*Safari* is Apple's iconic super fast and elegant *web browser* for Mac.
Version 5 sees some exciting introductions such as a new *Reader* icon for
easier reading in one page, faster page load times and vastly improved HTML5
support. All of the previous features in Safari, such as tabs on top for
easier page management and *Cover Flow* to flip through your bookmarked sites
iTunes style have been retained too. If you're new to Safari, the first thing
you'll notice is how clean it feels compared to many other browsers. There
are no annoying toolbars or plugins installed and the result of this is that
Safari looks trim and loads pages very quickly. The other benefit is that
maximum space is given to the contents of your page rather than a chunky
browser. In the previous version of Safari, Apple introduced *Top Sites*
which is one of the most impressive aspects of Safari. It shows a panoramic
thumbnail view of your most visited sites in one screen. Just click on the
window you want to visit that site. This certainly looks cool, although its
day-to-day usefulness is questionable. It is a good way of tracking which
sites you visit most frequently though and you can lock your favorite sites
to one single position so that you'll always know where it is when you open
Safari. Sites with a star in the corner denote those with new content.
Meanwhile *Cover Flow* lets you browse through your bookmarks presenting full
page views of the sites as they looked the last time you browsed them. The
principle is based on flipping through albums in iTunes. Again, this looks
cool although usually, I don't really care what the site looked like the last
time I visited it - I just want to get there as quickly as possible. What I
do like is the History Search - just type a word and Safari throws up every
single page it has cached with that word on - very useful when you can't
remember where the hell you saw the name of that person or game. Other handy
features in Safari include *Tabs on Top* which makes it a little easier to
access and open your tabs at the very top of Safari. You can even drag and
drop tabs into another Safari window. Speed has always been of the essence in
Safari and Apple have stepped up the pace with an enhanced *Nitro engine*
which it claims executes Javascript 25% faster than the last version. It's
certainly damn quick and I'm mighty impressed at how fast it's loading my
favorite sites such as YouTube and the BBC (and Softonic of course!). In this
latest version of Safari, the most notable feature is the new *Reader* which
allows you to view all of your content on one page although there is no way
to change the font. There's also a new Bing search option for Safari's search
field, in addition to Google and Yahoo! *HTML5 support has been improved*
meaning you can now view HTML5 video in full screen plus HTML5 Geolocation
features are now available to Safari users. Navigating in Safari has also
been made much easier due to a *more predictive URL bar* which actually
searches cached webpages for keywords and archiving of exactly when you
viewed certain pages is more precise and refined. In addition to these
changes, all the standard features in Safari remain. By clicking on the RSS
tag in the URL bar, you can get a view of all the posts in a feed, which you
can present chronologically and get a detailed or a title view. There will be
inevitably some programs and plugins - such as 1Password - that don't work
with this new version of Safari but these issues will quickly be ironed out
by the developers of respective software. *I love the look and speed of
Safari but the lack of plugins available compared to Firefox and general
instability issues mean that it's still going to be a while before Apple can
lure me over to their browser.*Download *Safari 5.1.1* in Softonic
