Apple has launched Safari version 3.1 for Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista. The new version now supports CSS animations, CSS web fonts, and HTML 5 media support, improved SVG support, and HTML 5's offline storage support, among other features.

Apple boasts that Safari loads pages up to 1.9 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2; and it executes JavaScript up to 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 4 times faster than Firefox 2. Well, those numbers seem a bit exaggerated, but I installed the new browser on Windows and it runs pretty well, I'd say about 20-30 percent faster than Firefox 2.

Safari 3.1, available as a free download on Apple's website, requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher, or Windows XP or Windows Vista.

At the end of last month, Mozilla developer Vladimir Vukicevic announced that Apple's open-source WebKit browser engine contains "secret" APIs. He discovered that Safari indeed uses these undocumented framework APIs. Some have commented that these undocumented APIs might be used to give applications developed by Apple, such as Safari, a performance edge over competing products, most notably Firefox. Apple has denied such accusations.

PayPal’s Chief Information Security Officer Michael Barrett said in early March that Apple’s browser lacks two important anti-phishing security features. He said at the time that unlike other browsers, Safari, which is the default browser on the Macintosh computers and the iPhone, has no built-in phishing filter to keep users informed when they are visiting suspicious Web sites, and at the same time lacks the Extended Validation (EV) certificates, which turns the address bar green if the visited site is legitimate.