Safari 3.1 Zooms onto the Scene
The blazing speed of Safari's preview versions has caused eager anticipation for a public release to rise considerably over the past month. Finally unveiled by Apple last week, Safari 3.1 appears to live up to some of the hype. Touted by Apple as the fastest Web browser on any platform, 3.1 is the first version of Safari for the Windows platform that is not considered a beta. A corresponding version has also been released for Mac OS X.
In addition to the noticeably improved speeds, Safari 3.1 also brings with it a decent helping of new features and upgraded standards compliance such as HTML 5 element support. Perhaps the most important aspect of this major release involves its security updates. A total of 13 issues were addressed, some spanning across both the Windows and OS X platforms. A few of the Windows vulnerabilities that have been patched are particularly serious, including one that allowed cross-site scripting (XSS) and another which gave a malicious proxy server the ability to spoof seemingly secure Web sites.
It is highly recommended that current users of the browser, on both Windows and OS X, upgrade to 3.1 immediately due to the security ramifications. Those Windows users who did not want to install Safari while it was still a beta can now give it a go. Although you may not be in the market for a new browser, I recommend giving Safari a quick look anyway.
(Photo © manwolste - #779676/stockxpert)
Comments
I downloaded Safari when the apple upgrade ‘pop-up’ appeared and did not find it an intrusion. If they had not sent the offer, I may not have discovered an upgrade to my browsing experience! If I didn’t want it, I could have just ignored it, so I did not consider it an intrusion.
I have found Safari to load 3x-5x faster than IE7. I find the graphical layout of the browser to be cleaner and easier on my eyes. My only regret is that some sites must be viewed thru IE7, so I kept it on board, but hoorays to Apple! I love Safari!