Apple Brings In-Browser Apps as “Extensions” to Safari

July 28, 2010 | admin | Comments 0

Apple’s latest Web browser, Safari 5.0.1, has a new extensions feature along with it, bringing a whole new level of in-browser widget power, including HTML5 greatness.

The new Safari 5.0.1 version includes a few improvements, UI adjustments and bug fixes. Its biggest treat is the addition of Safari Extensions and the associated Extensions Gallery. This has been available to developers for a month or so, although now its hitting everyone.

The Extensions are next-gen plug-ins to the browser itself. Toolbars that display live web feeds. The MS Bing extension, for example, which keeps tabs on your search efforts, by automatically suggesting searches, complete with context sensing for maps and so on, when you simply select some text in a normal web page.

Twitter’s got an official extension as well, which lets you quickly tweet about a page you’ve surfed. News minded Safari users may also like the New York Times extension, which sits in the browser and live-updates as news hits the Times’ Web page.

Extensions can be found by visiting an extensions.apple.com website, or via Safari’s own Gallery menu item, so they’re easy to find (and Apple can manage the code, somewhat akin to how it manages the App Store in iTunes, so that it can keep potentially troubling or malicious extensions away from the end-user). Is this like a Safari-specific app store? You betcha! The code that extension developers can use includes HTML5 too, so Apple’s again gently pushing the “HTML5 is the future of browsers” agenda. Mind you, with YouTube’s recent HTML5-friendly adjustments.