The browser wars continue to rage on, and frankly since the consumer seems to be the winner I say go for it. As long as we are talking about progressive browsers with CSS3,  HTML5  and other forward ways of thinking, I say bring them on.

So Safari 5 was released this week and I have been playing with it. So far, very good. The two big things are the performance boost (hello Chrome? let’s play) and the very useful Safari Reader. I love the idea of being able to read multi-page web articles (and then print) with one snap of a button. So iPad-ish, what is not to love?

Safari 5 has better HTML5 support along with extensions but for me the biggest boost is Reader. I say hands down, every browser needs this immediately to keep being my browser of choice (hear that Firefox?)

When you come to a Web page that Safari identifies as an article, a gray Reader button appears on the right side of the Address Bar. Click the button, and a window appears over the top of your Web page, which displays the article, stripping out ads and extraneous layout. It shows you the text, graphics, videos and links in a very easy to read, scrollable display.

If the article has more than one page, the entire article is included, not just the current page. The original Web page is darkened so that it doesn’t distract you as you read the article. Buttons at the bottom of the Reader window let you zoom in and out, e-mail the page or print it. When you e-mail the page, it launches your default mail client and embeds the page link in the body of the message. That is just brilliant.

Apple has announced that Safari now supports extensions. As of yet, there is no official extensions page, but Apple has begun allowing developers to join the program to create them. Some developers have jumped the gun and already built extensions, and if you’re willing to do a bit of work, you can use them now.

Safari 5, like Chrome and virtually all other browsers, is jumping on the HTML 5 bandwagon and promising support for HTML 5 features such as geolocation services and playing embedded videos.

HTML 5 video lets you play videos embedded in Web pages without add-ins or additional technologies such as Flash. The controls for playing video are right on the page itself. As of yet, there’s very little HTML 5-based video on the Web, although YouTube has an experimental program that you can try out. You can also see some demonstrations at Apple’s HTML 5 Showcase.

You’ll find a number of other changes in Safari 5 as well. When you type text into the Address Bar, it now searches your history and bookmarks, as virtually all other browsers do now. But the Address Bar doesn’t do double-duty as a search box, as it does in Firefox and Chrome, and for me, I can’t figure out why this update doesn’t offer that. Major shortfall I think. I love being able to type to search right into the Address bar.

How does Safari stack up against Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer? When it comes to speed, Safari’s at the head of the pack — at least, on the Mac. Its new Reader feature is unique among browsers; as a result, for reading long Web articles, Safari is clearly the best browser. But to be honest, when I need to do web design and development work, my browser of choice is still Firefox. I love Firebug, and I know Safari has an equivalent, but for me, Firebug is sheer poetry in helping me work better, smarter and faster.

But for casual browsing and reading/printing, I do really like the Reader functionality. So, even though I dig the speedy-ness of Chrome, this latest update to Safari has made it once again, my casual browser of choice. But with all this competition, how can we the consumers lose out? Nice.