Safari 5 goes out into the wild

Apple has released the newest version of its Internet browser, Safari 5, which claims to have a “30 percent performance increase over Safari 4.”

Other radical changes include the ability to actually choose another search engine – Google, Yahoo, or Bing – as the default embedded search provider.

However, the big addition is of course a more robust infrastructure for displaying HTML5 content – a lucky coincidence with the number “5” there…

“Safari 5 adds more than a dozen powerful HTML5 features that allow web developers to create media-rich experiences, including full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video. Other new HTML5 features in Safari 5 include HTML5 Geolocation, HTML5 sectioning elements, HTML5 draggable attribute, HTML5 forms validation, HTML5 Ruby, HTML5 AJAX History, EventSource and WebSocket,” said Apple in a statement.

Additionally, the new browser brings with it the launch of Safari Reader, a new platform designed to enhance the way users read media articles on the Internet. Safari 5 can detect when users are accessing an article, and offers them the ability to read it scrollable, uninterrupted view.

Safari 5 is available now for both Mac OS X computers as well as Windows PCs, at Apple.com/safari