Apple today introduced Safari 3.1, what the company describes as "the world’s fastest web browser for Mac and Windows PCs." Apple claims that Safari loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2. Safari also runs JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers, and is the first browser to support the latest web standards needed to deliver the next generation of interactive Web 2.0 experiences. Safari 3.1 is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/safari for both Mac OS X and Windows.

Safari's features include drag-and-drop bookmarks, easy-to-organize tabs, an integrated Find that shows the number of matches in a page and a built-in RSS reader to quickly scan the latest news and information.

Safari 3.1 is the first browser to support the new video and audio tags in HTML 5 and the first to support CSS Animations. Safari also supports CSS Web Fonts.

Safari 3.1 is available immediately as a free download at www.apple.com/safari for both Mac OS X and Windows users.

Safari 3.1 for Mac OS X requires Mac OS X Leopard or Mac OS X Tiger version 10.4.11, a minimum of 256MB of memory and is designed to run on any Intel-based Mac or a Mac with a PowerPC G5, G4 or G3 processor and built-in FireWire. Safari 3.1 for Windows requires Windows XP or Windows Vista, a minimum of 256MB of memory and a system with at least a 500 MHz Intel Pentium processor.