The IT Nerd

Apple just posted a press release [Link broken: See below] announcing the release of Safari 5 on their website:

Apple today released Safari 5, the latest version of the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser, featuring the new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web without distraction, a 30 percent performance increase over Safari 4, and the ability to choose Google, Yahoo! or Bing as the search service powering Safari’s search field. Available for both Mac® and Windows, Safari 5 includes improved developer tools and supports more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies that allow web developers to create rich, dynamic websites. With Safari 5, developers can now create secure Safari Extensions to customize and enhance the browsing experience.

Okay. So if it’s available today, why can’t I find it at apple.com/safari or through software update? Perhaps their PR group jumped the gun? It’s also interesting that there was no mention of it during the WWDC event earlier today. Another interesting thing, Bing is in this browser too as a search engine choice. Weird. But it should be available at some point today for Windows and Mac.

UPDATE: Download away! However I will note that the original press release that I linked to earlier has been pulled. That suggests to me that the press release went out early. Here’s the new press release.

I’m not sure if Apple has jumped the gun here, but Safari 4.0.1 has appeared in Software Update on my Mac. But I cannot find any mention of it anywhere on Apple’s site. Nor can Software Update on my PC find it. That to me says that either Apple is in the process of releasing it to their Software Update servers (and as a result haven’t updated their website), or they jumped the gun. Another possibility is that this is a Mac only update given what Software Update says about this update:

“This update addresses incompatibilities between Safari 4.0 and certain features in iPhoto 09 including Places and Facebook publishing.”

We’ll see which shortly. In the meantime, I’m installing it on my Mac right now.

I’ve started using Safari 4 on both my MacBook Pro and Windows XP PC at work, and I have to admit that for the most part, it’s a worthy replacement for Firefox on my computers. Here’s why:

• It’s generally faster than Firefox, and nothing (so far) has proven to be a problem. Although since installing it on my Windows XP machine, the machine does seem to “stall” from time to time. I’ll keep an eye on this to see if this is a problem long term. No such effects have been noted on my Mac.
• Memory usage is kind of on the high side. Two windows with a total of three tabs ate almost 265MB of RAM.  Firefox only took 52MB of RAM with the same number window and tabs with the same content on the screen. Talk about being a RAM hog.
• Javascript on Safari does seem to process WAY FASTER than Firefox.
• Some of the eye candy such as the “Top Sites” feature which gives you a graphical view of the sites that you tend to go to a lot are cool. But I’m sure that accounts for the memory usage that I’m seeing.

If you’ve tried the new Safari, please leave your feedback in the comments section. If you’ve seen this “stalling” problem that I’ve noticed, I’d really love to hear from you.

UPDATE: My “stalling” problem is apparently Safari related. It seems to occupy anywhere from 0% to 30% of the CPU. So it’s a CPU hog as well as a RAM hog. It’s related to Safari’s “Warn when visiting a fraudulent website” feature. I turned it off and my computer became “normal” again. A search of Apple’s discussion boards found this posting that points to a corrupt database. Specifically SafeBrowsing.db. However this is a Mac specific document, but a search of my computer found the file at C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari on my Windows XP computer. I will delete it, turn back on the “Warn when visiting a fraudulent website” feature and see if it improves things.

UPDATE #2: So far that seems to have solved my issue. I’ll continue to monitor the situation.

UPDATE #3: The “stalling” has returned. Unchecking the “Warn when visiting a fraudulent website” feature is how I am dealing with it at the moment until Apple kills this bug. No sign of a similar behavior on my Mac thus far.

This press release just hit the wires announcing the availability of Safari 4 as a BETA:

Apple® today announced the public beta of Safari® 4, the world’s fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac® and Windows PCs. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.* Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites, for a stunning visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow®, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

That’s all well and good, but we’ll let web surfers be the judge of how fast and innovative it is. I’ll be downloading a copy shortly and playing with it to see what the fuss is about. If you do the same, please leave a comment and let us know what you think of it.

It’s available for Windows and Macintosh platforms now at apple.com/safari.

If you use Safari on either the Mac or Windows platforms, then you need to pay attention to this. Brian Mastenbrook who has found a couple of Apple related vulnerabilities in the past, has tripped over another one:

I have discovered that Apple’s Safari browser is vulnerable to an attack that allows a malicious web site to read files on a user’s hard drive without user intervention. This can be used to gain access to sensitive information stored on the user’s computer, such as emails, passwords, or cookies that could be used to gain access to the user’s accounts on some web sites. The vulnerability has been acknowledged by Apple.

He won’t give specific details, but he does have a workaround for you:

Because this vulnerability could be exploited by a phishing site in a way that would not cause affected users to suspect their information had been stolen, users of Mac OS X Leopard should protect themselves until a fix is issued by Apple by choosing a default feed reader other than Safari, such as Mail. To select a different feed reader:

1. Open Safari and select Preferences… from the Safari menu.
2. Choose the RSS tab from the top of the Preferences window.
3. Click on the Default RSS reader pop-up and select an application other than Safari.

The only workaround available for users of Safari on Windows is to use a different web browser.

So take heed and protect yourself accordingly by either following his advice, or by using another browser.

Apple released a Safari update to the world last night with the only documented improvement being “Stability Improvements.” One would think those “Stability Improvements” have something to do with the stabiltiy issues that have plagued Safari 3.2 since its release.

I don’t use Safari myself, so I haven’t tested this release. If you notice anything better or worse in this release, please leave a comment.