Safari 5.0 - Your verdict?

[rajputwarrior]

Chrome is still killing Safari, Firefox and surprisingly Opera :/

that's why im sticking with chromium. tried the new safari, while it's a bit faster and the reader feature is cool but still couldn't take me away from chrome (sync between all computers via google account FTW! and chrome remembering every site you go to search string via the address bar is one of the best features i've ever seen in a browser). Chromium is too fast (and the most html 5 compliant browser)

[rajputwarrior]

If everything was about speed, we would all be driving Ferrari-like cars, but with only two seats. That is Chrome: fast but with a lack of a lot of useful features.

you know chrome has extensions right?

you are absolutely correct, the thing i need most from a browser is security and functionality that's why i use Firefox instead of chrome or safari, i would of course switch if i could get all of the plug-ins and features i use on Firefox over to chrome or safari ,like ad-block plus, stylish, Tineye and more.

you know chrome is the most secure browser right (Major browsers fall on day one of Pwn2Own, Chrome survives)? Of course firefox is still kicking everyones but in terms of extensions but that gap is closing.

[.Neo]

It's slow when compared to Chrome 6. I've uninstalled it already.

From what I can tell it really isn't, at least not enough to qualify Safari as "slow" in comparison with Chrome. Difference is that Chrome starts showing internet content right away while Safari waits until enough is loaded. In the end they both pretty much finish at the same time. At least over here.

you know chrome is the most secure browser right (Major browsers fall on day one of Pwn2Own, Chrome survives)?

Won't WebKit 2 bring the same security?

[IphoneMini]

I agree with you there... although I still have to test Safari 5 on Windows - perhaps it improved, who knows :)

btw. when hitting the reply button, Safari crashed here on 10.6.3. First. Time. Ever. ;)

i believe no matter how good it's a browser perform,crashing is always inevitable like it used to be (especially flash)

[PyX]

Installed it for about 5 mins. It doesnt block ads on every site, and it still doesnt save passwords. Verdict: I removed it. I had to delete the files in programdata/apple/installer cache first. Otherwise, it wouldnt install

Of course, a stock browser simply can't block ads. Especially if it's from Apple or Microsoft lol

And yes it saves passwords.

My verdict : pretty much the same as the op. It's Safari 4.1 in my head, I was hoping for a little more. The reader function is really really nice, but it doesn't seem to work all the time here. I usually see an RSS button and sometimes a Reader button when I reload. Pretty random :-\ The extensions = really awesome because I know a lot of people didn't switch because it didn't support them.

The best feature of Safari by the way is clearly the inspector. You're a web developer? Go for Safari, clearly. The tools that are provided in the Developers menu are just impressive. I think they included the new inspector in Safari 5, but Safari 4 already had an awesome one. This one's been fine tuned a lot though.

Oh by the way, all of those who say Safari is slow, just go download Webkit instead. www.webkit.org

It’s a drag and drop installation on the Mac, must be a little harder on Windows to run it.

[rawr_boy81]

Of course, a stock browser simply can't block ads. Especially if it's from Apple or Microsoft lol

And yes it saves passwords.

My verdict : pretty much the same as the op. It's Safari 4.1 in my head, I was hoping for a little more. The reader function is really really nice, but it doesn't seem to work all the time here. I usually see an RSS button and sometimes a Reader button when I reload. Pretty random :-\ The extensions = really awesome because I know a lot of people didn't switch because it didn't support them.

The best feature of Safari by the way is clearly the inspector. You're a web developer? Go for Safari, clearly. The tools that are provided in the Developers menu are just impressive. I think they included the new inspector in Safari 5, but Safari 4 already had an awesome one. This one's been fine tuned a lot though.

Oh by the way, all of those who say Safari is slow, just go download Webkit instead. www.webkit.org

It?s a drag and drop installation on the Mac, must be a little harder on Windows to run it.

I wouldn't be surprised that by the time 10.6.4 is released that there will be a 5.0.1 in the download queue as well. Bugs are to be expected but I haven't come across any so far, then again I tend to wipe out my user settings directory so that it loads clean without any baggage from the last version. I've run Webkit in the past but found it very, very buggy to the point that I was not able to use GMail - every time I would switch tabs and then come back the whole page was blank.

I hope that Webkit2 is coming along; I understand that'll be more heavy in terms of memory and CPU utilisation but if the benefit comes with a more robust browsing experience then I think it is a price worth paying.

[Elliott]

The best feature of Safari by the way is clearly the inspector. You're a web developer? Go for Safari, clearly. The tools that are provided in the Developers menu are just impressive. I think they included the new inspector in Safari 5, but Safari 4 already had an awesome one. This one's been fine tuned a lot though.

Chrome has the Inspector as well. It's a WebKit feature, not a Safari feature. The Developer menu is all Safari, though.

Still, as a web developer, I prefer Safari. It just seems to do a "cleaner" job than Chrome at rendering.

[MS Bob 11]

If Apple can get hardware acceleration working on Windows XP, Microsoft's vested interest to push Windows 7 is showing.

[rawr_boy81]

If Apple can get hardware acceleration working on Windows XP, Microsoft's vested interest to push Windows 7 is showing.

Apple just used DirectX 9.0 where as Microsoft are using Direct2D/DirectWrite which are based on top of DirectX 10.0.

Btw, Windows XP is dead, suck up your bottom lip and get on with life.

[Scorbing]

My first impressions:

• It's snappier than Safari 4.
  
• Safari Reader works quite well. Not sure how webmasters will react to its ability to stitch multipage articles together though.
  
• Apple should have released a beta to developers early to have some extensions to show off.
  
• IMHO we can think Google for the jump in the major version number. If it weren't for Chrome 5 this would be Safari 4.1.
  
• Yay, the blue loading progress bar is back
  
• Hallelujah - Safari 5 fixes the loading of animated .gif files. No more waiting for the file to download before the animation starts.
  

Overall it's a welcome and long-overdue update. We'll have to wait and see what kind of extensions will be available in the near future. The UI remained mostly unchanged, which makes sense - the UI of Safari 4 worked well enough for me. Some will complain about the lack of tabs on top; I don't see those coming back after the failed experiment with them during the beta of Safari 4.

Peacekeeper benchmark comparison of the browsers I have installed:

How happy are you with Safari 5? Discuss.

I am very impressed with it. Not bad at all. I find it as speedy as Chrome.

[Marius F]

i always see safari 5 compared to chrome 6. safari 5 is a stable version and should be compared to chrome 5. it's like comparing safari 5 with chrome 4

if you want a comparison with chrome 6 dev you should compare it with the nightly build of webkit...

am i right or what?

[david13lt]

It really feels much more better comparing to 4 version. The "Reader" function looks nice, I think I might be using it quite a lot in future. What I don't like that Apple did not release information how Safari 5 manages to find the articles and show them in "Reader". It doesn't work 100% well, but it's very good and impressive. Some websites gonna hate it (especially news portals), because those adds gives money and "Reader" feature removes them from article.

I still sometimes get Safari to hang from time to time then webpage is loading. I would like Apple to use WebKit 2, which is fully asynchronous.

[MS Bob 11]

Btw, Windows XP is dead, suck up your bottom lip and get on with life.

Yeah at 63% market share, it's dead. Really. It has been artificially obsoleted.

[Luis Mazza]

Yeah at 63% market share, it's dead. Really. It has been artificially obsoleted.

I can't understand the odds of being in love with a ten year old OS when there's plenty of other newer options that are more stable, secure and even more beautiful to use. Unless your're an IT administrator for a company that uses XP in large scale. Otherwise this looks a bit dumb.

[Xtreme $niper]

I finally upgraded to Safari 5 and I found that sites like thestar.com are sluggish to scroll through while on Safari 4 (and every other browser on OS X) it scrolls perfectly smooth.

Can anyone else confirm this?

[Elliott]

I finally upgraded to Safari 5 and I found that sites like thestar.com are sluggish to scroll through while on Safari 4 (and every other browser on OS X) it scrolls perfectly smooth.

Can anyone else confirm this?

The site you linked (and all others that I've visited) scroll just fine here on my 13" MacBook Pro.

Have you upgraded to Flash Player 10.1?

[Mr. Gibs]

Yeah at 63% market share, it's dead. Really. It has been artificially obsoleted.

It's at 56% now, it was 65% in Jan 2010. Plus there's no real benefit to using XP.

[Xtreme $niper]

The site you linked (and all others that I've visited) scroll just fine here on my 13" MacBook Pro.

Have you upgraded to Flash Player 10.1?

Yup, everything fully updated. Which year is your Macbook Pro? Mine has that new inertia scrolling... might have something to do with it. But again, it only got sluggish after the update.. Good thing Safari isn't my main browser these days.

[rajputwarrior]

It's at 56% now, it was 65% in Jan 2010. Plus there's no real benefit to using XP.

yeah there is, games run faster (well for me anyways), most of my apps that I personally use work perfect in XP (not soo much in vista/7) and my x-fi card works better in XP. And i love the classic gui more then the new aero one.

/off topic

[Kpssst]

yeah there is, games run faster (well for me anyways), most of my apps that I personally use work perfect in XP (not soo much in vista/7) and my x-fi card works better in XP. And i love the classic gui more then the new aero one.

/off topic

I would say that drivers are the problem then. You can always switch to the classic theme in Vista or 7. There are advantages to Aero (hardware acceleration being one) anyway.

On topic, with the right extensions, I could see myself using Safari more. Now, just waiting on flash block and smooth scrolling add ons.

[firedavid]

why use sfari when there's chrome/firefox. i dont get it :shifty:

[Quillz]

why use sfari when there's chrome/firefox. i dont get it :shifty:

"Because it's there." --Edmund Hillary

[e-berlin.org]

I like it so much and speeds are awesome, but I can't fix the choppy scrolling (up/down) in web pages. Does anyone have an idea how to smoothen it a bit?

[Chasethebase Reporter]

why use sfari when there's chrome/firefox. i dont get it :shifty:

Because it's 500% better on Mac OS than on Windows. For some stupid reason, probably because Apple don't want to make their apps good on competing OS's.

[.Neo]

why use sfari when there's chrome/firefox. i dont get it :shifty:

Safari is the only browser out there that has a native interface that makes full use of the many services Mac OS X offers. That includes Dashboard, out-of-the-box PDF support, OS' default spell and grammar check and dictionary without the need for third-party solutions like extensions. Next to that Safari always seems faster and less bulky on Mac OS X than Firefox does. Chrome is very fast, but lacks a refined interface with good features (CoverFlow, visual History search, Reader etc.) on Mac OS X (in my opinion anyway). If you're a sucker for a minimal UI Safari can provide you with that as well. I also don't like resorting to third-party extensions to get PDF and RSS support, something Mac OS X already offers by default. Applications should just make use of that. The actual noticeable speed differences between Safari 5 and Chrome 5 on my Mac are pretty much negligible, however Chrome 5 is a tad faster.

So to make a long story short: Both Firefox and Chrome integrate extremely poorly with Mac OS X. For me the minimal speed advantage Chrome 5 has over Safari 5 isn't enough to make up for its other shortcomings.

I realize that on Windows this plays a lesser role. I'd probably use Chrome 5 on that platform over Safari.

For some stupid reason, probably because Apple don't want to make their apps good on competing OS's.

Microsoft isn't doing the exact same thing with their applications (Office, Messenger and previously Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player) on Mac OS X?