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Apple announces Safari 4, QuickTime 10

by Seth Rosenblatt

and Stephen Shankland

 

 

Correction: QuickTime 10 is likely to be released with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard in the fall, and won't be updated Monday.

 

At WWDC Monday morning, Apple's Bertrand Serlet came out with guns blazing, not just in support of Snow Leopard, but of Safari and QuickTime, too. Announcing that Safari 4 would leave beta later Monday and that QuickTime would receive a massive overhaul, Serlet introduced new features while taking swipes at both Microsoft and Mozilla.

 

Safari 4 can be downloaded from CNET Download.com for Windows and Mac.

 

 

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20090608/wwdc_safari.jpg

 

Safari 4 shipping today.

 

 

The senior vice president of OS X software said that QuickTime 10 is now "super efficient" and will support HTTP streaming based on h.264 and AAC, a feature that many competing programs have long offered. The new QuickTime will automatically adjust the playback bit rate, and it will be able to stream through firewalls.

 

In addition to receiving a major version jump from v7 to v10, the interface has also received a complete refresh. Onscreen controls will disappear when playing back video. The QuickTime "Q" logo will also see a slight redo, changing from its familiar blue to a silver and purple.

 

Safari 4's Nitro will be the fastest JavaScript engine of any browser on the market, Serlet said. Without describing what kind of benchmarks he was using, he showed a chart indicating that Chrome 2 is 5.3 times faster than Internet Explorer 8, but that Safari 4 is 7.8 times faster. Safari 4 also loads JavaScript three times faster than Safari on the iPhone, Serlet said. HTML 5 audio and video tags will be support in Safari 4, too.

 

Microsoft was not the only target for Serlet. "The number one cause of crashes," he said, "is browser plug-ins." Mozilla Firefox is the best-known extensible browser, and one new feature in Safari 4 is designed to address the instability that some plug-ins can bring to browsers. Crashes in Safari 4 that are caused by a plug-in will cause only the plug-in to fail. Refresh the page, Serlet said, and the plug-in will reload. "All you need to do is reload that page and that's it. You haven't missed a beat."

 

I'll be running hands-on tests on Safari and QuickTime later today when they're made available to the public. The update to QuickTime in particular is somewhat surprising, given that Apple had been resistant for years to make any dramatic overhauls to its movie player. If the company can improve its performance, then we may be looking at a heated battle in the video playback market in addition to Web browsers.

 

(courtesy of CNET News )

Edited by i-rivere
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Opera 10 Beta Released

Carrie-Ann Skinner, Computerworld UK

 

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/picture_library/dir_235/it_portal_pic_117940.jpg

 

Opera Software has made the first beta of its latest web browser, Opera 10, publicly available.

 

Opera says the new browser features Opera Turbo technology to deliver web content up to 40 percent faster than its previous browser Opera 9.5. The function will also automatically switch on if a slow connection speed is detected.

 

The web browser also features a resizable tab bar, which when pulled down reveals thumbnails of every open tab in your browser window.

 

Opera 10 allows you to see thumbnails of all open tabs

 

Opera also expanded the inline spell-checker to support 51 languages and revamped the user interface, with a new design from Jon Hicks.

 

"Initially, we were just going to clean-up some elements and focus on the interface for new features. But, over time, the new user interface elements became so different that we decided to update everything," said Jon Hicks.

 

"We think Opera 10 will redefine how you can enjoy the web. We have more surprises on the way, but when you try the features, enjoy the acclerated performance and get a glimpse at our shiny new wrapping, I think Opera 10 beta will excite both long-time users and those new to Opera," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software.

 

Opera 10 can be downloaded from Opera's website for Windows, Mac and Linux.

 

(source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/166268/oper...a_released.html

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Google Chromium Alpha Builds Available for OS X, Linux

By John Herrman, 5:03 AM on Fri Jun 5 2009, 10,737

 

 

GoogleThe Chromium team has posted early alpha builds of the ported browser for OS X and Linux, along with some explicit instructions: "DON'T DOWNLOAD THEM!" But really, you should.

 

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3334/3522366923_6b0a97bd06.jpg

Google Chromium on Mac

 

This tongue-in-cheek advice refers to the fact that these builds aren't finished, and could be buggy. And they're right—Flash, printing, and most of the settings pages don't work. But for basic browsing, the builds are actually quite usable.

 

The browser's look has been toned down in both cases, but other than that, Chromium looks like it's moving forward healthily, and it performs like its Windows counterpart. That is to say, it's fast. OS X Download here, Linux here. [Chromium via PocketLint]

 

(source: http://gizmodo.com/5279835/google-chromium...-for-os-x-linux )

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