[Randman]

Originally Posted by bmedina

Yes it is.

No, it's not.

Safari 2 is faster. The RSS feed is nice. FF still doesn't have a spellcheck extension. Private browsing in Safari. The Mail Contents Of Page is awesome. 1-click photo management, including saving to iPhoto. Did I mention how much faster it is?

[brutal]

I agree. Safari 2 beats the hell out of all the other browsers. I used to be a Gecko-fanatic, but S2 made me change my mind.

- And for all you Adblock-lovers out there: haven't you ever heard of Pithhelmet?!

[the_glassman]

Originally Posted by Randman

No, it's not.

Safari 2 is faster. The RSS feed is nice. FF still doesn't have a spellcheck extension. Private browsing in Safari. The Mail Contents Of Page is awesome. 1-click photo management, including saving to iPhoto. Did I mention how much faster it is?

Have you used the optimized builds? Did you know you can modify them even more to make Firefox quicker?
I've been using a Firefox spellcheck extension since I've used 1.0.
http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by Randman

No, it's not.

Safari 2 is faster. The RSS feed is nice. FF still doesn't have a spellcheck extension. Private browsing in Safari. The Mail Contents Of Page is awesome. 1-click photo management, including saving to iPhoto. Did I mention how much faster it is?

Firefox is faster. I don't use RSS, but it's also available in Firefox. Safari still has no official extension system. Configurable "Sanitize Firefox..." in Firefox. Mailing web pages is absurd; just send a link. Why would I want to save a low-res JPEG from the internet in iPhoto? Did I mention Safari doesn't have an extension system?

Anyway, my point was that saying there is no competition is silly. Which browser to use is a personal choice. I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. So what's the point?

[cmoney]

double post

[driven]

Firefox acts wonky with the two finger drag on my Powerbook.

I use it only for GMAIL where it allows me the rich formating. If I could do the rich formating in Safari I doubt I'd ever spin up Firefox.

[cmoney]

Originally Posted by bmedina

Mailing web pages is absurd; just send a link.

not all web pages are accessible from URLs. "here, steve, i just bought 500 new macs and here's the invoice" bam send the captured webpage.

Why would I want to save a low-res JPEG from the internet in iPhoto?

online albums of relatives and friends. usually not the highest res available but still good enough for iphoto and maybe making dvds or slideshows.

i'm also now using this feature for saving desktop images i find while surfing. just "add image to iphoto library" and then in iphoto, i move the image to the "desktops" album.

Did I mention Safari doesn't have an extension system?

That's fine but Safari has what i need. true firefox is still faster but safari is fast enough. plus using .mac sync for the bookmarks is so much more convenient and "finished" compared to the bookmark sync extensions for firefox.

Anyway, my point was that saying there is no competition is silly. Which browser to use is a personal choice. I'm not going to convince you, and you're not going to convince me. So what's the point?

there may be features that i didn't know existed in the other platform. besides it's just a debate, something to talk about, and exactly what the thread is about.

for me the biggest issue with firefox is that it feels unfinished, too many little niggling issues and inconsistencies. it's been 2 weeks since i switched back from firefox (which i used exclusively for 4-6 months and had about a dozen extensions, the special g5 nightly builds, etc) and i haven't found myself even starting firefox in that time.

[cmoney]

Originally Posted by driven

Firefox acts wonky with the two finger drag on my Powerbook.

I use it only for GMAIL where it allows me the rich formating. If I could do the rich formating in Safari I doubt I'd ever spin up Firefox.

good point, when horizontal scrolling was enabled, firefox doesn't honor the settings, instead it goes back and forth in your history. how annoying!

[wataru]

Originally Posted by brutal

I agree. Safari 2 beats the hell out of all the other browsers. I used to be a Gecko-fanatic, but S2 made me change my mind.

- And for all you Adblock-lovers out there: haven't you ever heard of Pithhelmet?!

Pithhelmet is not free, and it significantly slows down Safari on my machine.

Safari 2.0 is certainly good, but Firefox is still more powerful. Until Safari gets a true plugin architecture like Firefox (with a community developing excellent plugins), it can't win, in my opinion.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by wataru

Pithhelmet is not free, and it significantly slows down Safari on my machine.

Safari 2.0 is certainly good, but Firefox is still more powerful. Until Safari gets a true plugin architecture like Firefox (with a community developing excellent plugins), it can't win, in my opinion.

And that's fine, for you. You like the functionality that the extensions provide, so you use Firefox. Some others of us like the access to the system-wide spell checker, so we use Safari/Shiira. To each his own.

I don't understand why we have to have the Browser Wars 2.0 constantly running on this board.

[brutal]

Originally Posted by wataru

Pithhelmet is not free, and it significantly slows down Safari on my machine.

Strange, since Pithhelmet speeds up my Safari..

[turtle777]

Originally Posted by brutal

Strange, since Pithhelmet speeds up my Safari..

On dialup ?

-t

[Wevah]

Originally Posted by Millennium

Camino is based on Gecko, the engine which powered Mozilla (and Firefox), but it is not based on Mozilla itself. Camino is an official Mozilla project, and was not killed off when the suite was.

You don't have to take my word on this, however. Consider Josh Aas and Mike Pinkerton, the two biggest Camino developers (the former of which is actually employed by the Mozilla Foundation). When they say it's not dead, odds are it's not dead.

You can take my word on it, too!

(That's all...sleep deprived.)

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by cmoney

not all web pages are accessible from URLs. "here, steve, i just bought 500 new macs and here's the invoice" bam send the captured webpage.

You can easily do this from any browser (and any application, for that matter). Just Print, then choose the Mail PDF option.

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by Randman

With Safari 2.0, it's not even a competition anymore.

I agree, it's just great. Fast, and stable.

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by bmedina

Firefox is faster.

Not on my, or any other Mac I have Tiger on.

[Autumn]

On my PB with Tiger, Firefox is every bit as fast if not faster than Safari 2.0.

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

Not on my, or any other Mac I have Tiger on.

You missed the point entirely. The two are so close speed-wise that it's pointless to claim one is absolutely faster than the other (WTF does "faster" mean for browsers, anyway?), because someone else can just as easily claim the opposite. And for every acclaimed feature that Safari users shout about, Firefox users can shout about one of their own, and vice versa.

[RedHerring]

I recently had my DSL upgraded from 1.5 mbps to 3.0 mbps and while all of the browsers I fiddle around with sped up, it seems like Firefox sped up more. Safari and Firefox were neck and neck before the upgrade, but now Firefox is obviously faster.

Is that even possible? Or am I imagining things?

[Sharky K.]

Safari with CSS banner filter instead of pithelmet is very nice

[brutal]

Originally Posted by Sharky K.

Safari with CSS banner filter instead of pithelmet is very nice

CSS-blocking in Safari doesn't filter Flash-banners, though.. (But it works in Firefox and Camino )

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by bmedina

You missed the point entirely. The two are so close speed-wise that it's pointless to claim one is absolutely faster than the other

If they were SO close, there would be no notably difference. There is.

(WTF does "faster" mean for browsers, anyway?)

Page loading of course. In Safari, on my machines, it loads faster than Firefox.

Before Safari 2.0 Firefox loaded pages a tad faster.

Now, in Safari 2.0, it loads pages a tad faster.

Really any faster and it's just going to load all at once.

[bmedina]

If they were SO close, there would be no notably difference. There is.

If they weren't so close, we would all agree one which one is faster.

Page loading of course.

It could also mean how fast the browser launches, or how responsive the interface is, or how responsive it is with lots of tabs open, or how responsive it is while a page is loading, or....

[billearl]

Although I've used Safari exclusively since Tiger arrived, IE had one feature that no other browser could touch, namely Print Preview.

With IE's built-in Print Preview, you could conveniently change Page Setup settings (such as scale) and use a little hand to move the previewed page (or pages) up or down so you could print out just the part of the page you want. That's light years ahead of that bit of clunkiness known as Preview app.

I miss that feature alone almost enough to dig IE back out of the dumpster. If some currently supported browser adopted it, I'd switch from Safari in a heartbeat.

[bobolicious]

Opera is the only browser to date for OS-X that works in my pc recommended mls website - it appears java compatability & 'user agent' recognition are the issues with others - and all browsers seem slow compared to my pc... They are however improving with almost every OS update...

I am disappointed one must have 10.4's Safari for 'private browsing', which has also long overdue as far as I'm concerned - I've never really trusted Apple after the .mac freemail service cancellation...

Even though Quicken ships with many macs it still only uses MS IE to download data, and I wish the default browser preference wasn't based in Safari...

[TiDual]

Originally Posted by Xeo

Ooo, the new safari opens PDFs in the browser window natively.

Am I the only one who *hates* this behaviour ... I *liked* having these things open in a proper PDF app (like Preview). Otherwise Safari 2.0 is has gone from 60% to 85% on my machines (taking share away from Firefox and OmniWeb) .. iMac integration is nice when you have a work machine, home machine and a laptop!

[ciparis]

Originally Posted by bobolicious

Opera is the only browser to date for OS-X that works in my pc recommended mls website.

Just a mini-rant: typical MLS site "developers" represent the sorriest misuse of the title that the Internet has ever seen. Your average VB developer doesn't even suck that badly. Nobody can touch MLS devs in the total-lack-of-competence category. They're one good reason to kep Virtual PC handy: hi, I have to launch a PC in a window because you have no @##^#$% idea wtf you are doing. Congrats!

/rant off

[QuatermassX]

Well, having used all three browsers under discussion, I've found that:

1. Safari is damn sluggish at times - e.g., the spinning beachball every bloody time I want to use the Bookmarks pulldown menu!!!! And page rendering is ... leisurely. Wonderful spell-checking, copy to clipboard text styling. Text looks smooooth and lovely.

2. Camino is wicked fast rendering web pages. It suffers with Flash content (but only sometimes) and with multiple animated gifs on a page (that REALLY annoying smileys ad). But the controls are all fast, responsive, and not ast all weighty - feels like a brillilant Mac app. Great password management via Keychain. Has some problems rendering fonts ...

3. Firefox looks and feels like an app from another OS. And it tends to crash badly on me ...

So my Powerbook is just an old 867 with 256MB RAM ... but Camino fits the bill for my web surfing needs.

[osxrules]

Out of all the browsers I've tried: Camino, IE, FF, Mozilla, Safari, Opera, Shiira, icab and maybe some others, I've settled on Safari for a while. Mozilla was too bloated, Opera didn't render frames properly, icab and shiira crashed too often, IE was just too slow and camino didn't have enough preferences and features and it rendered certain forums badly.

I spent a long time weighing up FF and Safari because they came out on top for me. I kind of liked that FF had the extensions but they bogged it down and some conflicted to make FF crash. I only really used the tabs and spell checker extension anyway and safari does both. I also found FF just wouldn't work on a lot of JavaScript sites. I posted on the developer forums to which they reply that the site developer wasn't adhering to the strict standards. Alright in the interestes of security that may be a good thing but for usability it's not. I've even developed some basic webages that wouldn't work in FF because of insanely minor errors but worked fine in IE and Safari.

The one thing that I loved in FF was the ability to save pages with media. Despite Safari saving archives now, I can't extract any of the contents and the archives only seem to work in Safari whereas FF pages worked in all browsers and I could get the page contents easily. This was handy for getting flash files. Safari will stay as my main browser but I think I'll still need FF around if I need to save a web page.

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by osxrules

I only really used the tabs and spell checker extension anyway and safari does both.

You don't need an extension just for tabs.

I also found FF just wouldn't work on a lot of JavaScript sites.

Got a link?

[tigas]

I'm an opera guy, since 1995 (on windows) and since 2003 (on Mac) and for most features that both Safari and Firefox brag about, Opera had them first. As for bad rendering of frames, so what if some frames are rendered badly? Shame on the web developer for writing crappy code that happens to work around ancient fossilized Netscape and IE4 bugs. Example? The .Mac main page is just borked on all versions of Opera, from mobile phones to Linux, including OSX. Now send it to w3c.org for validation: 80 errors!

Not to mention those sites that are suddenly rendering properly in Opera now that there's a preference to completely hide Opera and make it tell the website that it's not Opera in disguise, it's really IE (or Firefox). That just cracks me up.

Opera just tells it like it is. And it's as fast or even faster than Safari 2.0.

[the_glassman]

Originally Posted by tigas

I'm an opera guy, since 1995 (on windows) and since 2003 (on Mac) and for most features that both Safari and Firefox brag about, Opera had them first. As for bad rendering of frames, so what if some frames are rendered badly? Shame on the web developer for writing crappy code that happens to work around ancient fossilized Netscape and IE4 bugs. Example? The .Mac main page is just borked on all versions of Opera, from mobile phones to Linux, including OSX. Now send it to w3c.org for validation: 80 errors!

Not to mention those sites that are suddenly rendering properly in Opera now that there's a preference to completely hide Opera and make it tell the website that it's not Opera in disguise, it's really IE (or Firefox). That just cracks me up.

Opera just tells it like it is. And it's as fast or even faster than Safari 2.0.

So you actually paid for a web browser?
I don't care what it does, I'm not about to pay $40 for a web browser.

[tigas]

So you actually paid for MacOS? If you just need an operating system, you can use a BSD or Linux OS with your Mac.

Maybe I've decided to pay for the best browser there is.
Maybe I could just live with the ads (the unregistered version is ad-supported but fully-functional, all that registering does is remove the ads; nowadays they are even less intrusive because they're Google AdWords).
Maybe I got a pirated key. You don't have to pay to use it.

Did I mention the included e-mail client and intelligent pop-up blocking (two years ago!), the automatic importing of IE and Safari bookmarks, the automatic importing of the email addresses in Address Book, the "fit content to window" function, and other goodies? Would you bother? I don't think so. I do.

[loki74]

I dont know about Glassman, but no, I sure as hell didnt pay for OSX It came with the system It would actually be MORE trouble to run BSD or Linux on a Mac.

I used to love opera, but when It couldnt even redner Apples site properly... out the window. No siree I will not have that. I think that its fair to say that the majority rules here--Operas the only one with problems like that. Maybe its shame on the Opera developers for making crappy table rendering code...?

I think Opera would be great, but I just cant have every other site I go to having all sorts of sh!t flying all over the place. It would be muich easier for Opera to incorporate more lenient code parsing than make the millions of web developers rewrite everything to suit one--one --browser.

And having tp pay 40 bucks for a browser to get rid of ads is gay gay gay.

[Sharky K.]

Originally Posted by brutal

CSS-blocking in Safari doesn't filter Flash-banners, though.. (But it works in Firefox and Camino )

you can hide flash with css in safari.

[Zimphire]

Originally Posted by bmedina

If they weren't so close, we would all agree one which one is faster.

No, some people are claiming certain one (not naming names) is faster because that is the one they use, and that is the one they WANT to be faster.

It could also mean how fast the browser launches, or how responsive the interface is, or how responsive it is with lots of tabs open, or how responsive it is while a page is loading, or....

I was talking about page loading. Safari loads pages faster than Firefox.

Opera just tells it like it is. And it's as fast or even faster than Safari 2.0.

After you made this comment, I went and downloaded it. I hadn't used Opera yet.

I can now say I have, and can honestly say I wasn't missing anything.

What a bloated POS. And no, it's not even CLOSE to being the speed Safari 2.0 is.

Not even in the same league.

[Arty50]

Originally Posted by TETENAL

Firefox respects the Dock as far as I understand that phrase.

Unfortunately, it doesn't still. If I open a new window on my machine, the bottom of the new window is underneath the dock.

I use both Safari and Firefox on a regular basis. Firefox hangs on me a lot, and this has frustrated the hell out of me. Despite this, I still prefer it to Safari. For my uses, the contextual menus are a lot better/more feature rich and the popup blocking is much more mature. I say it's more mature because you can selectively allow sites to display popups. There are a couple sites I visit which have legit popups. In Firefox, I can allow them to still display these elements. Safari makes me jump through hoops.

As for Omniweb, there was a time when it was far and away the best browser for OS X. It was so much better than everything else, I happily paid for it. In fact, I would still be using it if it weren't for their tab implementation. I hate it. It takes up unbelievable amounts of real estate compared to the standard way of doing tabs. Tabs should be simple and unobtrusive. The folks at Omni just don't get this.

[ennerseed]

Originally Posted by Arty50

It takes up unbelievable amounts of real estate compared to the standard way of doing tabs. Tabs should be simple and unobtrusive. The folks at Omni just don't get this.

[LoveOmniTabsRant]
Funny, the thing I like most about Omniweb is the tab implementation. And if you are looking at a web page on an Apple system chances are growing that you are viewing a web page on a widescreen, which web pages just don't cover in width. And then actually the height real estate becomes a more precious area, which all the other browsers take away... I mean if you are talking about real estate.

Personally I like being able to see what the web page i am looking for, in my tabs, looks like. searching for somethings via text are great, like iTunes, I know what the exact song name is. I usually don't know what exactly the web developer happened to put in the title of a webpage, but I almost always know what the page looks like.[/LoveOmniTabsRant]

ps. Omnigroup makes the best frickin palettes ever! Sounds silly but compare them to Adobe or Macromedia (which are a nightmare) and your in heaven. Just wish I worked in Omni products more than once every few months.

[pliny]

I've always considered Firebird the weakest Mac browser--the weakest Gecko Mac browser too.

I don't think you can qualify an application as great or even good on the Macintosh if it doesn't integrate use of MacOS technologies like the keychain.

But's that just me.

[spiff72]

I just noticed today that when I am at www.remotecentral.com on Firefox, I get an odd hearbeat sort of pattern in my CPU usage, and when I go to the same site in Safari, it isn't as bad.

I have been using Firefox for some time now, and I really liked it (in Windows), but I want to force myself to use Safari. I just bought a Universal remote that expects Safari to be used as your browser for programming it, so I figure this is the excuse I need to switch. I am still waiting for my Tiger upgrade, so I am using Safari 1.3 not 2.0....

Can someone else go to that site, and take a look at your CPU usage? I am curious what is on that page that is running the CPU. I am also curious about the difference between the 2.0 and 1.3 versions when visiting this site...

Thanks,
Jeff

[tigas]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

After you made this comment, I went and downloaded it. I hadn't used Opera yet.

I can now say I have, and can honestly say I wasn't missing anything.

What a bloated POS. And no, it's not even CLOSE to being the speed Safari 2.0 is.

Not even in the same league.

"Bloated"? How can an 11MB browser be "bloated"? Yes, it does almost everything under the sun, but you must have downloaded the 7.5x version, not the 8beta. The 8beta is in another league.

As for "lenient" html code: OK, so imagine I'm driving and I arrive at an intersection where I have a Stop sign and I decide to, uhh, stop. Then some freak tailgates me and says it's my fault the accident happened because no-one stops at a Stop sign?

Rules are there for a reason; in a computer language, they decide if a program will be portable between compilers, because unlike humans, machines can't make assumptions on what the author was meaning to say. Well, browsers are forced to do it all the time because web developers are forced to write around the IE engine: "if I write X it'll do Y, so I better write Z for it to do X".

Now Apple writes very crappy code for it's websites because, like Microsoft, it believes everyone that is going to visit will use *their* browser (and if it works in Safari, that's OK), and now we have different "standards" and different "Internets". I don't think that's what Tim Berners-Lee wanted.

[bmedina]

Originally Posted by Zimphire

No, some people are claiming certain one (not naming names) is faster because that is the one they use, and that is the one they WANT to be faster.
.
.
.
What a bloated POS. And no, it's not even CLOSE to being the speed Safari 2.0 is.
Not even in the same league.

Sounds like you should take your own advice.

Can someone else go to that site, and take a look at your CPU usage?

Firefox hovers steadily around 2 percent CPU for me at the homepage. Perhaps there is an ad that gets automatically blocked for me?

[spiff72]

Originally Posted by bmedina

Sounds like you should take your own advice.


Firefox hovers steadily around 2 percent CPU for me at the homepage. Perhaps there is an ad that gets automatically blocked for me?

Odd...right after I posted that message, I went back and tried to recreate it, and it didn't happen...

When I am posting this message though, my CPU is at about 60%. Mostly from Safari. I think it is all those animated smileys to the right of the reply thing on this forum. When I scroll this window so the smileys are off screen, they load drops a lot. Does 2.0 fix this at all?

[spiff72]

And why is it that when I Option-Click a link in Gmail messages, it opens a new window in Safari instead of a new tab?

[cmoney]

Originally Posted by spiff72

Odd...right after I posted that message, I went back and tried to recreate it, and it didn't happen...

When I am posting this message though, my CPU is at about 60%. Mostly from Safari. I think it is all those animated smileys to the right of the reply thing on this forum. When I scroll this window so the smileys are off screen, they load drops a lot. Does 2.0 fix this at all?

Yeah I stopped using Safari 1.x because those damned smileys brought typing to a halt. Happily in 2.0 everything is fine. I'm hovering at 15-20% in Safari as I type this.

One thing I noticed about Firefox though: when I'm selecting text, my fans in my dual 2GHz G5 spin up fast and the CPU spikes like crazy! That got pretty annoying fast!

[cmoney]

Originally Posted by Arty50

I use both Safari and Firefox on a regular basis. Firefox hangs on me a lot, and this has frustrated the hell out of me. Despite this, I still prefer it to Safari. For my uses, the contextual menus are a lot better/more feature rich and the popup blocking is much more mature. I say it's more mature because you can selectively allow sites to display popups. There are a couple sites I visit which have legit popups. In Firefox, I can allow them to still display these elements. Safari makes me jump through hoops.

One thing about Firefox popup blocking: because of the popularity of Firefox, it seems lots of web developers have targeted that browser to get around its built-in pop up blocking. In the past 2-3 weeks, I've started seeing popups again when using Firefox! Now that I've switched back to Safari, I'm happy to say those are gone again.

[cmoney]

Ha I'm hijacking this thread and want to re-introduce CYBERDOG! Yeah, we should all stop the insanity, spin up our Classic environment and switch to CyberDog! I actually used this for a little bit as it had some nifty features.

Any old timers out there?

[spiff72]

Is Safari 2.0 only part of Tiger? Can I get it if I haven't received Tiger yet (on 10.3.9)?

Thanks!

[Eddies in the A]

>Any opinions on which is the best one?


Firefox, because the extensions mean no ads and most importantly no Flash!

[Eddies in the A]

Originally Posted by spiff72

I just noticed today that when I am at www.remotecentral.com on Firefox, I get an odd hearbeat sort of pattern in my CPU usage, and when I go to the same site in Safari, it isn't as bad.

Can someone else go to that site, and take a look at your CPU usage? I am curious what is on that page that is running the CPU. I am also curious about the difference between the 2.0 and 1.3 versions when visiting this site...

Thanks,
Jeff

With Firefox I get a flat cpu usage of 3% at that site .
This reply page when Firefox is frontmost really uses the cpu approx 40%