Expert’s Rating
Pros
Cons
As its competition tramp over their version numbers with each modest change , Safari 5.1 , which ship with Lion ( Mac OS X 10.7 ) but is alsoavailable for Snow Leopard ( adaptation 10.6.8 ) , plays it cool . That low denary climb , from 5.0 to 5.1 , embrace important changes to Apple ’s web internet browser that help it compete far more creditably than its predecessor . The modish edition also packs a few new surprisal .
Safari 5.1 owe its most visible changes to OS X Lion itself , which enable several features not usable to Snow Leopard users . The new motion - based controls Apple uses throughout the OS apply to Safari , too , including two - finger tap to zoom and swipes to navigate your internet browser history . Thanks to Lion ’s raw resume feature , Safari can remember its state when you quit and restore it when you reopen the web web browser .
In addition , Lion enable full - screen surfing , although this musical mode frustratingly hides the ready to hand Bookmarks Bar . If you keep all your favorite connectedness there , as I do , move your cursor all the way to the top of the sieve , then hold off a half - second or so for the menubar and Bookmarks Bar to appear , may get honest-to-goodness fast . In its favor , the full - screen Safari windowpane becomes its own workspace , so you could utilize Lion ’s three - digit - swipe motion to slide Safari off the side of the concealment and mold in other apps ; sneak back to re-start browsing . This is a great , easy way to conserve blind space when you have multiple programs open .
The XHTML results are in seconds; shorter times are better. The SunSpider JavaScript and CSS results are in milliseconds; shorter times are better. The Acid3 result is a score out of 100. The CSS3 Selectors result is a score out of 41. The HTML5 Compliance result is out of 321/ 13 bonus.
The new version infix Reading List , a silken way to save the universal resource locator of interesting pages for easy future recitation . Sure , you could do the same thing with bookmarks , and plenty of third - political party add - ons and World Wide Web servicing have long let you squirrel away protracted online articles . ( Services such as Instapaper and Read It subsequently even provide more power and functionality . ) But for anyone who simply require to set aside the periodic challenging piece for by and by , Reading List is loose to supply to , use , and manage .
Safari ’s Reader feature , which exhibit article in an easier - to - read formatting , sans advertizement and other muddle , has been significantly improved in Safari 5.1 . Whereas Reader in Safari 5 often failed to correctly display articles , especially those spanning multiple pages , Safari 5.1 ’s Reader work with every article I tested , even those that yield Safari 5 ’s version fits .
Reading List works with Reader modal value , but only just . When you insert Reader mode while perusing a Reading List detail , Safari is smart enough to stay in Reader when you switch to another Reading List detail . But in all other cases , Safari displays saved item as ordinary Web pages , irrespective of how you were viewing each when you added it , and even if you were looking at it in Reader mode the last time you used Reading List .
Since I usually download only one or two file cabinet at any given time , I like Safari 5.1 ’s new Downloads display . Previous version of Safari opened a separate window to track in - progress downloads ; this window either obscured your browsing or got lost in the background . Now , a small button with a miniature progression bar sits in the upper - right nook of Safari ’s windowpane , revealing a more - traditional lean of downloads , in an iOS - style pop - over , when clicked . you may even drop back finish downloads straight from this lean to the desktop , a Finder window , or another program . Those who often download multiple filing cabinet simultaneously will probably miss the older approach — in Safari 5.1 , you need to consider that bulge out - over presentation to tag the progress of each download , and doing anything else in Safari hides the list — but it seems to be an improvement on the whole .
In iOS , Apple seems to desire to manoeuvre user away from web apps and into consecrate program program — often Apple ’s own offer . Safari 5.1 smartly co - prefer that scheme : When you first access to a Gmail , AOL , or Yahoo account , Safari offers to transfer your e-mail , chaffer , and calendar setting to Mail , iChat , and iCal , respectively . I tested this feature with Yahoo Mail , and my Mail Inbox promptly exhibit all the junk e-mail I ’d mirthfully neglect in webmail .
Behind the scene , Safari 5.1 adds admirable concealment trade protection . Before autofilling information in web forms , the web web browser inquire your permission and even lets you specify whether to pull info from Address Book or Outlook . A new Privacy pane in Safari ’s Preferences also better illuminates the websites tracking you . Rather than displaying a tangle of filenames , Safari 5.1 lists domains and the types of file — cooky , caches , plug - Indiana , and the comparable — each has stored on your Mac . you may delete these item by domain or all at once .
Under Lion , Safari joins Google ’s Chrome browser app in “ sandboxing ” its operations to further secure the web browser app . harmonize to Apple , Safari walls off each individual online fundamental interaction it gain , forestall any site ’s malicious code from overwork any other site you ’re browsing , or from spreading to your Mac . In both Lion and Snow Leopard , Safari 5.1 also separates what it ’s doing online from the processes in reality that execute the browser app . In theory , even if one or more situation load slowly , or include content that would in the past impart Safari to a Australian crawl , Safari 5.1 will still open computer menu and novel tabs responsively . In my examination , Safari 5.1 did slow down when digesting resource - heavy land site , but it never completely lock up .
Under the hood , Safari 5.1 for Lion adds hardware quickening for HTML5 Canvas , which enable animations , biz , and other online apps . Though a few of the Canvas demos I try out would n’t figure out , most ran swiftly and smoothly . WebGL 3 - five hundred demos and game also worked well ; inexplicably , this capacity is turned off by default , with the setting buried in the hidden Develop menu . ( you may enable this menu on the Advanced silver screen of Safari ’s preferences windowpane . )
My Safari test found a few uncanny bug . One peculiarly long clause , viewed in Reader , initially choke Safari hard enough to crash the browser app ; it work all right on the 2d try . And Safari can misidentify a two - fingerbreadth horizontal swipe — meant to go forward or back in the current tab ’s account — for an attempt to scroll horizontally ; on sites with blank space on each size , this can go forth page hanging half - off the sharpness of the web web browser window . In general , though , version 5.1 felt much faster and more up to than Safari 5.0 , and at least on par with Firefox 5 .
Benchmarks: Safari 5.1
- With WebGL enabled ; without it , Safari 5.1 scored 293/11 fillip .
The XHTML results are in second gear ; inadequate times are better . The SunSpider JavaScript and CSS results are in msec ; forgetful times are well . The Acid3 result is a score out of 100 . The CSS3 Selectors result is a account out of 41 . The HTML5 Compliance resultant role is out of 321/ 13 incentive .
I perform my standard browser app benchmarks on Safari 5.1 using a 2GHz atomic number 13 - unibody MacBook with 2 GB of remembering . base on these trial run , version 5.1 assert Safari ’s traditional lead in render pages and improves notably in HTML5 support ; however , it fall behind rivals in JavaScript public presentation .
Safari 5.1 render XHTML virtually 30 percentage faster than Chrome 12 , three time firm than Firefox 5 , and four times faster than Opera 11.5 . In CSS rendering , Safari 5.1 was a little slow than Safari 5.0.5 and just scantily faster than Chrome , but it soundly clobber Opera and Firefox .
Safari 5.1 ranked secondly in HTML5 compatibility , at 307 points ( and 11 bonus points ) out of 450 . That ’s 50 points better than Safari 5 , but still 20 points behind Chrome . In the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark , Safari 5.1 finished last , 80 milliseconds slower than victor Firefox — although just 21 milliseconds slower than the cheeseparing competition .
take note that this score may vary depending on your machine . In a separate examination on a 2.66GHz MacBook Pro with a Core i7 mainframe , 4 GB of retentiveness , and Snow Leopard put in , Safari 5.1 ’s SunSpider scotch ( 239.7 milliseconds ) ticktock Chrome 12 ’s ( 401.6 millisecond ) by more than 40 percentage .
In my examination under Snow Leopard , Safari 5.1 post performance similar to what it registered on Lion : XHTML rendering scores were closely selfsame between Safari 5.0.5 and 5.1 ; caesium benchmarks ran slimly slower on the newer version , but Safari 5.1 ’s SunSpider mark was roughly 7 percent faster than its predecessor ’s . In general use , Safari 5.1 on Snow Leopard feel modestly dapper and more responsive than version 5.0.5 , especially on dynamical sites using JavaScript and jQuery .
Macworld’s buying advice
Safari 5.1 gives Apple ’s browser app enough HP to hold its own against rivals in Clarence Shepard Day Jr. - to - mean solar day browse . More importantly , its newfangled feature rightfully distinguish it from the face pack , take a shit Safari 5.1 a great pace up from its herald .
