Safari 5

I've been using Safari 5 for a couple of days and it's nice. I can't say I've noticed a speed increase (I think the web and DNS have been slow for me lately) or the HTML5 compatibility but there are two things I like.

Reader mode is quite nice. I was using Readability occasionally to format a web page with minimal distractions (just the text context, no adds or sidebars). I also had the bookmark third in the bookmark bar so command-3 would activate it. Reader mode is a little nicer in that it deals with page breaks better. It will automatically download the next page when you scroll down (and it might try to get the whole thing at once if it can figure it out). I also like the button in the address bar though it does overwrite the RSS feed button. If you click and hold the button a drop down appears with the RSS feed button if available.

I was also curious about the new extensions but hadn't tried any. Here's "a handy list of available Safari extensions to tide you over until Apple opens their gallery." Still nothing particularly interested me enough to try them before Apple opened their curated gallery until I saw this tweet

"Here's a Safari extension to stop iTunes from auto-opening. FINALLY! • http://bit.ly/a6E1qA /via @Digeratii #untested".

The link will download the .safariextz file which I learned is in xar format. I opened it up and found two short javascript files and a css file and they looked fine. I then followed these instructions to Enable & use Safari extensions menu. It's nice that there's a preference tab to manage the extensions including updating and removing them.

I tried it out and it works well.

Update: One thing with Reader doesn't work as well as in Readability. I often highlight text on a page and use a keystroke to activate a bookmarklet to blog a story in MarsEdit. The highlighted text is quoted in the post. In Reader I can highlight text but it doesn't make it into MarsEdit. I assume copy/paste works but I assume there's something about the Reader page not be active or something.