CrystalXP.net

Took me a while to realise I was at apple.com/fr instead of /uk!



Downloading now, I shall edit/post when I've used it for a bit



EDIT: So Safari 5... (Windows Vista Home Premium )



Well, after loading it up the first thing I did was hit the little cog and choose 'Reset Safari' which, well... completely reset Safari! All cookies, history, bookmarks, top sites and so forth were wiped out, but I could have chosen what to keep. So then starting fresh I loaded the homepage (by default apple start page) and then opened a link in new tab, by using the middle button on my mouse. BOOM Safari crashed.



OK, let's try that one again. Reload Safari... open start page... click link... phew! Then I went about finding all my favourite websites from Chrome and bookmarking them in Safari, adding them to the top sites page and removing all the useless (and mostly American orientated) rubbish Apple gave me as standard. I did however keep the news bookmark folder and went to Google News. I looked at an article about a grandmother who's house caught fire and she forgot her grandson was in, a terrible story but everyone was fine. Anywho, when the page finished loading, I noticed a little purple button next to the refresh button in the address bar, that said 'reader'. Heck let's click that. Wow, reader is really nice! All advertisements, gone. Article in full glory with the original web page dimmed out in the background. Happily I read through my article, including the relevant photos, without advertisement clutter. Nice one Apple



And I've literally just noticed the fact I can resize text box elements



I the joined up to the Safari Extension Developer program and looked through the demos they have on there. Wow, they do some amazing stuff. Trust me, you'll want to see these. Transforming videos on the fly, 360 degree views using clever css and java, image manipulation and export on the go (greyscale, invert colours, define edges... export as png, jpeg, gif...) and as for the text manipulation... God love web standards.



Performance? Well for the average user you won't see much difference between Safari and Chrome, Firefox it is noticeable, at least on my system, as is Opera but less so. (Yes, I refuse to mention IE8, get over it) but I haven't had much of a chance to try any heavy loading sites and java, so there may be a more noticeable difference. Judging by Apple's own performance benchmarks... it's looking pretty nifty. Notice Apple ignored IE8 too.



Bing search... well, nice for those of us who use Bing and have avoided the mighty internet giant that is Google. I haven't however. I used Bing a few times in the past and only once has it proved useful, and that was on search page 3 moments before giving up. I guess Apple are going for kudos off Microsoft? But no, most likely there is an appreciable share of market search going on with Bing, and Apple want to make sure people don't forego Safari for IE8. Which makes sense, I mean, have you used IE8? Ok, ok, I'm being cruel, I'm sorry.



So, that's the main new features Apple want to point out to users, and as Enigmatux mentioned there's sandboxing for tabs (and for extensions), so that's where I'll leave it. I've set Safari 5 as my default browser, and we shall see how long it lasts this time. Hopefully it will be a long and fruitful relationship. I strongly recommend you download the new version and see how you go, maybe try it for a while like I am - we can all have difficulty readjusting.



EDIT2: And while I'm living with Safari, I'm going to reset and start using Google again. I've gone heavily organised with my iPod Touch, it's become a sort of digital organiser, so using and syncing with Google, as it's web based, would be great. I would prefer Desktop programs but I can't carry them around on the web, unlike Google. And I'm returning to YouTube, there are some good channels. Might start my own...



Anywho, back to the revision, this was a nice hour break



EDIT3: And it ain't great at opening more than 3 or 4 web pages at a time, but that might just be the combination of Windows and my dying laptop's hardware.

I was expecting quiet much from Safari. I switched to Chrome on my MacBook a few weeks ago. Tested Safari - but really crashed a few times on me. Perhaps it doesn't like me running the latest dev version of WebKit?



Nice detailed post here Ghost!

Thanks for the nice review Ghost, will have to check it out sometime soon

Thanks guys, glad you like my review Not bad for being rushed

Nice briefing there Ghost

Using chrome at the moment & much addicted to it also , Will give Safari a try later on