what browser do YOU use??
 

Hi,
Having just made the switch from pc to MACs, I'm questioning eveything.
I, like most Wintel gang thought IE the reinging leader, But, then I discovered Firefox, now having made the transition to macs, I was wondering
where Safari fit in? :)

For me..
 

Safari #1
Camino #2
Firefox, a distant #3

I only open IE if someone forces me.. At gunpoint.. with a hot poker.

Safari on my Macs, Netscape Communicator on all my PCs.

There's a number of threads on this subject already; this one being a fine example. ;)

I use:

"DEVONagent"
http://www.devon-technologies.com/pr...t/overview.php
and
"DEVONthink"
http://www.devon-technologies.com/pr...k/overview.php

these are powerful but still developing rapidly. since they use the Apple Webkit my second browser is:

"Firefox 1.0"
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/index.html

I was in a coffee shop the other day and saw a lady using MacIE on her iBook. I felt sorry for her, but for some reason didn't guide her in the right direction.

As for me, I use Safari 99% of the time, but might consider Camino when it hits 1.0. Firefox comes in handy when Safari malfunctions. I thankfully haven't had to touch MacIE in perhaps a year. Actually, the Gecko browsers seem to do a better job with WinIE-only sites than MacIE.

There's a plentiful amount of browsers available for Mac, and all are good and bad in their own way. Might as well try them all and see which one fits best.

I use Camino

I'm a relative noob when it comes to Macs but I use Safari virtually every time. I only use MacIE when a website forces me to drink the Kool-Aid.

I tried FireFox for the Mac but it was not as good, IMO, as Safari nor was it as configurable as the Wintel version. This was very frustrating because I use a 3-button mouse on my Mac and I could not set up FireFox to automatically open a middle click in a background tab. Maybe I just missed something.

When at work, on a Windows or Linux box, I use FireFox. When at home on my Mac, I use Safari.

I use a Safari knockoff/variant called Shiira. It's better than Safari if you've got a one-button mouse (or a PowerBook with a one-button trackpad, something that's harder to get around when you're on the road) because it pops contextual menus on click-and-hold instead of requiring you to hold down the control key. It doesn't have that infernal metal window scheme (although there are hacks that can remove it from Safari as well). And it lets you open links in background windows. I don't remember whether or not Safari would let you open links in background tabs but background windows are definitely a problem, and that's how I browse message boards like this one: bring up the list of new posts and cm-click each link and have it open in a background window, leaving me on the list view. Then I click the "2" to go to the next page and while it loads I switch windows and start reading the posts which have opened in the mean time.

Safari will allow the user to open tabs in the background as well as new windows.

My settings:

Preferences -> Tabs -> [X] Enable Tabbed Browsing -> [ ] Select new tabs as they are created, [X] Always show tab bar

Also:

Apple-click: Opens a new link in a new tab.
Apple-Shift-click: Opens a new link in a new tab and selects it.
Apple-Option-click: Opens a new link in a new link in a new window behind the current one.
Apple-Option-Shift-click: Opens a new link in a new window and selects it.

Safari and Firefox because neither browser does everything best.

I keep trying different ones, but always come back to Firefox. As of 1.0, I have yet to find anything it can't do.

Safari - 99% of the time when on Mac - only IE due to one website that has problems with Safari/security protocol.

Safari seems to work more efficiently - IE took a long time to handle going from one page to another.

I use Camino. It's simplistic, it's nicely designed, it's fast. Though the 0.8 builds have been occasionally crashing lately; it's probably something with my computer.

Safari is OK, but I can't stand Brushed Metal on a web browser, the progress-bar-in-an-address-bar greatly annoys me, and the toolbar buttons just look bad to me. It's just User-Interface-Guideline-violation-city.

Maybe it's just because I'm a relatively new Mac user but I like the UI of Safari. :) Coming from the Windows and Linux world, both of which I still have to use as well as CDE (Solaris and HP-UX), the unique Safari UI is appealing.

Well, compared to Windows and *nix, sure. :)

I use Camino and have been pleased with its performance. Only one problem, I cant download from php for some reason.

I don't see anything in there on how he will account for possible ISP cacheing.

One way to do browser tests is to hit local (or on the local network) copies of large complex pages. This will give a good representation of the render speed.

Then, to compare network performance, it is more difficult to be consistant, because we can't control site performance, network performance, cacheing, or anything of the like...

ditto. the only reason i even open any other browsers is to test my webpages to make sure they work when i am building them, then i quit them and don't open them again until i need to do the same thing.

Shiira is the fastest browser on my computer. The thing flies. I typically rotate between OmniWeb, Safari, and Shiira, but Shiira is very cool.

Shiira
 

Two problems with Shiira:

Though you can use Safari's bookmarks, *you cant edit them*. Major design flaw -- so much for being able to sync with Shiira.

Shiira's development seems to have slowed to a crawl. Not even sure if it is actively being developed. Even the "nightly" is weeks old!

Shiira is a very nice Safari replacement. It can't replace Firefox for me, and development is so slow that I don't think it ever will. But for those times I want another browser (testing, logging into a site twice at once, etc) it's great.

I use Shiira 90% of the time and Safari. I also gave Camino and Omniweb
a spin and thought they were very good.


I noticed that, but it's not too big of a problem for me. I sure hope
they would continue developing Shiira though, it would be a shame to see
it go. Maybe the developer saw the poll results at macosxhints, got
discouraged and is now rethinking his life. I guess this explains the lack of
recent nightly builds ;)

I don't know... The Shiira site currently has the following list of most recent "nightlies":

12/1
12/7
12/9
12/13
12/15
12/16

All things being equal, I wouldn't say that development has "slowed to a crawl." It is, after all, a small open-source project with virtually no publicity. I have e-mailed the main developer twice with problems and I have heard back both times with a resolution in the next nightly. It's not a perfect browser (as if that actually exists), but it has great potential and is by far the fastest of all the browsers I've run on my TiBook. I assume the next Safari will be quite compelling and I look forward to trying it out, but it's always nice to have options!

Mostly Safari
 

I use Safari most of the time.

My local library, of which I am a heavy user, has dreadful new software (especially for such a wonderful library) that Safari really stubs its toe on. For this, I use Firefox, which is, I think, what Mozilla wanted to be but but wasn't.

I like the HTML "rating" feature of iCab, and won't use a browser that costs money. I can't recall why I used to use Netscape. Internet Exploder? I can barely remember it. Since 1999, I used it only for downloads from the Microsoft site itself.

For someone who is as visual as I am, well, Safari is just so clean and beautiful, not to mention fast, that I really like it. For example, consider just the detail of the progress bar for page loading running behind the URL field. Once you see it, as my friend Karl says (and he's a "Windows guy", it's difficult to understand why every other browser doesn't do it the same way, now that it's been done once. I'm not claiming Safari was the first to do this, but I know its the first one I saw that does this.

97% Safari, 2% Firefox, 1% Mozilla
 

I use Safari for most everything. Its user interface, rendering speed and rendering accuracy is way ahead of any competitor. Cons: sometimes stalls when opening several tabs (net stall); has some nasty bugs with CSS and XHTML; doesn't allow posting forms unless the entire page has been completely loaded; doesn't allow saving entire sites; many bookmarklets don't work with Safari.

I use Firefox when Safari won't cut it. Firefox/Mozilla/Netscape are all slower, and they all have rather clumsy user interfaces. Their rendering is sometimes unacceptable, because they don't use ATSUI. Camino claims to use ATSUI, but this is not true (and it is dog slow). The Gecko browsers have superior support for CSS, and they have no problems with any bookmarklets. Good for porn surfing. They also have more features, if this is what one wants.

Opera is not free, is slowest of them all, and have some serious bugs. It has potential, but why bother when there are better browser already working for free.

Internet Explorer is totally worthless for everything. Not just on the Mac. It is beyond me why people use it and actually prefer it.

I just can't understand why people think Safari looks good. I guess I never will.

Firefox, Mozilla, Safari
 

on mac: Safari
on pc: Mozilla
on linux: Firefox, Konqueror

IE is used to check the IE compatibility (what an oxymoron..)