Firefox vs Safari (poll: which browser do you use)
 

I don't want to be biased in this poll, but my immediate motive for putting this up is to get help seeing which Mac browser is preferred, and why.

So, which is it? Firefox, Safari? Or, ahem, OperaIEOther...

Oh, and why, please. :)

With Tiger, I find Safari the most useful. It still misses quite a few features, but the better OS integration is a plus. If Camino gets tighter with the OS, I'll jump back in a split second.

Since I still use alot of PCs from time to time I find myself using Firefox for the simple reason that I use it on the PCs too. With things like bookmark syncing and bettersearch extension I just love the firefox experience. The ability to for Windows,Linux, and Mac to all share the same bookmarks and to update eachothers databases is simply the coolest thing.

As for speed to don't feel like the browser is any slower then safari. But my Mac experience is limited to a Mac Mini with 512 meg of ram. So I might not know the meaning of the word speed on a mac.

Forgot to put in my own vote...

I'm torn between Safari and FF. I like the speed and responsiveness of Safari (a lot). FF seems to be just a tad more stable at its best though - takes hits from faulty websites with ease and no whining. But FF seems to get slower and less stable over time (a memory leak?). As someone mentioned in another thread, I also like the FF bookmarks system better.

This is even after tweaking FF.

Safari!
 

FireFox's UI still seems sluggish to me. Safari's is better, and it's just screaming fast at rendering pages (especially with the cache disabled on a 1.5 mbps dsl line) and JavaScript (although it is trailing Opera in JS, but Opera's horrible interface makes it not even a viable option for me.)

I used to use Camino...CAlvarez, what features of Camino would you like to see included in Safari?

Oh, and a rule of the thread should be if someone votes for IE they have to explain why...

Safari.

I'll toss out a different reason. I've been buying postage/labels online from www.usps.gov. The last time I checked, they only supported IE and Netscape, but Safari works fine. Firefox, however, hasn't worked at all. That said, they [usps.gov] were supposed to have a new system as of yesterday. I'll run that through Safari and Firefox as soon as I get a chance.

See also: http://www.macosxhints.com/pollbooth.php?qid=browser6

Recently switched from a wintel laptop to the PB, so sticking with FF meant one less thing to get used to. I tried Safari and found it slow compared to FF.

I'm with Rob on this one, I bounce between those three browsers, as they each have their strengths.

Forgot something
 

I think the poll should include Omniweb as well. Personally, I use Safari and Omniweb only, don't feel the need for FF at all on a mac. Camino still feels a bit basic.

In my opinion Safari needs two things: AcidSearch, a free and excellent extension which gives you the ability to switch between search engines; and you to disable the cache if you are on a broadband connection, which makes the page load wicked fast.

Omniweb has a ton of nice features, much slower though but preferable for certain tasks like research, where the visual tabs save time inmho.

The moment I touch a wintel box I go for FF and love it.

My choices are Safari for general use, and FireFox when I need to do things the same way as on PC or transfer bookmarks... though its not hard to transfer them to Safari either...
I would just hope that web site designer, especially those for specialised sites for education, gov and such would adhere to standards instead of going the easy lasy "IE on windows works" way.

Its just a web browser get a life

Why take the time to post that?

Happy Shiira user here.

I should go look at Shiira again, it's been a while. Has there been much development on it?

The first one I can think of is protecting me from being an idiot and hitting CMD-Q instead of CMD-W. It should confirm closing if I have multiple tabs or windows open. I actually can't think of the other things I keep wishing for as I use it; I should make notes and look for plug-ins or other solutions.

Hmm...three posts and already being an idiot...I think we need a can of...
http://www.cbr1100xx.org/temp/may/trollspray.jpg

Shiira has been good to me as well.

At the moment Safari is my default browser. But I need to re-evaluate Firefox.

What drives me bonkers about Safari is when the web page has a large number of small images. For example, my bank's login web page has about 50 images, one for each border of each section of the page. Safari chokes, and slows to a near crawl. The same page loads very quickly in Mozilla and Firefox (on Windows, that is, which is why I have to re-evaluate Firefox).

Hmm. I think I may have a new default. I am really liking Firefox this time around. I still have to run it through its paces, but I'm able to configure it very much the way I want. And it loads my bank's page very quickly.

Hmm...

Edit: One big drawback for Firefox: no on-the-fly spell check.

Hmm...

To me the biggest drawback is that it doesn't support Services, and that is a feature that I use a lot when researching. A lot of good hints find their way in my notebook using services, and tons of other things I need to email, save, annotate. Not having services is now very much unacceptable to me. Other than that, FF is a great browser, but it's just not a Mac browser.

Would you consider starting a new thread and expanding on how you do that? I haven't quite figured out how to use services in my research work, doing a lot of copying and pasting manually into text files and such. I'd like to be able to snip pieces of info and save them somewhere easily.

I primarily use Safari, but I pull up Firefox occasionally. I like the Flashblock extension on Firefox. Also, Safari 2.0 got rid of the "Save As..." option when you right-click on an image, Jobs only knows why, which makes it less than optimal for picture-hunting.

I'm finding that Safari can be more compatible than Firefox, which seems counterintuitive, since FF is a port of the popular Windows browser. USBank just changed their Bill Pay system. Safari works with the new system, but FF can't get into it, displaying a screen of Java exceptions.

------RM

my two machines (iBook and G4 desktop) *were* both running firefox, for bookmark syncing and because FF seems to be a bit better at loading poorly constructed pages.

but, when i installed tiger on my desktop, i gave Safari2 a go... it seems much quicker than the old version. on tiger, FF seems to load a page slightly quicker, but Safari will scroll *much* more smoothly.

its a real dilemma - at least on windows there is a clear choice (FF)... it seems like i am torn between safari (smooth scrolling, keychain integration, nice-looking), FF (fast load, robust, but lacking in kechain and services because it is not a 'true' OSX app).

I thought i would give camino a go, hoping it would have the best parts of FF and a true OSX app, but found it to be slow and awkward. it uses the keychain, but doesnt read the safari keychain entries... meaning that migrating to it would be just as much work as to FF was... it also doesnt have the FF extensions...

I will keep using FF on my iBook (it cant have tiger) and will wait with anticipation for a new release of FF, which should be more mac-orientated (and maybe mozilla should ditch camino and put all their efforts into a macFF ??)

I only use OmniWeb. Been a happy and loyal user (other than a couple months of Safari when it was first released) of OmniWeb since version 2.4.

Firefox still does not feel like a native OS X app to me, and its GUI is less responsive than Safari in my opinion. Also I prefer Safari's RSS mechanism over Firefox's. Since Safari 2.0 Firefox has become a less attractive alternative to me, especially with its much noticed speed bumps.

However, I like the Gecko engine more than KHTML. If Camino starts making progress and offers me an experience similar to Safari's, I might consider it in the future. I'm afraid Firefox will never be an option, since its corss-platform compatibility prevents it from ever feeling like a real Mac application.

Safarisofar
 

Because it was there! It seems to work well and quickly, after binning acid stuff and installing java update. I am considering Firefox though, for it's developer tools, which look well handy.

Shiira
 

Its Shiira for me, I'm stuck on the older version
since I'm still on Panther. I find the browser fast
and love features like 'tabbed expose' and a very
useful Sidebar.

I use Safari ocasionally and fire up the old Mozilla 1.7.something
(which I somehow still prefer over firefox) when I need to go
into irc or just need a change.

Have you used Safari 2 and have any comments about it vs. Shiira?

Shiira seems to not save login info for any sites. Did I miss something, fail to turn on a feature? Or does it really just not do that? Makes it pretty useless if so.

I agree why take time

Nothing is wrong with posting and sharing browser preferences

to be honest for users who simply browse (no hacking and advanced use)
they are both the same but there is a great feature found in safari and not in firefox.

in safari there is an "x" button in every tab meaning that u can close the tab by clicking its "x" button. However, in firefox there is one "x" button at the far right corner to close the tabs. You have to click on the tab then drag the pointer all the way to that "x". While in safari u can simply close each tab without going all the way to the corner. Other than that I personally find them identical.

there is one more difference that may not concern you:
firefox displays arabic websites perfectly while safari messes with arabic text it separates the letters while they are supposed to be connected there is a fix for this. But I simply use firefox! Which is good plus i don't have to fix safari's problem with arabic websites.

Yeah, but there are also ways to place a close button on each tab in Firefox, if you prefer (such as through extensions). Or, you can always just close tabs using Command-W. :D

I never thought of that I will place the close button on each tab. I am not a fan of keystrokes :)

That has nothing to do with Safari; it's Microsoft Office's installation of non-Arabic compatible fonts. The 'fix' is removing 'Times New Roman' and 'Arial' from the font directory in each user's home directory, defaulting back to the standard Apple versions.

I deleted the fonts and it worked. I am switchin to Safari 2.0

btw ur nickname is bedouin. I am a bedouin too. Bogomy from the bogooms (southern KSA) :cool: to be more specific

Yeah, that's one of my great annoyances in Safari. I haven't found any way to remove those useless close buttons. Anyone know a way?

I'm back to Safari. Shiira is pretty, but won't save my logins, so it presents too much effort to use.

Did you mean eg. logging into macosxhints or gmail? If so, Shiira
remembers my logins. Strange :confused:
I guess everyone has his/her own preference and knows what works for
them. I have not tried Safari RSS so I can't really compare.

AFAIK - shira and camino save your username/passwords, but have no 'form-fill' memory. at the moment, this is keeping me from using them...

still on safari 2.0

wheel click
 

Safari opens a new tab with "middle click"
FF doesn't

Safari for me, FF as fall-back browser when S occasionally chokes.

There are two ways to remember logins; cookies which automatically log you in when you return, and a browser that remembers your login info and enters it on the form for you (auto-fill). Some sites keep your cookie for a long time. Bank sites and such don't, so you need the auto-fill feature for those.

Does Shiira give you auto-fill?

I have my logitech mouse programed for middle-click = left-click + command

This IMHO is better than the system default, as it works in Safari and FF, and also means that you get the command-click functionality elsewhere:
- click on the name of a folder (at the top of the window) in finder to display a drop-down menu of where the file is (ie its parent folder etc)
- the above also works for clicking on the filename portion of any open textedit window (and many other apps). this is really useful for easy access to the 'containing folder' which the file is stored in...
- click on a finder sidebar component to open it in a new window

I have a feeling there are other uses which aren't listed here.

chris, you're right, of course, it can be accomplished by programming the mouse.
I like to avoid installing the logitech program, though. (Have a cordless logitech mouse).
Camino accepts the scrollwheel click out of the diskimage (doesn't come in a box ;)). Come to think of it, it's really Camino I try first when Safari acts up, then FF.

Safari user! Why? Because its simple... Although the idea of having "skins" for firefox and cool plugins would be cool for safari, its not enough for me to switch over, Firefox is a really powerful browser, but it has its quarks. The truth is, is that I have become acustomed with Safari and how it works, and I don't think i have the time to sit down and try to make my self use to a new browser especially now when Tiger has come out, and all of my time has gone into makeing workflows in automator, playing with spotlight and loveing the dashboard!

Esy

I have several installed but i only use them for testing my own site to make sure it works ok in other browsers, I use Safari on my macs and firefox on my work PC.

I use Firefox mainly because I switched over from a Linux box where FF is basically the defacto browser. I got used to it, its settings and mainly FF's extensions. I don't care for skins much, I feel they kind of slow the browser down a bit.

The times I've used Safari I could see that it is really fast, but not so amazingly faster than FF that I'd switch from it. In other aspects, being a different browser than what I'm used to, it feels kind of uncomfortable for me.

While I'll agree with most of the reasons why I'd like to use Safari more (on the go spell check being tops), ever since I found a "brushed metal" theme for FF, (I hated the candy-flavored themes, like I was using a browser for a 4 year old) I have started using Firefox. I've really gotten into the extensions for FF, especially the web developer extension. To be able to outline block level elements, show ID and class details, not to mention other extensions like colorzilla and measure it, my browser now is much more than a browser. I still miss some of the speed of Safari, but for FF offers so much more. Not to mention, still in Panther, so I don't have the RSS option for Safari, I do with FF.
(One less app to deal with being open).

Firefox
 

I do like Safari because it's definitely integrated with OSX much better than Firefox is, but the reason I like Firefox is that you can literally type ANYTHING in the address bar and 999 times out of 1000 Firefox takes you directly to the page you're looking for. Sometimes it returns a google search page, but that's usually what I want in those cases anyway.

I would definitely switch to Safari if they ever implemented that one feature, but as of now if you type in something it doesn't like it opens up a useless page saying so. At least they finally added an option to search google right there on the error page, but why couldn't they just automatically search Google?

Safari. Only one reason... you can increase and decrease font size with the mouse. If you wear bi-focals and sit back from the keyboard, that's a nice feature.

I think Firefox, however, is more secure and so I use it for banks and such. Also, Firefox has a better parental control ... can disallow "disreputable sites" which you cannot do on Safari with Tiger. So, the 11 year old is locked out of Safari, and gets Firefox only.

I used Shiira for a long time, starting long before v. 1.0. I've switched to Demeter, Which is based upon Shiira 1.x, but with bug fixes and more active development.

I've had that feature turned off for a long time now, but I'm nearly positive I have used it in Shiira v.1.x, which is now being developed as Demeter.

It's an option in the preferences, anyway.

Mid-march update: I have switched to Demeter for about a month now. It has one disadvantage compared to Shiira: like Safari, it does not provide contextual menu on left-click-and-hold. For that reason alone I would have stuck with Shiira except that it turns out that, like Shiira, Demeter uses Safari's bookmarks. So I keep all my bookmarks in SAFARI, actually, and that makes it painless to switch back to Shiira if I don't have a mouse plugged into my PowerBook and have to rely on the single-button trackpad.

(For you folks who joined the platform in the Intel era, PowerBooks do not have a trackpad routine for intending right-click; we only have Control-click as an option)

Meanwhile, Demeter does one thing that Shiira (to my substantial irritation) does not: lets me select a batch of text on a web page and drag it out as a textClipping. And the latest version of Shiira just seems buggy. So Demeter it is.


Dark-horse news: iCab, of all the forgotten browsers (!), has somehow become viable again. Someone said they'd switched to webkit. At any rate, it's long-term inability to render more than the simplest of pages without screwing them up appears to have been fixed, and yet it has its speed like it used to have. Unfortunately iCab does NOT seem to have the option of sharing bookmarks with Safari et al. I could perhaps import them but now I'm spoiled to the idea that I should never have to.

Since this thread appears to be in use again, I will throw in my 2 cents worth:

I am using Camino at the moment on my iBook, and have been since version 1.0 (now at 1.5). Although the new Firefox sounds like it will be in use on my work PC, as it still doesnt use the keychain for password storage, it is unlikely to be useful on my Mac.

Demeter -> Preferences -> General -> Context menu: Display by holding button press on the Web page. (Check box.)

Used to use Safari almost exclusively, until I had a pressing need for the ability to have one or more website automatically refresh after x minutes. Couldn't get it to work back then. Can it be done now? FireFox can with the reloadevery add-on. I also like FF's add-ons download statusbar, colorful tabs, the browser sync, and StumbleUpon. Can't seem to do all of that with other browsers.
That being said, I'm using OmniWeb right now, and it seems a lot crisper than FireFox.
tommaso

I'm a Safari guy, I have liked it since the beginning because of its look and feel. Very clean and polished, typical Apple product.

I'll gladly sacrifice a few rarely used features for a good interface...being satisfied with how things work is the most important aspect of using a computer, in my eyes, as long as it works well enough that it is practical. Safari does exactly that.

I originally used Firefox, then switched to Safari after Leopard came out. I'm now back to using Firefox with Beta 4, and I have to say - Apple's going to have to do some pretty amazing work to lure me back to Safari.

i prefer firefox, it has more features and looks more polished.

I think there should be a multiple choice...
I use Firefox on my work and sometimes I use it at home but mostly I use IE7 at home on my Mac thru Parallels Desktop...
Why? I just like IE and get used to it. :)

Safari.....because I just like it better. It has that cool "Apple" look and as far as I'm concerned Firefox and all other browsers look generic in comparison. I use the Debug menu all the time, and I have just been completely turned off with all the silly querks the other browsers have. Not a single one has actually come remotely close to the ease-of-use that Safari has. The guys at Apple are very good with that.