Upping the ante in the ongoing browser wars, Apple has released Safari version 3.1 for both OS X and Windows. The company claims that the new version "loads web pages 1.9 times faster than IE 7 and 1.7 times faster than Firefox 2" and runs JavaScript "up to six times faster" than the competition. What's more, the browser is the first to support HTML 5 (video and audio tags) and CSS animations. Other new features include support for CSS web fonts and HTML 5 offline storage, as well as improved SVG support.

For more on Safari 3.1:
- see this Ars Technica article [1]
- and hit up Apple's website for the free download [2]