Apple Computer Inc. on Monday released an update to its KHTML-based Web browser, Safari. In addition to stability enhancements, Safari 1.2 also includes several new features requested by users.
With Safari 1.2 users can use a personal certificate, generated by a certificate authority, to securely authenticate to supported Web sites; LiveConnect support for communication between JavaScript and Java enabled Web sites that require two-way communication between the browser and Java applets; full keyboard access provides increased accessibility for navigating web pages without the use of a mouse; and Resumable downloads enables users to continue interrupted downloads without having to re-download the entire file.
“Our goal with Safari all along was to have the best browser on any platform,” Kurt Knight, Internet Product Manager at Apple, told MacCentral. “We wanted to make a browser that was fast, standards compliant and one that featured the innovation that Apple is known for.”
Knight said that if you look at the combination of performance, standards compliance and innovation that Apple has with Safari right now, they do have the best browser on any platform. New benchmarks will be posted on Apple’s Web site today showing that Safari is faster than Internet Explorer, Netscape and Camino, according to Knight.
As with previous releases, Apple will be giving back code changes they made to KHTML to the open source community.
Safari is available for download from Apple’s Web site and through the Software Update control panel in Mac OS X. Safari 1.2 is available for Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther” only.