Open Thread: What Do You Think of Safari 5?
While it wasn’t announced in Steve Jobs’ keynote at Apple’s WWDC event, Safari 5 was released for both Windows and Mac yesterday, and is a major update. It boasts improved support for HTML5, a new “Safari Reader” view that makes it easier to read articles online, better performance and (still to come) browser extensions.
I’ve been using it all morning and have to say that it feels impressively fast and slick in use. Quickly running it through WebKit’s SunSpider benchmarks shows that, at least on my machine, it has the best JavaScript performance of the currently available non-beta Mac browsers:
The chart shows SunSpider scores in milliseconds, where a lower score is better. As you can see, Safari 5 has a slight edge over both Opera 10.5 and Chrome 5.
While raw speed is important, especially as web apps become increasingly complex, it isn’t everything. Nearly all of the currently available browsers have pretty good performance (even Firefox, lagging behind the others, is no slouch) and support for web standards. Features and stability are just as important as speed. While Safari 5 feels stable, apart from the new Safari Reader view, there isn’t anything really groundbreaking in this update (which is perhaps why Jobs didn’t include it in his keynote).
Even though the new Safari feels very solid, fast and slick in use, it’s not stunning enough to tempt me away from my current browsers of choice: Chrome and Firefox. One of the reasons that I use those browsers is that the both have considerable extension ecosystems. Apple’s decision to include extension support in Safari is a smart one, but until developers start porting the most useful extensions to the browser, I’ll find it tough to switch.
If you’ve had a chance to try it out, what do you think about Safari 5? Share your comments below.
Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Report: The Real-Time Enterprise
Though Safari seems quicker overall, it’s interface is mostly unchanged. It doesn’t spawn a new process for every tab to take advantage of multi-core processors. I had expected a bit more in a major release update. Browsers (including safari) still have a long way to go. It’s time they bring some apple innovation into safari.
It launches quickly and loads pages quickly — seemingly quicker than the prior iteration of Safari. But, for me, the dealmaker is the Reader function — to be able to read a web page free of all of the clutter is a real treat.
I know that the advertisers are going to moan about this feature — kind of like the ability to skip commercials on TiVo or a DVR — but as a web user I really do appreciate it.
Thanks Safari team.
Initial launch was slow but now seems a bit faster than Safari 4. Quite a few extensions already and the one I’ve tried have been solid. Few (1) spinner so far. Not bad. Much cleaner than ‘Fox.
I think the real power will come when extension developers get going and create some really great extensions. Until then, Safari 5 is nice, but not much new.
I don’t care.
Firefox has:
1. a list of bookmarks in the left column. This is very to important to me.
2. Extensions such as:
AdBlock Plus
Web Developers Toolbar
Firebug
YSlow and PageSpeed
I just don’t see why Safari even exists as it is no better than Internet Explorer–from my perspective.
I would have had a good laugh to see how the old IE for Mac had done on the test…
I think your comment of “I don’t care” is actually the most honest description of the majority of the end user experience. Most people couldn’t tell the difference between a quarter second vs a half second without a placebo effect of being told item A is faster than item B by 250 ms.
I would use it IF when you open a new tab it always opens in your current window. With the Firefox extensions PermaTab and Faviconize I save tons & tons of time, so any performance boost that Safari 5 claims would be offset by all the Firefox conveniences (also Firebug, Download helper, etc etc) i use daily.
If I switch to anything it will be chrome.
I like it. It seems very fast. Maybe not as much as the dev build of Chrome that I run but it is much more stable.
One interesting thing I have found that does not work is Google Analytics. That is a bummer. I only check Analytics once a day but I have to do it from another browser.
I am in the same boat as many other with regards to extensions. I am still waiting for a way to extend Safari.