are some indications that even on the Apple's own platforms—Mac, iPhone, iPad—Safari is not generally the most popular browser.
But Safari 5 plays catch up in several significant ways, making it worth a look.
Safari 5 is Fast
According to Apple, Safari 5 running on a Mac is 3 percent faster than Chrome 4 and nearly twice as fast as Mozilla 3.6 at loading JavaScript, thanks to its improved Nitro JavaScript engine. In my anecdotal tests with the PC version of Safari 5, the browser performed about as well as Firefox or Chrome, which is a significant improvement from Safari 4.
Safari 5 also prefetches some DNS data and has improved caching capabilities, which again leads to better performance.
More HTML5
In my opinion, HTML5 is a developer's dream. It codifies things that we have been doing for years and brings us features that we've wished we had. So when any browser includes more support for HTML5, I cheer.
Apple Safari 5 deserves a lot of cheering, as it pushes much further toward HTML5 support, including geolocation, sectioning elements, draggable attributes, form validation, AJAX history, and advanced video and audio features like closed captioning and full screen playback.
Extensions
Safari 5 also creates new opportunities for browser extensions, like Firebug for Firefox, which dramatically improve the user experience for special use cases without weighting down the core. So it is great news that Apple is apparently placing more emphasis on these with Safari 5.
Use
From the user standpoint, Safari 5 reminds me a lot of the recently released demonstration version of IE9, since both have similar button placement and feel.
A New Browser War May Be Very Good for Developers
When Google launched Chrome, it started a new browser war of sorts. Safari 5 may be the latest salvo.
But unlike the browser wars between Netscape and IE or even Firefox and IE, this fight could be very good for the web development community. In particular, instead of browser makers fighting to maintain separate and proprietary approaches to web markup and usage, they seem to be working toward more standardization and compliance.
What's more, browser makers like Apple are updating browsers more quickly—Safari 4 was released only a year ago—and adding better support for new standards with each iteration. In theory, this may mean that web developers and designers can expect much better cross browser compatibility.
