I can’t seem to give it up. My favorite web browser is still Safari.

I know, I know… Firefox is more widely used, Opera has that cool “speed-dial” thingy, but I love Mac. And I love iLife integration. And I love trying to use Apple applications for everything I can. (I’m still holding strong with Aperture!)

Anyway, this morning, Apple made version 3.1 of Safari available for free download. It’s available for both PC and Mac here.

One of my favorite new features (I haven’t spent much time exploring yet) is the Develop menu that can be activated in the program’s preferences. As a web developer, it allows me to quickly analyze a page’s scripts, CSS, image elements, etc, and compare their performance in different browsers. Previously, I’d used the Web Developer extension in Firefox for this purpose.

The detailed documentation on Safari 3.1 from Apple is available here.

I recently had a friend complain that my blog posts were too “Mac biased” and, therefore, useless to PC users. While I won’t apologize for being an adamant Mac fan, I’ll try to throw them a bone here with this little gem:

PicLens is a browser plugin that is, in my humble opinion, one of the coolest innovations for viewing images from the web. You really have to see it to fully understand what I’m talking about, but basically it allows the user to view a “feed” of images in a full-screen, interactive environment.

I know that it works with Flickr, Google Images, Picassa, Yahoo, and Facebook at this point, but, if there are not already others, I’m sure there will be soon!

It is available for Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. The newest feature, the 3D “Wall” of images, only works in Firefox and IE. I’ll take this opportunity to throw out my Firefox plug. My advice: quit using Internet Explorer. If you are a PC users and don’t have it, download Firefox here.

Head over to piclens.com to download the plugin that’s right for your browser. Once the plugin is installed, anytime you mouse over an image on a site that works with PicLens (Media RSS enabled), a small play button will fade in. Click that button to begin the experience. If you need more help, you can click the Tutorial link on the piclens.com site.

Questions? Leave a comment here, I’ll respond. Enjoy.