Apple has released a press release stating that Safari 4 has been downloaded over 11 million times in just 3 days.

Breaking these down, there were 6 million downloads for Windows and 5 million downloads for Mac OS X.

To compare, Firefox 3 was downloaded 20 million times in 7 days, so the numbers from Apple seem quite reasonable.

Apple claims that Safari 4 is “nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3”.

Safari 4 can be downloaded for Windows and Mac from the Apple Safari website.

At today’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple announced the immediate availability of Safari 4 final for both Mac and PC.

Safari 4 contains over 150 new features, including a screen reader, basic HTML5 support, and a much improved JavaScript engine. A full list of new features can be found online.

The latest release is now the first browser not in beta to score a full 100% in Acid3 tests, which tests a browsers support for JavaScript and CSS3.

Safari 4 can be downloaded from the Apple Safari website.

Along with Apple’s release of 10.5.7 yesterday, Apple has also quietly updated Safari 4 and 3 with security patches.

The update for Safari repaired input validation and memory corruption issues which could have allowed hackers to plant malicious code on websites.

The update was included for Mac users who have already installed the 10.5.7 update, or an updated version of the browser can be downloaded and installed manually from the Apple Safari website.

With the recent release of Safari 4 beta, Apple launched a large marketing campaign on it’s website.

Turns out, many of the facts are in fact, not fact.

Users over at the Opera forums have dissected several facts, with sources proving Apple has got it wrong.

You can read the full list of incorrect facts over at the Opera forums.

Apple has released Safari 4 beta to the public.

The release is incredibly impressive, with over 150 new features, including support for some HTML5 elements along with improvements in the rendering engine.

Safari 4 also scores an impressive 100/100 in Acid 3 which tests a browsers standards compatibility. Opera 10 alpha and Safari 4 beta are now the only two main web browsers to reach this feat.

Safari 4 includes a new JavaScript rendering engine called Nitro. It’s claimed to be 4 times faster than Firefox 3.1 and 6 times faster than Internet Explorer 8. Benchmark results should be out soon.

Users can download Safari 4 beta for both Windows and Mac today.

Apple has issued an update to its Safari browser for Windows users.

The browser, with version number 3.2.2, fixes an RSS vulnerability found in the browser mid January.

You can read the full details of the update in the support article. The update should be pushed out to Windows users, or users can download the update manually from the Safari website.

The latest nightly build of WebKit now includes support for CSS animations. WebKit is the rendering engine used by many browsers, including Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browser.

Dean Jacksons explains the benefits of CSS animations:

CSS Animations is one of the enhancements to CSS proposed by the WebKit project that we’ve been calling CSS Effects (eg. gradients, masks, transitions). The goal is to provide properties that allow Web developers to create graphically rich content. In many cases animations are presentational, and therefore belong in the styling system. This allows developers to write declarative rules for animations, replacing lots of hard-to-maintain animation code in JavaScript.

The new effects are already implemented in the iPhone and iPod touch browsers, and should make their way in to releases of Safari and Chrome shortly. In the mean time, you can test the new CSS animations by downloding the latest nightly release of WebKit.

European Union regulators have laid down fresh claims that Microsoft is again in breach of its anti-trust laws.

The complaint is related to Internet Explorer being bundled with all new Windows installations.

Microsoft lost a similar case in 2004 and was forced to sell Windows versions without Windows Media Player.

This has potential repercussions across the market. Apple currently bundles Safari with every copy of Mac OS X, while most Linux distributions are bundled with Firefox.

“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice” said a spokesman for the European Union.

Any final decision on the matter is likely to be years away.

EMG Technology is suing Apple over an alleged patent infringement in its mobile version of Safari.

EMG is seeking an unspecified amount in damages, claiming the “simplified interface of reformatted mobile content to provide optimum viewing and navigation with single touches on a small screen” as a reason for the suit.

Patent 7,441,196 was issued in October this year, after being filled back in November 1999. The patent covers the resizing of content and data on mobile screens, along with navigation and scrolling methods.

EMG has not offered Apple the chance to licence the technology and currently has no plans to go after other smartphone makers.

Apple will not comment on the matter.

It looks like we won’t see a browser war for the iPhone just yet, with Apple refusing to let Opera Mini be released for the iPhone.

Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Opera’s co-founder and chief executive said that “Opera’s engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won’t let the company release it because it competes with Apple’s own Safari browser.”

Opera Mini is currently available for free for many other phones available today.