Toby Atkin-Wright

With all the excitement about new iPhones and iOS 4 being announced by Apple yesterday, it may be easy to miss the release of Safari 5. But it has some good improvements - JavaScript speed, HTML5 support, and an extension system - and one compelling new feature: Safari Reader.

Safari Reader displays the content of a suitable web page, while ignoring the clutter around it (links, adverts, menus, headers, comments). It also stitches together multi-part articles. So far it has worked well on content I've viewed on The Register, LiveJournal, the BBC News site, and The Spectator. I think I'll get into the habit of hitting command-shift-R to go into reader mode whenever I view a web page.

With all the excitement about new iPhones and iOS 4 being announced by Apple yesterday, it may be easy to miss the release of Safari 5. But it has some good improvements - JavaScript speed, HTML5 support, and an extension system - and one compelling new feature: Safari Reader.

Safari Reader displays the content of a suitable web page, while ignoring the clutter around it (links, adverts, menus, headers, comments). It also stitches together multi-part articles. So far it has worked well on content I've viewed on The Register, LiveJournal, the BBC News site, and The Spectator. I think I'll get into the habit of hitting command-shift-R to go into reader mode whenever I view a web page.