Apple has released Safari 5, the latest version of their web browser. The new version features the new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web without distraction, a 30% 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, according to Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. With Safari 5, developers can now create secure Safari Extensions to customize and enhance the browsing experience, he adds..

Safari Reader makes it easy to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a new, scrollable view without any additional content or clutter, says Schiller. When Safari 5 detects an article, users can click on the Reader icon in the Smart Address Field to display the entire article for clear, uninterrupted reading with options to enlarge, print or send via email.

Powered by the Nitro JavaScript engine, Safari 5 on the Mac purportedly runs JavaScript 30% faster than Safari 4, 3% faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6, Apple says. Safari 5 loads new web pages faster using Domain Name System (DNS) prefetching, and improves the caching of previously viewed pages to return to them more quickly.

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.

The new, free Safari Developer Program allows developers to customize and enhance Safari 5 with extensions based on standard web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The Extension Builder, new in Safari 5, simplifies the development, installation and packaging of extensions. For enhanced security and stability, Safari Extensions are sandboxed, signed with a digital certificate from Apple and run solely in the browser.

Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/safari . Safari 5 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X 10.5.8 or Mac OS X 10.6.2 or later. Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista or Windows 7, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor. Full system requirements and more information on Safari 5 can be found at www.apple.com/safari . The Safari Developer Program is free to join at developer.apple.com/programs/safari .