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robshoy · Jul 22, 2007, 06:03 PM

I've gone through browsers more than any other program type. I keep switching. Right now I'm on Shiira, but there are a lot of things I don't like, and I find myself going back to Safari, but like Shiira, it has a lot of negatives. So I'd like some help picking a browser and staying with it. So please take the poll above, and do me a favor and state a few reasons why you use the browser you do. Thanks a ton!

-Rob

cgc · Jul 22, 2007, 07:01 PM

I've tried every browser and love Camino, Firefox, and Safari but keep coming back to Safari. Maybe if Shiira is finished I'll move to it but not yet.

larrinski · Jul 22, 2007, 07:05 PM

I have had Omniweb as my main browser for quite some time. The new Safari 3.0 is quite nice but I love all the options in Omniweb, and it is super fast.

Faust · Jul 22, 2007, 07:22 PM

For pure leisure Safari is my browser of choice. For any webdesign/development purposes, I use Firefox as Safari does not offer any plugins that are close to what Firebug or the Webdev tools are capable of, unfortunately.

Sethro · Jul 22, 2007, 08:43 PM

Safari hands down, simply because it looks and feels the best.

Other browser's just cant get the Mac OSX look right.. especially Firefox

peeb · Jul 22, 2007, 11:25 PM

Seamonkey. Really intuitive search / address bar, and one tab close button (not one for each tab).

gangaspeed · Jul 23, 2007, 12:01 AM

naw its firefox all the way for me

Aegis · Jul 23, 2007, 01:29 AM

I've gone back and forth many times too, but I've settled on Camino at this point.

Camino: Just feels the best overall. Has the best combination of speed and features I want. Caminicon helps spiff it up a bit too.

Safari: Sleek, quick. But missing many things. Helped by add-ons, but some are pay (like Saft). My 2nd choice
Firefox: The power of extensions, but feels clunky, ugly and crashed on me more than any other browser.
Omniweb: Quite powerful, but I don't want to pay for a browser unless it's head and shoulders above the rest.
Opera: My former favorite on Win, has alot of built-in power. But feels ugly and clunky on Mac.
Shiira: I want to love it, it's got some interesting GUI and features, but it really lacks in some of the basics.

Kenneth · Jul 23, 2007, 11:15 AM

Camino G4 and G5 builds.

dnordstrom · Jul 23, 2007, 11:27 AM

I've tried 'em all. I love Opera but I'm using Safari because it looks more beautiful. Firefox is overrated, but I use it to blog because the WYSIWYG doesn't work in Opera or Safari, unfortunately.

0157988944 · Jul 23, 2007, 12:31 PM

Safari has its shortcomings, like WYSIWYG not working a lot, but once you use it, it's hard to break away. Similar to the way I used to be attached to *shudder* Internet Explorer.

But then I got a Mac

TheoCryst · Jul 23, 2007, 12:53 PM

Safari FTW. I don't do web development or anything, so I have little need for all those nifty Firefox plugins.

EndlessMac · Jul 23, 2007, 01:01 PM

For those of you who won't use a browser because it's ugly, you do know that some of them you can change the look right? For example, Firefox has a huge selection to choose from and you can make it look as pretty as you want by going here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/browse/type:2

I like using iAqua or iFox themes.

You can also change the look of Opera also. Another nice thing about Opera is that you can use mouse gestures as a standard feature. If you have never tried mouse gestures it's pretty convenient because all you have to do to go back and forth on a page is hold the right mouse button down and move the mouse to the right or left.

I mainly use Camino and Firefox because some of the websites I go to frequently don't work correctly in Safari. IE and Firefox are the two dominant browsers on PCs so most websites are created for them. Unless a website uses Active X, Firefox has worked for every other website I've been too. I also like Camino because it allows me to stop annoying gif and flash animations without having to install any plugins. Shiira also seemed nice but I forgot why I stopped using it. I probably should give it another try. I remember it having a lot of useful features already built into it.

Cold Warrior · Jul 23, 2007, 01:04 PM

Firefox. From my use and experience with a number of browsers, FF offers the fastest loads, most stable browsing experience, some useful extensions, and accessible preferences. I find Safari to be slightly slower at rendering. I also prefer AdBlock to anything else for Safari, such as CSS blocking or SafariBlock.

voodoo · Jul 23, 2007, 01:30 PM

I used to have Mozilla as my default browser, but never warmed up to Firefox. Safari has taken the place as the all-round best Mac browser.

The 3.0b is very good.

V

pyrite · Jul 23, 2007, 09:21 PM

I've switched many times between Firefox and Safari, currently on Safari3 beta. I also love omniweb, but it crashes fairly regularly on my MB for some reason...

ghporter · Jul 23, 2007, 10:24 PM

Firefox is compatible with every site I visit, unlike Safari, and its interface is so similar to the Windows version that when I use it, it really doesn't matter which platform I'm on. Safari is prettier and in some ways much cooler, but it still doesn't work on sites I need to visit...

osiris · Jul 23, 2007, 10:30 PM

Safari 99.999999% of the time. On the odd sentimental occasion, I'll try my former favorite Camino, but always come back to Safari for speed and consistency.

Camino is quite good though, lots of features. I do wish there was a simple ad blocker for Safari to kill those flash ads like this has. But I've had a too many crashes and odd looking formatting with it lately, so it's 2nd best for now.

As for Firefox: I don't get it. It feels slower and just doesn't look right to me. I personally dislike it a great deal.
Most of my graphics artists use it (from a mounted disk image, no less, because they don't know how to install it. :-/ )
Maybe there's a bs cool factor I'm not getting here... live and let live...

Opera: Not today, thank you kindly.

Shiira: small, fast, and crashes. great. But maybe in time it will mature.

Not mentioned: Shiira mini browser widget, aka "シイラ mini". I love this little browser. When I'm stuck in Dashboardland, this is a great way to check out the internets, albeit in non-scalable miniature.

robshoy · Jul 23, 2007, 10:36 PM

I think I've settled on Camino, at least for the moment. Nothing wrong about it, and it's very fast and sleek. It feels awfully native which is always a good thing, and all of the other browsers I've tried (Including Safari 3 Beta may I add) feel like they're still in developmental stages.

zro · Jul 23, 2007, 11:17 PM

OmniWeb

It's way ahead in usability but still behind in rendering/stability.

besson3c · Jul 23, 2007, 11:19 PM

Originally Posted by Sethro

Safari hands down, simply because it looks and feels the best.

Other browser's just cant get the Mac OSX look right.. especially Firefox

Mac users have funny priorities.

I'm into web applications working, pages rendering properly, performance, you know, the basics...

This is not to criticize Safari, but the way that the application widgets look is pretty far down my list compared to these other things... I've heard these sort of comments more than once though, which I find odd.

besson3c · Jul 23, 2007, 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by adamfishercox

Safari has its shortcomings, like WYSIWYG not working a lot, but once you use it, it's hard to break away. Similar to the way I used to be attached to *shudder* Internet Explorer.

But then I got a Mac

I'm assuming you guys are referring to the TinyMCE WYSIWYG toolbar, which is apparently fixed in Safari 3.

Lateralus · Jul 24, 2007, 12:08 AM

Camino and Safari 3b

Randman · Jul 24, 2007, 01:10 AM

Safari 3B. If only it had pithhelmet.

danman · Jul 26, 2007, 01:27 PM

Firefox, safari sucks. It has no flash blocking and its ad blocking/popup blocking is pathetic.

mdc · Jul 26, 2007, 01:47 PM

Safari at home on my Mac.
Firefox at work on my PC. I don't use Safari at work since GMail's chat doesn't seem to work in Safari 3 yet.

voth · Jul 26, 2007, 02:03 PM

I use Safari primarily at home and IE7/FF at school (What do you expect? They have a ton of Dells)

besson3c · Jul 26, 2007, 02:29 PM

Originally Posted by danman

Firefox, safari sucks. It has no flash blocking and its ad blocking/popup blocking is pathetic.

And its ad-blocking (PithHelmet) and session manager (for crash recoveries) are add-on hacks that are prone to break in between releases.

Safari is not the worst thing in the world, but I often think that Apple really did bet on the wrong horse. While it might be more difficult to embed Gecko in applications, it has been done, and the other Gecko advantages outweigh the problems Safari is faced with now. Firefox will only continue to get better and gain more adoption while Safari's growth seems dependent on the iPhone at this point.

It will be interesting to see whether Firefox 3 being Aqua will result in a lot of Safari switchers, since the look and Mac integration of Firefox seem to be the primary reasons that people stick with Safari.

MacosNerd · Jul 26, 2007, 02:42 PM

Safari all the way.

Firefox on the mac just sux, at least compared to its PC counterpart. I still use it, if a site balks at me for using safari, though they seem to be getting fewer and fewer.

with IE 7, I've just about eliminated using firefox completely. Firefox for some reason sucks 100% of my cpu when view flash sites (at least on the pc) and IE doesn't seem to have this affliction. The thing that kept me using firefox was the tabs Now that IE 7 has tabs and of course Safari always had tabs there's little reason for me use it.

I'm also glad that apple chose not to use gecko, it failed to live up to the hype when it first rolled out and they were smart to avoid it. Only now does it look like its starting to come together, after how many years?

auxlepli · 09:51 AM

My default browser is Safari.
I quickly switched to Firefox, since it's customizable.
The one I use most now though is Camino. I find it faster than Safari and Firefox, and it is somewhat customizable. It's quickness is what appeals to me most though.

Cold Warrior · Jul 27, 2007, 09:55 AM

I love Camino. It's text looks better than in Firefox. Unfortunately it doesn't have FF's extensions. If it could use those, I'd be set.

besson3c · Jul 27, 2007, 10:44 AM

How could text look different in certain browsers, they are all using Quartz, no?

Koralatov · Jul 27, 2007, 10:48 AM

Safari, all the time. To me, Firefox is a PC browser, and it feels like a PC browser. It's hard to explain, but Safari just 'feels' more Mac, and I love the built-in feed-reader. The only downsides with Safari are the lack of WYSIWYG support and the brushed metal interface (which I took care of with Iridium anyway).

I think I mainly like the fact that Safari is quite refined and bloat-free.

When I do any web design (increasingly rare these days) I do it on my PC, out of force of habit, and because all my tools are on there. Then I test it in IE, FF and Safari. Sometimes Opera, if I remember to.

besson3c · Jul 27, 2007, 11:09 AM

Originally Posted by Koralatov

Safari, all the time. To me, Firefox is a PC browser, and it feels like a PC browser. It's hard to explain, but Safari just 'feels' more Mac, and I love the built-in feed-reader. The only downsides with Safari are the lack of WYSIWYG support and the brushed metal interface (which I took care of with Iridium anyway).

I think I mainly like the fact that Safari is quite refined and bloat-free.

When I do any web design (increasingly rare these days) I do it on my PC, out of force of habit, and because all my tools are on there. Then I test it in IE, FF and Safari. Sometimes Opera, if I remember to.

What do you mean by WYSIWYG support? Do you mean the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing toolbar?

auxlepli · Jul 27, 2007, 11:28 AM

Oh and another thing I like about Camino is that it seems more stable then Firefox and Safari.
Firefox is more PC like, but I changed it to look and feel more like Safari. I am using iFox 2.5 and also have iFox Graphite 2.5 for backup.

GuillaumeB · Jul 27, 2007, 12:17 PM

i did not think that Firefox would be so far behind in the Mac community.

I personally use FF and i cannot stand safari. I mean the engine rendering is horrible. Safari, from what I have experience is the fastest but seriously i could never live withut my extension. I would never be able to install FF extension on Camino

Firefox do not cause any problem on my machine over here

vertigociel · Jul 27, 2007, 06:40 PM

Firefox is terrible on OS X. It takes two to three times longer to launch than Safari or Camino, has a huge memory footprint, and the UI does not integrate with OSX's GUI at all.

Camino all the way.

ghporter · Jul 27, 2007, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by vertigociel

Firefox is terrible on OS X. It takes two to three times longer to launch than Safari or Camino, has a huge memory footprint, and the UI does not integrate with OSX's GUI at all.

Camino all the way.

Aside from the GUI (I'm no style zealot, so it's not a big deal for me), my experience is completely opposite from yours. Firefox loads AND LOADS PAGES faster than Safari on my MBP (2.0GHz Core Duo, 2GB RAM).

unhappyending · Jul 28, 2007, 02:41 AM

Well, it's kind of mixed use between Safari and Bon Echo (Firefox Optimized for Macs). I use Safari now for the quick launch and just everyday browsing, and Bon Echo for other things such as downloading YouTube videos etc. I'd use Bon Echo more but, it takes ages to launch on the mini. I'd use Safari permanently if there was Video Downloader for it and AdBlock for Safari, don't say SafariBlock it sucks bad.

shifuimam · Jul 28, 2007, 10:29 AM

Firefox in every OS I use - Windows, Linux, and OS X. Nothing beats it in extensibility. I have four on my system - Firefox, Camino, IE, and Safari. I mostly use IE and Safari for testing how pages render (and have been disappointed in Safari's rending engine, to say the least). I tried to use Camino and just kept coming back to Firefox.

This is on a 466MHz G3 with only 328MB RAM, too. It does take longer to load than Safari, but it's worth it for the features it provides.

Like besson3c, I'm (only a little, considering it's a Mac community) surprised that people pick a browser based on how pretty it is. I couldn't care less if an application I use "look good with OS X", as long as it does what I need and does it well.

Wiskedjak · Jul 28, 2007, 10:53 AM

Firefox. The look of the browser doesn't matter to me ... especially when it takes up less than an inch of screen and when I can make FF look like any browser I want (even Safari). I'm more concerned about performance and site compatibility, factors where the beauty of Safari fails.

JKT · Jul 28, 2007, 11:38 AM

People aren't picking their browser on the basis of "how pretty it looks" they are picking it on the basis of how well it looks and functions with the OS. On the basis of this criteria, I'm sorry to say it, Firefox fails to cut the mustard in OS X because it just doesn't look or function enough like an OS X app for many people.

Me, I'm still an OmniWeb user 99% of the time on my Mac, with occasional dips into Safari and Firefox. Firefox 99% of the time on my work PC (unfortunately, I have to dip into IE for our corporate website... even the IE Tab extension can't save me from that).

pockets · Jul 28, 2007, 11:42 AM

Safari is my default because it integrates well. I can change a bookmark and sync through .Mac and have my mini, MacBook (iBook before the MacBook) and iPhone reflect the changes. I've got Firefox, which I use once in a while for access to certain sites, but overall Safari seems to work fine for me.

Koralatov · Jul 28, 2007, 12:51 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

What do you mean by WYSIWYG support? Do you mean the TinyMCE WYSIWYG editing toolbar?

The WYSIWYG I'm talking about is that used in WordPress blogs. I personally don't have one, but my dad does (he's a councillor--he uses it like an online newsletter), and when I try and do stealth edits to tidy up wording or punctuation inconsistencies/errors, it doesn't show up in Safari. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with it.

besson3c · Jul 28, 2007, 01:33 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

People aren't picking their browser on the basis of "how pretty it looks" they are picking it on the basis of how well it looks and functions with the OS. On the basis of this criteria, I'm sorry to say it, Firefox fails to cut the mustard in OS X because it just doesn't look or function enough like an OS X app for many people.

Me, I'm still an OmniWeb user 99% of the time on my Mac, with occasional dips into Safari and Firefox. Firefox 99% of the time on my work PC (unfortunately, I have to dip into IE for our corporate website... even the IE Tab extension can't save me from that).

But the benefits of OS integration in a browser are pretty minor: OS X Services support, keychain support, Cocoa spellchecker, Cocoa preferences/widgets - this is all icing. The meat and potatoes is what is important to me:

1) Does it work with all sites?
2) Is it fast?
3) Does it have useful features?
4) Is it stable?
5) Secure?

The answers to this as far as Safari goes:

1) No
2) Yes
3) Not as many as in Firefox, thanks to FF extensions
4) No browser on OS X seems to be able to avoid the problem of getting really hoggy and miserably slow once I've loaded enough tabs into it. Firefox seems marginally better than Safari 2.x at this though. Seriously, this is a really weak spot of OS X.
5) It's a wash. Both have had exploits that were patched pretty quickly.

besson3c · 02:31 PM

Originally Posted by Koralatov

The WYSIWYG I'm talking about is that used in WordPress blogs. I personally don't have one, but my dad does (he's a councillor--he uses it like an online newsletter), and when I try and do stealth edits to tidy up wording or punctuation inconsistencies/errors, it doesn't show up in Safari. Other than that, I'm perfectly happy with it.

Yes, that is the TinyMCE toolbar. FYI, this is working now with the latest WordPress versions and Safari 3 beta.

Wiskedjak · Jul 28, 2007, 02:11 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

Firefox fails to cut the mustard in OS X because it just doesn't look or function enough like an OS X app for many people.

Please outline how, as a web browser, Firefox fails to function like an OSX app for you.

JKT · Jul 28, 2007, 03:24 PM

Not as a browser, as an OS X app. Sorry if the distinction isn't obvious, but as a browser it works pretty much the same as all the other browsers for OS X or Windows (though, I do miss the lack of text shadow support in Gecko-based browsers relative to WebKit-based browsers). However, here is where Firefox is deficient as a Mac app for me:

1. Keychain support - not critical for some, but to me, I don't want to have to run two separate databases of my passwords etc, and I want all my browsers to be able to pick up the same usernames and passwords (which OmniWeb and Safari do just fine).

2. Non-standard toolbar (as well as not following OS X conventions during customisation, command-clicking the pill button in the top right of the window doesn't toggle between the different toolbar views; you also can't command-drag icons to rearrange them).

3. Non-standard contextual menus.

4. Non-support of the built-in spelling checker.

5. Non-standard dialogues.

6. Lack of Services support.

7. Lack of Address Book support.

8. Lack of ColourSync support.

9. Non-support of OS X radio/check boxes and menus in web pages (the Firefox ones are seriously fugly).

10. Non-support of the Graphite appearance.

As just one example of the non-standardness of the UI, the Organise Boookmarks... pane is a prime one (e.g. drag the column headings to re-order them, or a bookmark to move it - the visual feedback is non-standard).

Individually, the items in that list range from nothing major to relatively insignificant (Keychain and Services support notwithstanding - the absence of these two is a critical flaw for me), but put together, they make for an unpleasant OS X user experience.

Will this change in the future - quite probably, but at the moment Firefox just isn't a Mac OS X application for me.

Edit: as one of many reasons, it is for similar (but fewer) issues that I don't like Safari very much either.

shifuimam · 03:36 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

People aren't picking their browser on the basis of "how pretty it looks" they are picking it on the basis of how well it looks and functions with the OS. On the basis of this criteria, I'm sorry to say it, Firefox fails to cut the mustard in OS X because it just doesn't look or function enough like an OS X app for many people.

What does "function like an OS X app" mean? That it uses the same oversimplified interface as the iLife apps? It all comes back to appearance - and if people are using Safari because "it blends well with the OS" or it "looks the most like an OS X app", then they're still picking their browser on the basis of "how pretty it looks".

<edit>
Damn you beat me right before I posted my response here.

All the things you bring about Firefox's checkboxes, dialogs, preference panes, etc are moot points. Firefox looks the same way in EVERY OS. It's part of its skinning engine - different themes will make the dialogs and whatnot appear differently. I'm guessing there's at least one Aqua theme available that will make your buttons and form elements look like standard OS X elements, if that's really so important to you.
</edit>

Originally Posted by besson3c

4) No browser on OS X seems to be able to avoid the problem of getting really hoggy and miserably slow once I've loaded enough tabs into it. Firefox seems marginally better than Safari 2.x at this though. Seriously, this is a really weak spot of OS X.

This seems to be an issue regardless of the OS. Opening up multiple tabs is more or less the same as opening multiple windows. Any browser is going to sh!t itself if you have 53 instances open at once. Windows has the same problem with Firefox, Opera, and I'm guessing IE7. It's a shame, but it seems unavoidable at this point in the progress of technology.

JKT · Jul 28, 2007, 03:30 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

1) Does it work with all sites?
2) Is it fast?
3) Does it have useful features?
4) Is it stable?
5) Secure?

For OmniWeb, the answers to all those questions are the same for me as they are for Firefox, except that the features I love about OmniWeb are seriously lacking in Firefox (due to bugginess or poorer implementation in the available extensions that replicate those OmniWeb features).