The new browser arrived via Apple's software update feature, which is included in its iTunes software. iTunes boasts impressive penetration on Windows as well as Mac computers. Apple normally uses software update to deliver updates of the QuickTime media player, iPod software and iTunes.

But Apple confirmed Thursday that it is now delivering Safari through iTunes. "We are using software update to make it easy and convenient for both Mac and Windows users to get the latest Safari update from Apple," said Bill Evans, a company spokesperson.

Aggressive Stance

At last June's Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple CEO Steve Jobs reported that users were downloading one million copies of iTunes per day, half of them to Windows machines.

Jobs said at the time that he was interested in increasing Safari's market share, which was then at about five percent. "We know how to reach those users," Jobs said.

The new strategy indicates Apple is taking a more aggressive stance to leverage the broad success it has had with its iPod. Apple says the new Safari is 1.9 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari 3.1 also supports new video and audio tags in HTML 5, and so-called CSS animations -- created through the Cascading Style Sheets Web standard. It also supports CSS Web fonts.

Standards-Compliant

Support for standards, rather than proprietary tags, appears to be in vogue. Microsoft recently said IE 8, its next-generation browser, would shift to favor Web standards over Microsoft's proprietary technologies. There is a "concrete benefit to Web designers if all vendors give priority to interoperability around commonly accepted standards as they evolve," Ray Ozzie, chief software architect for Microsoft, said.

Safari 3.1, built on the open-source WebKit framework, scored impressively in standards-compliance testing by Computerworld. In the Acid3 tests, which test dynamic browser capabilities, Safari 3.1 scored 75 out of 100, significantly better than the current beta 4 version of Firefox 3.

The new Safari also came out on top of IE and Firefox in terms of speed. In a speed and validity test suite, Safari achieved top scores over its competitors. On Windows, "it worked extremely well for everyday browsing, offering speed and efficiency , especially on a four- or five-year-old machine. It also performed really well with lots of tabs open," wrote Computerworld reviewer Seth Weintraub.

Even so, many users may not choose to make the switch to Safari, as it doesn't handle sites well that depend on Microsoft's ActiveX technology. Safari also lacks Firefox's extensions technology, so it can't run, for instance, the Google toolbar.