Safari 5.0.1 Lands, Comes With Extensions

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Jul 28, 2010

Fresh off the heels of launching a slew of new products yesterday, Apple this morning debuted Safari 5.0.1, switching the flip on Safari Extensions and formally introducing the Safari Extensions Gallery, a directory of available extensions across categories.

The company had introduced extensions support in Safari 5 last June, giving developers the opportunity to start creating browser add-ons using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript standards.

Perhaps surprisingly, two fierce Apple competitors were given the opportunity to tout their extensions first and foremost, namely Amazon.com with their Wish List extension and Microsoft with their Bing Extension for Safari. Also featured in the press release: MLB.com, The New York Times and Twitter (eBay also gets featured on the Gallery site).

The new Safari Extensions Gallery is accessible straight from the browser menu or at extensions.apple.com. Users can download and install extensions from the gallery with a single click, and there’s no need to restart the browser (much like Google Chrome, and unlike Firefox).

I did a quick count and came out at above one hundred extensions already.

Add-ons can be automatically updated and are managed within Safari. Users can enable or disable individual extensions, or turn off all extensions with one click.

Every Safari Extension comes signed with a digital certificate from Apple to “prevent tampering” and to verify that updates to the extension are from the original developer. Safari Extensions are also sandboxed, which prevents them from accessing information on a user’s system or communicate with websites aside from those specified by the developer.

As Apple had made clear earlier, Safari Extensions run solely in the browser.

CrunchBase Information

Safari

Apple

Information provided by CrunchBase

http://www.danieldirico.com Daniel DiRico

Could extensions ever work on the iPhone version of Safari? That could be interesting.
gregorylent

adblock?
Rob Hoffmann

There is a version of Adblock for Safari.
Rob Hoffmann

…it’s a port of the Chrome version, and can be found at http://safariadblock.com/.
http://connup.com Rúben B.

That’s really nice…
http://betterness.net Kawika Holbrook

“switched the flip”? That’s new. 1 for mobile Safari extensions.
Tom

Did you copy this article verbatim from the marketing materials?
http://www.einteractivedesign.com Torrey Moss

Lands, Comes With Extensions but won’t take off.

The performance on these extensions is seriously effecting the speed of the browser. Ad – block and a Gmail extension. I tested them on and off on Safari, and FF sans extensions.
brycran

anyone know a good place to find someone who can develop these things?
Shimone

See for yourself: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/07/28safari.html
http://www.mediahive.com Thomas McGee

Hey there,
If you’re interested in a comercial application you can contact me through my website.
-Thomas McGee.
polish

I love it
http://www.http://tiny.cc/rm91t sam27

Safari is the best browser ever, it works much faster than any other browser. http://tiny.cc/rm91t
http://www.swapster.com Don H

Should be a slow death for FireFox on the Mac.
Livers

Safari is so irrelevant.

I’m surprised anyone cares any more. I’ve been using Chrome for a year and wouldn’t touch safari, FF or IE with a barge pole.
Hillary Scott

Safari is the quiet workhorse of web browsers.

It changed the game by using WebKit (originally a pre-CSS2 KHTML), which is becoming the standard HTML and CSS engine for browsers… and is now co-developed by Google and others and used as the main HTML renderer in Chrome browser.

Safari has quietly been pushing the web browsing experience forward without blowing its trumpet like Chrome that uses Apple’s WebKit work.

A good example of this is that Safari on iOS already has nearly 5000 web apps compared to how many for Chrome/ChromeOS? (Zero?)

http://www.apple.com/webapps/

I’m looking forward to web apps for iOS Safari being available to Safari on OS X and Windows. It’ll be another game changer from Apple!
http://yourversion.com Evan C

Robin, thanks for the nice article about the new updates from Apple today. Our team at YourVersion http://yourversion.com is very excited to be listed in the debut of the Safari 5 Extensions Gallery. YourVersion brings you the latest, relevant news tailored to your specific interests.

I invite you all to check out the YourVersion extension, listed under Social Networking http://extensions.apple.com/#social-networking. Our extension lets you share webpages you like with just one click via email, Facebook, and Twitter (with our automatic link shortener). If you have a free YourVersion account, you can also bookmark pages you find and access them from any computer on our website.

Another great feature is our Discovery engine; type any topic of interest (i.e. Apple, Safari, etc.) into our search box, and we’ll instantly bring you all the latest stories about that topic from across the web.

We’d love for you all to check out our extension and let us know how you like it!
http://blog.zumkhawala.com amar

Yeah, performance penalties are a pain, though I’m amazed at what extensions will do, and am glad Safari now supports them like all other web browsers do. I think there are some unique elements to how it supports them to, like the no restart or ability to organize the buttons on the toolbar. Small touches, but I like it. I’ve got four extensions installed now and am much happier with Safari (http://bit.ly/top4safariextensions) than in the past, even if it isn’t as fast as Chrome.
http://photographworks.wordpress.com David

True