Safari 3.1, built from the latest version of WebKit that had been buzzing with excitement for being ultra-fast, has finally arrived. The Windows version seems to have been released at the same time. Is this one finally an official stable release?

Safari3.1 About

Needless to say about its speed, there are other highlights as well:

  • HTML5 support
  • CSS Animations support
  • CSS Web Fonts support

While it wasn't mentioned in Apple's press release, what I personally was paying the most attention to was the offline capability. It allows websites to build a database locally (likely SQLite).

Safari3.1 DB

Speaking of offline capabilities, it's an area that has been heating up recently with Google's Google Gears, Mozilla's Prism, and Adobe's AIR. Future web browsers will likely support offline capabilities and synchronization by default, offering convenience where users won't even have to think about whether they're connected to the internet. For example, web versions of services that were originally desktop apps—like Google Docs—will benefit immensely. Users will be able to focus on editing documents without worrying about whether they're online or offline.

I haven't looked into how to use this offline capability (database) in Safari yet, but I definitely want to try it out. While I wish the API were standardized across the board, that's probably not the case. In terms of market share, though, I personally bet that Adobe AIR has a higher chance of winning.