Is Safari 5 a game changer?

Yesterday marked the beginning of the Apple WWDC 2010, the release of iPhone 4, the iOS 4 and a general wow effect, mainly over the iPhone’s new Retina display and video talks called FaceTime. Apple didn’t want to steal iPhone’s thunder, so it quietly released Safari 5, but in fact, it’s the biggest leap for this browser since years. But let’s first look on what is new.

The change that you encounter at the beginning is the new address bar, with the similar magic as in Chrome and Firefox – what you type is analyzed and is, at the same time, a search query, a history search, a bookmark search and an actual URL. The effect is pretty appealing, but I personally never liked it, as I often type URLs by hand.

None of the browsers’ magic bars understood yet that when typing in the address bar the priority should be the URL, not a page title. As a result, I often open localhost, instead of the page I just uploaded online from my local environment. But for the majority of casual web users, Safari magic bar might be very useful.

Another casual feature is the new Reader – when a page structure is good enough, its button appears instead of the RSS, and when pressed, displays a special view of the article on the current page. It’s stripped from ads and other clutter, but looks kind of nicer than in Google Reader. This new feature seems like a variation of QuickLook for the web. And to be honest, I really like it.

So, where is the game changer? Well, the big deal with Safari 5 is the introduction of Extensions. Moreover, Safari got its own Developer Program, as well as Extensions Gallery that will be launching later this summer. I imagine Apple will use their App Store experience to make it really appealing and good for promoting the best extensions.

I assume most of you will ask What’s the big deal? Firefox had this for years – and I answer Yes, but it was often the sole argument for Firefox. I remember what people always said when asked why they don’t change their browser, and that was – “extensions”. And given how Chrome Extensions count grows, and how Apple developers like to create things, that advantage will soon be not a thing of Mozilla, but all modern browsers (look out, IE9, the game just introduced another feature expected from you too).

And there are other problems with Firefox. Their rendering engine is not as good as WebKit, lacking in speed, accuracy (in the past months I had to create several CSS hacks for FF, remembering the not-so-good old days of IE6…) and innovative implementations (starting from advanced CSS3 transitions, ending on simple rounded edges on images). I am really looking forward to FF 4.0, and I hope it will be really redesigned, because since FF 3.0, not much has evolved in the above matters, making me dislike its experience, and looking back at the FF 1.0 I miss its blazing speed.

While at it, the second most popular argument for Firefox is Firebug. But Safari 5 changes its Web Inspector too. It finally displays colors as in CSS, instead of converting everything to RGB (actually, you can now choose between hex, RGB and HSL). It finally gives an option to show JS EventListeners per DOM item, instead of globally. It automatically includes iframe HTML inline in the DOM view. It puts the error console directly in the tab menu. In short, virtually all the problems the Inspector had are fixed.

One change I don’t understand is launching Resource Tracker when double-click on a DOM element. This action used to trigger code edit, and was more natural. Still, every time I use Firebug, I don’t understand why it’s so popular. The Inspector is just so much better. And now, even more :)

Safari 5 is very polished, but of course there are some glitches. For example, it calculates the ex measure differently then the previous version. As a result, in Google Reader, you can see random pixels, which in fact are the top edges of next line of text… And over the days we’ll probably find more problems. But that’s normal and acceptable, as long as the updates will come soon.

To sum up, my point is, the browser game has changed. I’m not saying Safari will become the major browser, I doubt it. But the difference between it and Chrome or Firefox is not that big now. Between Google’s heavy advertising of Chrome, and Apple’s war on Flash promoting HTML5 and Safari, Firefox is in a difficult position. It once was the most innovative browser, but now it’s development pace really slowed down. Even IE9 is showing off it’s abilities, and FF starts to feel a bit retro.

It will be interesting to see how the browser market diverges. What is certain, is that Firefox has to respond. Otherwise it’s market decline is imminent.