Apple isn’t just priming an iPhone bump today. No sirree. It’s also plotting a major boost to its Safari web browser. Dubbed Safari 5, it’s getting a stack of new features aimed at slapping down Firefox and Chrome.

French site Mac Generation has scooped all the details, unveiling plans for a Bing search option to go alongside Yahoo and Google, better HTML5 support in line with Steve Jobs’s recent Flash smackdown and 25 per cent faster Javascript.

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The big deal though is Safari Reader, which will aggregate feeds into one page on your browser. Word is you’ll be able to use a single Reader icon to access all the web articles you want, putting this right up there with Google Reader and opening a new front in Cupertino’s fight with the Big G.

Other improvements are said to include hardware acceleration for PCs, pushing Apple’s browser harder on Microsoft machines, as well as a smart address field, something Firefox and Chrome users know all about.

Meanwhile, Snow Leopard is also set for a minor tickle, mainly solving bugs and not offering new functionality. Steve Jobs will be showing the lot off tonight from 6pm, so stay tuned for all the news as it happens.

Via: Mac Generation