After unleashing
a beta version of its Safari 3 browser upon the Windows-using masses last
spring, Apple has finally taken
the browser out
of beta with the new 3.1 release. This new version introduces several
enhancements, including a snappier rendering engine, new developer tools,
support for HTML 5 audio and video tags, and support for CSS 3 animations
In addition,
TechReport tested how fast the new browser is compared to the competition.
They ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark on an older laptop with a 1.7GHz
Pentium M processor, 512MB of RAM, and Windows XP SP2. In that test, Safari 3.1
scored 5,861ms, narrowly outperforming the 6,329ms score reached by Firefox 3
beta 4. Apple's latest browser also handily outperformed both the older Safari
3.0.4 beta release, which scored 14,881ms, and the latest Firefox 2 release,
which only managed 30,671ms. Yeah, Safari 3.1 really seems to be incredibly
snappy and smooth. The only problem is that Safari does defy Windows convention,
and its Apple-style font antialiasing and lack of support for autoscroll
certainly aren't for everyone.