KEY POINTS:
Apple has released the latest version of its Safari web browser.
A full release version of Safari, which has until now only been available for Mac, is now also shipping a Windows-friendly version.
This reflects the fact that Microsoft's operating system runs on Intel Macs.
A beta version of Safari 3 for Windows was released in June last year, quickly followed by a bug-fix from Apple.
Despite a shaky start - which included online reports of slow page loading compared to Internet Explorer 7 on Windows machines - a million people downloaded the beta in just 48 hours.
Safari is currently the number three browser in the marketplace, with analytics company Net Applications data showing six per cent of the world's web users use the browser. Internet Explorer accounts for three quarters of the market, followed by Mozilla's Firefox on about 17 per cent.
Apple claims that Safari 3.1 is the fastest web browser in the world - 1.9 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2.
It based these claims on tests made with VeriTest iBench 5.0 using default settings running on an iMac 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Windows XP with 1GB of RAM.
Apple also says that Safari is capable of running JavaScript up to six times faster than other browsers and is better tooled to deliver Web 2.0 content.
"Safari 3.1 for Mac and Windows is blazingly fast, easy to use and features an elegant user interface," said Apple spokesman Philip Schiller, "and best of all, Safari supports the latest audio, video and animation standards for an industry-leading Web 2.0 experience."
He is referring to support for the new video and audio HTML tags, CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) animations, and CSS web fonts.
To work, Safari 3.1 for Windows needs XP or Vista, at least 256MB of RAM and a minimum 500MHz Intel Pentium processor.
On Mac, it will run on any G3, G4 G5 or Intel machine with FireWire, running updated OS X Tiger (10.4.11) and carrying at least 256MB of RAM.
Safari 3.1 can be downloaded here.
A QuickTime demo of the browser in action can be viewed here.
A beta version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 can be found here.
Mozilla's excellent Firefox can be found here.
