For those with OS X 10.7 Lion who aren't ready to upgrade to Wednesday's release of Mountain Lion, Safari 6 is now available for download, though a Windows version of Safari 6 remains absent.
Safari 6 for Lion can be downloaded through Software Update in OS X. New features of Safari 6 highlighted by Apple include:
- Smart Search Field. Safari now has one field for typing both searches and Web addresses.
- Offline Reading List. Safari saves entire webpages in your Reading List so you can catch up on your reading even when you don't have an Internet connection.
- Do Not Track. Safari can send the websites you visit a request not to track you online.
- Password pane. Manage your saved website logins with the new Password pane.
- Baidu. The leading Chinese search engine Baidu is now a built-in option for Chinese users.
In addition to new features, Safari 6 for OS X Lion also includes improvements to stability, compatibility, usability, and security. These changes:
- Make the swipe to navigate gesture work with PDFs.
- Restore the state of Reading List when Safari is launched.
- Fix an issue that affected full screen video in webpages that have positioned content.
- Restore the user's previous cookies after Private Browsing without requiring a Safari relaunch.
The last update to Safari, version 5.1.7, arrived for Lion users in May. It automatically disabled old versions of Adobe's Flash player that don't have the most up-to-date security features.
Safari for Windows was not updated on Wednesday, but version 5.1.7 remains available for download from Apple's site.