The gallery lets Apple fans find extensions that add new features to the browser, such as toolbars that display live web feeds and sophisticated programs that filter web content. Safari 5.0.1 users can download and install extensions from the gallery or directly from a developer's web site.

"The Safari Extensions Gallery puts Safari right up there with Chrome or Firefox with its ability to add functionality to the browser," said Michael Gartenberg, a partner at Altimeter Group. "It looks like they've got a good collection of extensions already up in the gallery. What's interesting is that once again there is a Bing extension built in. Other than the extensions, this is a minor release."

Microsoft, Amazon and Twitter Agree ...

Apple is getting kudos from some of its heavy-hitting technology colleagues (and competitors), including Microsoft, Twitter and Amazon.com. Gianna Puerini, vice president of worldwide design and community at Amazon, pointed to how the browser helps its customers build wish lists.

"With Safari 5, we were able to quickly build the Add to Amazon Wish List extension that lets customers add items from any web site to their Amazon wish list with the click of a button," Puerini said.

Jeff Henshaw, general manager of Microsoft's Bing User Experience, said the software giant is excited about working closely with Apple to bring "visually compelling Bing experiences to Safari."

"The Bing Extension for Safari brings Bing search intelligence to everyday browsing with Safari," Henshaw said. "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."

Plugging Safari Holes

Jason Goldman, vice president of product at Twitter, said creating the Twitter extension in Safari was easy. "By providing features like the ability to tweet about a page and view trending topics," he said, "we've created a simple way to deliver relevant, interesting content to people regardless of where they are on the web."

In other Safari news, Apple patched some holes in the web browser less than a day before the Black Hat security conference kicks off. In all, Apple patched 15 vulnerabilities, including a flaw in how Safari auto-populates forms with a user's information. Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, made that bug public on July 21.