Apple has released a new version of web browser Safari 5, which it claims to be 30% faster than its predecessor Safari 4.

Apple said that Safari 5, available for both Mac and Windows, features a new Safari Reader for reading articles on the web and offers the ability to choose Yahoo!, Google, or Bing as the search service powering Safari’s search field.

The Safari Reader allows users to read single and multipage articles on the web by presenting them in a scrollable view and provides options to enlarge, print or send via email.

The company claims that Safari 5 on the Mac, powered by Nitro JavaScript engine, runs JavaScript 30% faster than Safari 4, 3% faster than Chrome 5.0, and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6.

According to Apple, the new version comes with enhanced developer tools and supports more than a dozen new HTML5 technologies that allow web developers to create media-rich experiences, including full screen playback and closed captions for HTML5 video. Other new HTML5 features include Geolocation, draggable attribute, sectioning elements, Ruby, forms validation, EventSource, AJAX History and WebSocket.

Apple also introduced a free Safari Developer Program that allows developers to customise and enhance Safari 5 with extensions based on standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript. The Extension Builder, new in Safari 5, simplifies the development, installation and packaging of extensions.

Safari 5 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2 or later, while Safari 5 for Windows requires Windows XP SP2, Vista or Windows 7, a minimum 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500MHz Intel Pentium processor.

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