[Moonray]

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
You are absolutely correct, since we have not fixed any definition for "reliability". But the fact that even the MS browser for the Mac cannot display pages like this one correctly, is bothersome to say the least. I understand that the problem is on the MS side, but the point is that, reliability or not, we, Mac users, remain locked out in the cold.



Try to find a PC and go to see. As I imply from the above, I wish and hope this MS �h!t ends, and soon .

I agree, but there's no end in sight and for sure no soon end. As long as Software suggests that buying it enables you to build Websites that problem will persist. And be sure many of these self-appointed web designers have no idea that there are other browsers or operating systems than "the obvious" and that their pages might look different there, and the software (any from $4.99 "Webdesign Gold Expert" and alike up to MS Frontpage) will of course not tell the customer how poor it is, what interoperable means, and what a HTML standard is.

(And I said plain IE 6 on plain Windows XP did not show it correctly for me).

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[Cadaver]

(This thread should probably be in the Software forum)

I'm using the latest nightly of FireFox at the moment, and I must admit, it's noticeably faster (at least it seems that way) than the 0.8 release. Also uses about half the CPU horsepower as Safari (why must Safari hog 90% of the CPU on my two G3-based Macs just to animate a few GIFs? I barely see a blip on my G5).

Even the button widgets (generic Linux/Windows style) don't bother me as much. The thing that I really wish Firefox had was a spel chekar ().

The other thing that stops me from using Firefox 100% of the time is the lack of bookmark syncing across multiple computers. While Safari is the only browser for any platform that has such a feature (that I know of), I've become somewhat spoiled by it. Between my Mac at home, Mac at work and iBook on the road, I've come to just expect all my bookmarks to be there.

I'd love to see an Apple ad with the headline "The same bookmarks, all the time, on your PowerMac and PowerBook. Try that on Windows!"

Anyway, Firefox is really shaping up nicely. Very fast. Clean interface (IMO). Not thrilled yet with the download manager, but I can live with it.

The recent Camino nightlies are also looking great, though I've had a few crashes in just a few hours of play, while Firefox has yet to crash on me since version 0.7.

OmniWeb could be the "one browser to rule them all" if (when) it gets finished. Too crash prone at the current beta 3 stage, and it's current use of the older WebCore bugs me a bit - for example, only one copy of each animated GIF will play. Waiting for the next implementation of WebCore into OmniWeb.

I must give the Omni-guys props though for working in bookmark iSync'ing (via writing/reading Safari's format). OmniWeb, even in it's unfinished state, has by far the most complete feature set I've seen in a browser on any platform. Per-site preferences - genius! Love it.

[ctw]

Originally posted by Mrjinglesusa:
Just downloaded the new Camino nightly. All I can say is YUMMY! This browser is awesome. Seems to load pages a bit faster than Safari but I do miss the spell checking.

I just tried the new Camino (03/13 build), and I too think it's great. For me, it's faster than anything, including Firefox. But I have found some rendering oddities. Whenever I visit the Apple homepage, I notice missing characters in the "Hot News Headlines" scrolling text. Also, the .Mac pages don't render correctly; vertical squiggly lines appear on the brushed metal frames. Anyone else see this?

If these problems can be corrected, I'd say it's Camino all the way.

[DamnDJ]

I do love Firefox, and I use it as my main browser at work (PC), but on my Macs, I only use Safari with IE as a backup.

I'd love to use Firefox, but I really can't deal not having the built in spell checker for forums. I can admit thatI am not the world's best speller, so having on the fly spell checking is a nice feature to have.

Until Firefox can integrate this, I'll stick with Safari, which works 98% of the time for me anyway.

[tigas]

Whenever I sit in front of a new wintel machine and want to browse somewhere, the *first thing* I do is download the latest Opera. It's that good - for 90% of the sites, that is...

The 6.03 Mac version of Opera is a dinosaur compared to the 7.23 Wintel... It's a shame...

I want to leave Safari so as not to get doubletimed by Apple like they did when the last Safari for Jaguar became 1.01 - "you want bugfixes? Pay 129$, please..."

Firefox 0.8 is nicer, but slower.

I'll try Camino next...

[wataru]

Originally posted by tigas:
Firefox 0.8 is nicer, but slower.

As someone mentioned earlier, the recent nightlies feel a good deal faster than the 0.8 release. But even the 0.8 release was definitely not slower than Safari in terms of rendering speed.

[plyxrbo]

if safari is optimized for mac osx (panther) why is it so much slower?

[runejoha]

Originally posted by plyxrbo:
if safari is optimized for mac osx (panther) why is it so much slower?

Mozilla is magic!

runejoha

[Demonhood]

this is Software.
so...BAMF!

[brutal]

Try The Scragz Render Test on your browsers. I get much better results in Safari than in the Geckos.

[Mrjinglesusa]

Originally posted by brutal:
Try The Scragz Render Test on your browsers. I get much better results in Safari than in the Geckos.

6.82 for Safari on 10.3.3 on a 933 MHz G4 iBook (640 MB RAM)
Over 8 seconds in Camino nightly...

[Moonray]

That's a pretty silly test because it obviously only measures the time for displaying a simple, large, text-only table.

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[plyxrbo]

i tried it too, and i was like 'what is that?'

[brutal]

Originally posted by Moonray:
That's a pretty silly test because it obviously only measures the time for displaying a simple, large, text-only table.

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..which ofcourse has nothing to do with rendering speed?

The Numion Stopwatch also tests rendering speed. However, this one lets you choose the site of your liking for tests.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by Pierre B.:
No, it's not. Perhaps 99%, perhaps 99.5%, but sure not 100%. There are still sites that no Mac browser (even IE for Macintosh) is able to render correctly. Example:

http://dim-ormas.pel.sch.gr/

Try the above in whatever browser you want on the Mac, and then try IE on Windows.

Come on! Not one browser is 100.00..inf% reliable, but Moz is close enough to 100 IMO. 99.99%.

[macintologist]

Originally posted by gorickey:
That browser was cool in 2000... [referring to iCab]

You mean 1998

[Moonray]

It still is.

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[Moonray]

Originally posted by brutal:
..which ofcourse has nothing to do with rendering speed?

Not much, browsers might render five tables of 1/5 of that size quicker or slower and HTML is not only tables and plain text. Just this table is lacking in practical relevance because 5000-row tables are pretty rare and browsers might rather be optimized for normal webpages.

Originally posted by brutal:

The Numion Stopwatch also tests rendering speed. However, this one lets you choose the site of your liking for tests.

Yes, but it includes loading time for the page ... do the test with the same page twice and see the second will be much quicker because that data got cached.

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[Cadaver]

Perhaps its just a perceived change rather than actual, but for me Safari scrolling seems much improved following the 10.3.3 update. Safari scrolls much faster than Firefox. Haven't yet tried Camino.

Edit: Safari 1.2.1 scrolls substantially faster than the latest Camino nightly.

[nsxpower]

The speed difference are minor, seriously I can't tell much difference between 5.5 and 6 seconds when it comes to rendering a web page. It also depends which website you are trying to load and whether you are running AdBlock etc. I did a layout update on my weblog recently and I have to say that rendering time is/has/will be my No.2 ... accuracy should always come No.1. Here isthe entry (Safari v. Firefox 0.8 v. IE 5.2) I am talking about. My CSS has no hacks and checks out with CSS validator, so it should theoretically look the same in all browsers ... right? Wrong, the only browser to render the layout properly was Safari (pre 10.3.3 version), Firefox came in second because it severely messed up font sizes (only some of them however) that appeared smaller then they are supposed to and IE 5.2 the PoS that it is came in third because it completely messed up the layout (moved the sidebar way too far to the right that even created a horizontal scroll bar and misaligned everything) and my fonts wrong.
So my preference is for Safari for everything unless a website craps out on me and asks for IE or death. I keep Firefox around, but it runs and renders slower for me ... I don't know why.
I wish someone made AdBlock for Safari ... .

[brutal]

Originally posted by nsxpower:
I wish someone made AdBlock for Safari ... .

so do I.. Adblock seems much better (and easier to configure) than Pithhelmet. Pithhelmet seems to load everything on a page before blocking, while Adblock never downloads the blocked content at all.

[runejoha]

Originally posted by brutal:
so do I.. Adblock seems much better (and easier to configure) than Pithhelmet. Pithhelmet seems to load everything on a page before blocking, while Adblock never downloads the blocked content at all.

So we can gree that the browser question is not easy?

[wataru]

I'm just glad this debate is possible at all. It hasn't always been the case that two (or more) excellent browsers have been available for Mac.

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by wataru:
I'm just glad this debate is possible at all. It hasn't always been the case that two (or more) excellent browsers have been available for Mac.

Hear ye!

[Sarc]

I've been using Opera lately, I liked it a lot (7.5 Preview 3).
Well, done, good tab management, very good use of context menus, mouse gestures are absolutely awesome. Has a very fast JavaScript engine too.