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Browser Wars #7: Which browser is your current favorite?
1/1: Browser Wars #7: Which browser is your current favorite?
Other polls | 9,114 votes | 61 comments
I'd switch from Safari if...
If Firefox was more Mac-like and supported more of Apple's core OS benefits (spell checking in form fields, Keychain integration instead of the stupid mozilla briefcase), I would leave Safari immediately. Probably.
I'd switch from Safari if...
It's it's just looks that are keeping you away, check out the Uno theme for OS X and the GrApple themes for Firefox.
I'd switch from Safari if...
Or give Camino a try...
I'd switch from Safari if...
I wish those same things from Firefox but I'm hopelessly addicted to extensions like adblock and mapit. So I'm sticking with Firefox until they get their stuff fixed.
I'd switch from Safari if...
Adblock for Safari? Ta da!
I'd switch from Safari if...
I agree with you. However, the more Mac-like browser is really Camino. It really flies when rendering pages and is much, much quicker in response time than Safari. While Safari is nice, the page rendering is somewhat slow. Try to scroll a page of news at NYTimes.com (while highlighting with the cursor) in both browsers and see the difference.
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It's the syncing
I'm sure Firefox is excellent, but it would have to be MUCH better than Safari for me to give up the automatic bookmark syncing I get via .Mac. I routinely use 4-5 different Macs, so that's a big plus.
It's the syncing
That is one reason I'm with Firefox. I can sync my bookmarks between my Windows machines and my macs with an extension called "Bookmarks Synchronizer."
It's the syncing
I was so excited when I saw your mention of "Bookmarks Synchronizer", and then so bummed out when I learned it can't be had for my version of FireFox. Bummer.
It's the syncing
What version are you using it on? I have the latest version and it works great.
It's the syncing
that's what del.icio.us is for. you can sync firefox's bookmarks with your del.icio.us bookmarks with the extension foxylicious.
It's the syncing - BookIt
BookIt. Shareware, but syncs between all browsers and .Mac
It's the syncing - BookIt
Based on your post I downloaded and paid for Bookit. Unfortunately, I can't get Dot Mac syncing to work with it. I wrote the author and here's his reply:
Firefox vs. Safari
I voted for Safari, but the battle of Mac browser is between Firefox and Safari. Firefox has generally superior renderer that is compatible with greater number of websites than Safari. And there are fine grain cookie management and Extensions, such as Adblock (Plus) and CustomizeGoogle. Points for Safari are Mac OS X look and feel, Mac OS X integration (e.g., spell checker, keychain), superior RSS viewer, and smoother performing render. Later is particularly noticeable when opening multiple pages simultaneously (either via new window or tab), as well as opening a website with embedded multimedia contents (e.g., Flash, QuickTime).
Firefox vs. Safari
Safari is just better integrated, but Firefox has extensions which you can't ignore again once you've enjoyed them. I'm using the SmoothWheel extension (which gives an adjustable smooth scrolling when using the mouse wheel) and when I try to use Safari just the stumbling scrolling turns me off. Makes it really hard to read long web pages. There are lots of other great extensions (AdBock, Web Developer, Sage, SessionSaver, DownThemAll, ScrapBook), but this is the first one I miss when using Safari and I miss it enough to not use Safari any more.
Firefox vs. Safari
well, sure Firefox on the extensions can't be beat, but i've found Safari to be more stable overall.
text shadow
AFAIK, text shadow (which i use on www.progenetix.net) has not been included into W3C standards :-(
I'm surprised
Form spell check is the only feature I miss from Safari, but with all the Firefox extensions, I would die without stumbleupon, diggthis, gmail space, develpers tools, bugmenot and tinyurl extensions, to name a few.
I'm surprised
Check out Spellbound Development extension... Spell check as you type in FF.
Safari at home and elsewhere, Firefox at work
Safari for some reason is *very* slow when having to talk to the MS IIS proxy here at work. Firefox is just fine. However, I hate Firefox's interface. It's missing too many basic functions. (Why, for example, can't I jump to the end of the text in the Google search bar by hitting the down arrow like I can in Safari?)
Camino
Camino is fast, good looking, standards compatible and extensible. Most of the other browsers are good, too but my favourite is Camino!
Camino
Nah, nothing beats speed of Opera.
Camino
Camino's startup time *and* back/forward is blazingly fast. Even Opera can't beat it.
click and hold contextual menus
I use Omniweb and go to Firefox when I have compatibility issues mainly because they let me get contextual menus just by holding down the trackpad button (mouse button?) on my Powerbook. If you could easily do the same thing in Safari, I'd use Safari in an instant.
click and hold contextual menus
This won't do exactly what you're looking for, but you can emulate the "right" click with two-fingers on the trackpad and click using the iScroll driver (http://www-users.kawo2.rwth-aachen.de/~razzfazz/iscroll2/). Like I said, not exactly what you're looking for, but it may be a suitable substitute.
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Camino
Camino is my favorite browser, and Firefox is a close second (it was a closer still call to make before I started using Shapeshifter). I hate Opera (albeit not as much as IE of course), and won't use Safari largely because it does not have anything like Flashblock. The key factors that allowed me to move from Firefox to Camino were keychain support, CamiTools, CaminIcon, some quality pre-provided icons which I mixed to my liking, and me having some Photoshop skills so that I could replace the appicon.
Browser wars - Safari and FireFox
I usually use Safari. Mainly habit but it is more fully developed. HOWEVER, I specifically use FireFox for my broker's website (LowTrades.com). The trading portion of the site is set up in java and, even though I have dl'd and installed Apple's J2SE 5.0 Release 3 and made it the first choice via Java preference - Safari will not work at the broker's site. Interestingly, FireFox 1.5.0.1 does! Good news for me - no need to fire up VPC and deal with how slow it runs. Bottom line is, at least for me, both are needed.
monitor shifts in browser tastes?
Rob, I was wondering if it was somehow possible to track changes in a user's preferred browser (perhaps if poll responses were saved in a user's profile?). I've voted in probably 4-5 of these polls, and I know I've changed over the years from Mozilla to Camino to Safari to Firefox for various reasons. I just think it would be interesting to see what kinds of shifts people tend to make, and why.
Shiira
I mainly use Safari, and sometimes Firefox. But the Shiira browser looks promising (same rendering engine as Safari, and a similar GUI).
Addicted to Camino... but I've recovered...
I was hopelessly addicted to Camino for probably about 6 months then I went to subscribe to an RSS feed and found, alas!, that it had no default support.
Addicted to Camino... but I've recovered...
I agree that no RSS support is a killer. There seems to be little urgency by the Camino developers to address this either.
Addicted to Camino... but I've recovered...
Safari is for me.
Addicted to Camino... but I've recovered...
Sorry, I meant:
Addicted to Camino... but I've recovered...
I was starting get aggravated by the lack of RSS support in Camino, too. Started flirting with Flock, which is REALLY neat, but not a browser yet, imo. Played around with Firefox, which I do periodically, until I need to save a password and it doesn't jive with Keychain, then I fire up my Camino again.
Internet Explorer?!?
Who are the four people who voted for it, and why?
Internet Explorer?!?
Because they use OS9?! :-)
Internet Explorer?!?
My wife is one of the people who still use Internet Explorer. For the life of me I cannot figure why she likes it better than Safari. But she does.
Firefox for multi-platform
Having three OSs on my desk (on separate hardware, real men use virtual machines just for testing purposes), namely Ubuntu, MAC OS X and WinXP, it's nice browsing the net always with the same command set.
Cookies
Even though it shares much under the hood, I prefer Firefox to Camino (and Safari) due to cookie handling. It allows you to choose each cookie, inspect the contents, and choose to accept by site, per session. etc., etc.
Sea Monkey
I use Safari most of the time, but my secondary browser is Sea Monkey (a continuation of the classic [not Classic] Mozilla suite). SM (and Mozilla) are IMHO more polished and less buggy on the Mac than Firefox. Since I didn't think Safari would need my vote, I voted for SM.
The traditional Brushed Metal Rant
As a web designer, Firefox + the Web Developer Toolbar + HTML Validator is absolutely unbeatable. Easily turns Firefox into the most important page designing tool I have - and it's all free. Plus, decked out with one of the GrApple themes, Firefox looks more native to OS X than Safari does.
Same for me
Same for me as always: No other browser comes anywhere clos to the built-in pro features of OmniWeb.
Safari for me
Safari with saft and inquisitor is perfect for me. Firefox is just plain awful on the mac, camino however is very promising and might potentially become my default browser when it becomes a little more feature rich. It's even faster than my safari setup if I use a G5 build.
Same for me
Yeah. I love OmniWeb, too, but it';s so slow compared to Safari, and incompatible with a lot of sites (google maps for one). So I'm back with Safari, pimped out with the Stand plugin for lovely OW style thummnail tabs.
Same for me
If you identify yourself as Safari 1.2.3 to Google, OmniWeb works fine with Google Maps. Stupid browser sniffing is all that stops it from doing so.
varies..
65% Camino- general web
OS X specific browsers rule
I use OmniWeb primarily, and turn to Camino when I need the Mozilla engine's compatibility. The customization of Firefox sounds good but I don't like the proprietary password handling etc... I want an OS X browser that integrates with Keychain, the only thing holding Camino back is that you have to install CEP manually instead of it being built in, and the lack of auto form fill.
OmniWeb!
I use OmniWeb as my main browser. It has most of Safari's good points, plus a lot more. There are still a few issues which need to be fixed though. I have about 10 browsers I can use for specific purposes - and I would rate about half of them as "good" We really have some nice browsers available for Mac OS X!
Favorite vs. most common
This is all very interesting, but I'd like to know what the most commonly/widely used browser is. Would the page-view statistics here at MacOS X Hints reflect Safari's apparent dominance.
Favorite vs. most common
Don't know about macosxhints, but at the site where I work Safari is about six times as popular as Firefox among Mac users. Interestingly, though, IE is used about 80% as much as Firefox, which is a huge contrast to the poll results here, where it's only a tiny percentage. I suspect this is because macosxhints readers self-select against IE users, being more Apple-committed, more anti-Microsoft, and more power-user-ish (and also, perhaps, less likely to accept IE's flaws).
Favorite vs. most common
Another factor is that browsers sometimes identify themselves as another kind of browser, either by default or because the user has changed the browser's self-identity for compatibility reasons.
DeerPark!
G5- and G4-optimized builds of Firefox 1.5 from el Furbe, with GrApple themes, absolutely fly for me. The build doesn't launch quite as fast as Safari does on the G5 but once its up it is screamingly fast.
If FF had an Autofill feature as good as Safari's it would be my 100% browser..
Back to Camino again for me..
I thought I'd give the 'ol Safari a chance again--
none of them perfect
I use Camino now, since the 1.0beta came out. With CamiTools, you get ad/flash block, find-as-you-type etc. Camino looks OSX native (which FF does not) has keychain support, services, great dock menu, and it is FAST. For page loads, its the same as FF, but for forward/back and scrolling, is much faster than FF.
Saft
I prefer Safari's GUI to the rest, especially with the texture (brushed metal) removed and the unified toolbar enabled. However, what is really keeping me glued to Safari is the availability of Saft by Hao Li. I can't imagine browsing without many of its features - type ahead support, url aliases, tab rearrangement, text-area/field undo support, etc.
Safari Stand rocks, Camino is my favorite and bookmarks are all over the place
Camino is my favorite because it is the fastest I have found and also because each of its functions work exactly as I think they should. However, I find that after installing Safari Stand I am back to using Safari the most often. Anyone know of a plugin for Camino that gives it Safari Stand / Omniweb like functionality such as thumbnail tabs and shelves/workspaces.
Firefox is simply better
When it gets down to it, Firefox supports & displays correctly more sites that any other browser I've used on OS X - over Safari & IE (since it's way old, besides who'd want to use IE?!?) It's also is quicker. I've made a number of websites and the truth is, is that Firefox is the easiest to design for. IE always has proprietary meathods & property names, and Safari can get confused sometimes.
Camino - Safari - Firefox...
Honestly - I still like the features that were native to IE5 - but it has gotten waay outdated and they totally killed support for it last week and haven't put out any security fixes in years_ As much as I do hate M$ - IE5 - Mac Edition was completely stable and pulled me totally away from Netscape at the time_
Whatever Tickles My Fancy
I don't understand these people who experience crashes and gobs of websites that don't display properly.
WebDev Toolbar
Being a web developper I really like the WebDev Toolbar in Firefox and couldn't code with it anymore... I really which someone ported it to Camino and Safari. They are much much much needed in *ANY* browser... If it wasn't for that I'd switch to Camino right away. But at the moment I use Safari for browsing and Firefox for coding. Not to mention they are very useful for fixing broken site (disabling js, css etc).
no true favorite
Which browser is my "favorite" depends on what I'm doing. For general web browsing I prefer Safari. For RSS-related browsing I prefer NewNewsWire (its saved tabs are convenient). For other things I use Camino. And I've recently started using DEVONagent for "long-term" browsing because it supports saved sessions; I might be using OmniWeb more for that if its performance were improved.
I've never gotten comfortable with Firefox's XUL interface, plus its lack of Keychain and Services support is hindering. It'd say it's my least favorite of browsers I've used on OS X, which is why I never installed it after "clean" upgrading my systems to Tiger last year. |
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