Stepping up the newly revived browser wars, Apple on Monday released the newest version of its Safari browser for Windows PCs as well as Macs. Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, said the free Safari 4, which was made available as a beta version in February, offers “blazing-fast speed, innovative features, and support for modern Web standards.”
‘Advanced Browser Technologies’
Apple emphasized that the newest Safari uses “advanced browser technologies,” including a new Nitro JavaScript engine that processes JavaScript almost eight times as fast as Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.
The browser is built on the open-source WebKit browser engine, and includes support for HTML 5 and advanced CSS effects. Apple, which is touting Safari 4’s support for Web standards, said the browser is the first to pass the Web Standards Project’s Acid3 test. That test is used to determine compatibility for CSS, JavaScript, XML and SVG standards.
New features include Top Sites, which provides a visual preview of Web pages that are chosen as favorites or are frequently viewed, and Full History Search, for searching through titles, URLs and text of pages in the browser’s history.
Cover Flow, which Apple has popularized on its computers and mobile devices, allows the user to flip through recent pages, and Smart Address Fields automatically complete Web addresses from a suggested list.
Search Fields is a feature that offers recommendations from Google Suggest or from recent searches and, with full-page zoom, a user can take a closer look at any site without lowering quality.
Apple also said that when Mac OS X Snow Leopard is available later this year, the new browser will run as a 64-bit application, which will boost the Nitro engine’s performance by as much as 50 percent.
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Al Hilwa, program director at industry…