Apple launches Safari 5 with dedicated article reader

Whilst most of the limelight shone on the launch of iPhone4 yesterday, Apple also snuck out the latest version of Safari 5 web browser for Mac and Windows at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco.

There are a number of new features on this release designed to aid smoother and faster web browsing. Most significant is the introduction of a Readability feature which allows you to view articles on a web page without the clutter additional content.

Once Safari 5 detects an article users are able to click on the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field to view the entire article with options to enlarge, print or send via email.

Apple is promising a 30 per cent performance increase over Safari 4 with the ability to choose Google, Yahoo! or Bing as the search engine powering the search field. It's also claiming that Safari 5 is three per cent faster than Chrome 5.0 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6.

For the code enthusiasts out there Safari 5 also includes a number of new HTM5-related features including full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video, CSS3 and JavaScript. For added security and stability, Safari Extensions are sandboxes, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the brewer.

Safari 5 is free to download at www.apple.com/uk/safari and is available for both Mac OS X and Windows. Full system requirements and more information on the browser can be found through the Apple website.