Safari 3.1 Is New and Improved. No, Really!

It's been a while since something as commonplace as a browser has piqued my interest. I tend to regard browsers as tools that should be more or less invisible and just let me do my work.

So, what's noteworthy about Safari 3.1? Apple made some improvements, including increased speed and better handling of JavaScript, and added new features, including CSS animation and CSS web fonts. Web designers are now free to select and embed their favorite fonts into web sites, and Safari 3.1 will render them correctly. This feature alone will make Safari 3.1 a big hit with web designers. Also new is support for HTML 5's video and audio tags, which allow better integration of audio and video into a web site.

The improvements make some very basic capabilities much easier to use. Bookmarks are now easier to organize, with an interface borrowed from iTunes. And why not? Organizing bookmarks is similar to organizing music, so a common look and feel makes perfect sense. The Find command, which lets you locate specific text on a web page, has also been given a facelift. Instead of a separate window, a small toolbar now appears at the top of the page. Enter the text of your choice and Safari will find every reference to it on the displayed page.

Safari 3.1 is the first browser to be an RIA (Rich Internet Application) platform that will run web applications and render web sites quickly and accurately. The update should be available soon through Software Update; you can also download it from Apple's web site.

What's your favorite browser or browser feature?