Apple released the latest version of its Safari web browser today, version 5.0.1. The release comes with Safari Extensions and the Safari Extensions Gallery.
While extensions became available in Safari 5 lat month for developers, the gallery makes them available to users. A few organizations that have already created extensions for the browser include: Amazon, Bing, Major League Baseball, the New York Times, and Twitter.
"Millions of our customers already use Amazon Wish Lists to store items they want to buy for themselves or receive as gifts," said Gianna Puerini, VP of Worldwide Design and Community at Amazon.com. "With Safari 5, we were able to quickly build the Add to Amazon Wish List extension that lets customers add items from any website to their Amazon Wish List with the click of a button."
Jeff Henshaw, general manager of Bing’s User Experience says, "The Bing Extension for Safari brings Bing search intelligence to everyday browsing with Safari. When a user selects text in Safari, Bing instantly recognizes what they might need and pops up helpful, informative tips, from real time maps and driving directions to real time translations to direct web search results."
"Our extension for Safari is a great way for readers to get all of the latest breaking news and all the important stories, blogs and columns they want to see," says Denise Warren, general manager of NYTimes.com. "While you browse other sites in Safari, our extension checks for updates and slides in new headlines and thumbnails, so you won’t miss a thing."
"Creating our Twitter extension in Safari couldn’t have been easier," said Jason Goldman, vice president of Product at Twitter. "By providing features like the ability to tweet about a page and view trending topics, we’ve created a simple way to deliver relevant, interesting content to people regardless of where they are on the web."
You get the idea. Expect a lot of useful extensions.
Safari 5 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download here. The gallery can be viewed here.