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PR: Apple releases Safari 5 (Since It Has Been Wiped From PRNewswire) (boygeniusreport.com)
59 points by jsm386 on June 7, 2010 | hide | past | favorite | 57 comments



The PR is now on their website: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/06/07safari.html

The Safari page is not yet updated (– edit: now is) but Safari 5 shows up when you check for updates. I’m downloading it now.

– edit: And finished. A quick rundown:

There are no (big) UI changes, Top Sites was visually updated and you can quickly switch to your history: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/topsites.png

The Reader button (where the RSS button would normally be) seems to only be displayed when Safari recognizes a article (until now it recognized everything I threw at it – blog articles, magazines, newspapers). It then overlays the article pretty nicely over the page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/reader.png

One really cool thing about Reader is that it recognizes multi-page articles. I tried a New York Times and a Ars Technica article. It doesn’t immediately load everything but rather as you are scrolling.

Bad news, by the way, for all who hoped that Reader would get rid of (all) ads, it still displayed one of those small ads placed in the body of the article: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/ads.png

The adress bar now sort of works like the one Firefox has (I typed in “aja”): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/adress.png

You can now make everything open in a new tab, that was previously only a hidden preference (sorry, German): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4073000/tabs.png

The developer tools seem to be much improved. And they look a bit Chromy (fixed width font and all ;).

Ahhhhh! I must have been completely blind! The old “fills-up-the-adress-bar” progress bar is back! I thought something was odd :)


Weird - it's not showing up for me when I'm checking for updates.


This one line stuck out:

For enhanced security and stability, Safari Extensions are sandboxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.


Yep, now we get to have the App Store censorship discussion all over again.

I wonder if ad blocking will be allowed.

Edit: After reading the Safari 5 site, it's not clear that Apple will be exercising any control over extensions.


I don’t think we should. Browsers are probably the single most competitive piece of software out there. Microsoft, Google, Apple, Mozilla – there is no reason to fret or even care about what Safari does.

Webkit is different but this doesn’t seem to be about Webkit.


I'm in the audience. They're demoing the AdBlock port now and it looks really good.


Oh boy, no apple in browser extensions/apps.

Technically, sandboxing is inspired from chrome. And even packaging sounds lot similar to chrome.

http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/packaging.html

Now how apple distributes those 'digital certificates' is important.


It looks like there's no Apple approval process or anything like that, thankfully: http://developer.apple.com/programs/safari/


Still may be one though right? It's not like they would brag about it. There's no 'approval' type words on the iPhone page: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/index.action


At least here, there's the alternative of using existing ad-blockers for Safari, which are typically SIMBL plugins or otherwise sidestep the official plugin channels.


Safari Reader is like Readibility but then without Readability:

"Safari Reader makes it easy to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a new, scrollable view without any additional content or clutter. When Safari 5 detects an article, users can click on the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field to display the entire article for clear, uninterrupted reading with options to enlarge, print or send via email."


Interesting move here. Apple is essentially providing a baked-in capability to "skip" ads within Safari on the desktop while simultaneously preparing to launch their own Mobile ad service.


They include an acknowledgment to Arc90 and Readability on their acknowledgements page.

file:///Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Acknowledgments.html


Can you post it or pastebin for those who don't have it? Thanks!


  Acknowledgments
  Portions of this Apple Software may utilize the following copyrighted material, the use of which is hereby acknowledged.
Then after several other acknowledgements:

  Arc90 ( Readability )
  Copyright © Arc90 Inc.  Readability is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.  
Followed by a full copy of the Apache License, V2


It reads:

  Arc90 ( Readability )
  Copyright © Arc90 Inc.  Readability is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.
Followed by the Apache 2 license.


I really like that it works with articles spread over multiple pages. Tried it on NYTimes and Ars Technica.


I tried it with some AnandTech/TomsHardware pages, and it worked on their 10+ page articles as well. Makes reading those type of sites a lot less irritating.

I'd love to see this feature in Chrome/Firefox/etc, so sites would stop splitting content into bite size chunks to up pageviews.


They seem to get their page views either way, so that regrettably won’t stop them.


Reader is a really nice feature. I like the way it's implemented. Bonus points for the fact you can add the nicely formatted readable version to Evernote as a PDF.


I very much like the idea but don't like at all how it is implemented. I would like to have it as a simple HTML page. I.e. where I can resize the browser window to whatever width and I never get horizontal scrollbars. And that there is no extra right/left border.

Maybe let's call this thing 'strip-everything-away-except-the-text'.

And I want it in Chrome, not in Safari. :)

Hm, now where I am thinking of it, it actually should be possible to just implement such a Chrome extension.


After using it a bit I want two things: 1) Integration with iBooks 2) Full screen.


The safari page is updated (http://apple.com/safari) right now, but the title doesnt look right (in safari 4): http://snaps.shrt.nl/saf5.png


Same in Chrome.

Edit: Seems fixed now. Also in Safari 5.


And in Safari 5...



Now it’s fine, it wasn’t a few minutes ago.


Little tidbit I picked out of the development guide: Safari will automatically update extensions by checking a publicly-accessible plist file:

http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Tool...

I think Chrome does this as well (I don't use it). Could this be related to their choice to require extensions to be signed? I'd think that anytime code is being automatically downloaded and installed, security would be a concern.


Chrome does this, almost all extensions use it.




Accidentially close a tab, press cmd z.


Oh, hey, that makes way more sense than Cmd+Shift+T.


If you don't undo it immediately and do other stuff between e.g. writing in a text box you have to undo all that typing before restoring your tab.

Adding window management features to the undo sounds plain stupid.


What's worse is that closing a tab is undone with Cmd-Z, but closing a window is undone with History -> Reopen Last Closed Window.


I believe Opera does this too. And Ctrl+Shift+T.


So does IE: Ctrl + Shift + T


Nice catch! In terms of day-to-day usage, that's probably one of the biggest new features for me.


From the Safari page:- "Safari Reader removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles."

AFAIK, in other browsers, extensions are required to block ads. Safari is the first major browser to have adblocking as a prominent built-in feature. I wonder if other browsers will follow and what impact will that have on Google's bottom line if adblocking becomes mainstream.


> I wonder if other browsers will follow and what impact will that have on Google's bottom line if adblocking becomes mainstream.

I wonder what impact will it have for site owners... that "distracting" content is what pays the bills of many people.


It looks like Safari fully loads each page to make the Reader version so I'd guess they at least get the ad impressions counted.


If the ads aren't being read then clickthrough and conversion rates will go down, and then advertisers will pay less. The likely impact on revenue for sites with advertising will be pretty much the same, I expect; just a bit slower to take effect.


opera has done everything before every browser...


And wrapped in a UI that's confusing. Adding features clumsily makes you first and that's about it.


Have they added Undo Close Tab?


They have.


The blue progress bar is back :D


I recall reading somewhere that they were adding WebSocket support to Safari 5. ANy word on this?


Type this in the address bar:

  javascript:alert('WebSocket' in window)


Is that a yes or no? (I don't have safari 5)


It is a "true".


one thing to note, safari5 for some reason won't work w/netflix streaming (their site asks for safari 3 + ) go figure.


Safari Reader ♥


Pretty ironic that their announcement about HTML5 on the download page is broken on most browsers:

http://www.apple.com/safari

screenshot: http://grab.by/4O3f


Don't see this anymore. Some temporary glitch while updating the page?


Does it use multipe processes/threads like Chrome? Because, if not, Safari stinks.





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