[TheIceMan]

I know the debate over which Mac browser is the best is old and I'm not trying to go there. I'm simply in search...in search of the perfect (ok, best) browser for the Mac platform. Now I have used Safari, Camino, OmniWeb, Opera and pretty much every Mac browser available. Sadly, I have yet to find (in the 4 years of being a Mac user) a "good" browser yet.

Currently, I'm rotating between FireFox and OmniWeb.

But the biggest headache of all is that Safari and OmniWeb seem to experience these horrible memory leaks. OW 5.5.1 is fast and renders great, but leave it open for a while and it starts to bog down. I noticed the same thing with Safari.

Granted FireFox won't win any beauty contest in the browser category, and I thought I was happy with it. BUT, it too seems to have some sort of memory leak as it tends to lag and bog down. I find the user interface of some Mac browser (like Opera) terrible and have tried to use it/like it, but I can't...however, if they are good and the only thing about them is that they're not pretty to look at, then I'm open to using them on a fulltime basis.

Again, I'm NOT trying to re-start the browser wars. I'm just looking for a solution to a nagging problem. Not every Mac browser has a memory leak so please don't misunderstand, but the main ones (FF, Camino, OW, Safari) seem to be plagued with them. I've repaired permissions and have tried to keep my PowerBook in good condition and the OS X 10.4.7 updated and running smoothly so I don't think it's my computer. I know 10.4.8 is out but will that fix all these memory leaks?

Can someone direct me to a browser that "just works" (NO memory leaks, and works on lots of websites)? Or can someone explain to me what is going on with so many Mac browsers having memory leaks (at least that's what I think they have)?

It's driving me crazy! Help...

[Catfish_Man]

Most (all?) large software has memory leaks. The thing to look at is the degree of leaks, and whether they're true leaks, or just overly large memory use for one reason or another. Two examples:

Gecko (Firefox/Camino) and WebKit (Safari/OmniWeb) both have the concept of a back-forward cache, which is used to speed up the back and forward buttons. This actually costs a moderate chunk of resources.

WebKit's cache doesn't correctly cap its size, because of a number of factors. This was corrected in revision 17131 of WebKit, which hasn't been released.

I'd tend to say go with Opera until Safari 3 or OmniWeb 5.x+1 is out, then try that.

[TheIceMan]

So Opera doesn't have these major memory leaks that Camino, FireFox, and Safari have?

[kauffee]

I notice the same problem on my iBook G4. It got to the point where Safari was basically unusable without constant restarts. I think Firefox, overall, is just too sluggish and slow on the Mac, so that was out. And Opera is even worse than Firefox in terms of responsiveness. Shiira doesn't seem to improve on Safari much, so that doesn't help.

For me, OmniWeb is by far the best. It does eventually start to hog resources, but it seems like days before that happens. For my money (literally), OmniWeb is the way to go. It's by far the best performer and as long as I restart it every now and then, it doesn't seem to leak too badly.

[Big Mac]

I must be the only one who hasn't experienced these putatively awful Safari memory leaks.

[DuckRacer1]

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

I must be the only one who hasn't experienced these putatively awful Safari memory leaks.

I don't get them either, unless you count Safari getting up to 120MB easily.

Right now OmniWeb is at 144MB, but honestly, I don't really see a performance difference if it's at 70MB or 140MB. And I only have 512MB of RAM.

[- - e r i k - -]

Yeah, I really don't get affected by them. But if you are, just grab SAFT and you can just periodically quit Safari when it bogs you down and it'll start up again just where you left it. Takes all but half a second to do.