[runejoha]

Hi, my new PB 15'' arrives in a very few days and I am checking up which SW fix best on a mac (i am an master of sicence in computer student which finaly said bye to Win ) I allready have asked about dev. tools on the PB forum, but which brower is best for surfin' the net?

On PC I use FireFox. I hate the commercial banner in Opera (though, I AM from Norway ) and IExpoler makes win crash because of all the pop ups ) (TEXAS!) BUT, which is the better of FireFox and Safari? FireFox is fast and light, and I am not a user that likes to many features on a web browser. Still, is Safari OK, in that case what is good in Safari?

Regards
Runejoha

[voodoo]

Download Mozilla - Forfox if you must and keep it at the ready. As your main browser use Safari. It works 99% of the time but Moz is there for you in the 1% of the time.

Safari is almost as fast as Firefox and Moz but much simpler and nicer to use. Great bookmark system and tabbing system. Unfortunately it doesn't ad block unless you use Pith Helmet as well but that is a small app that opens undocumented features of Safari.

Enjoy your new Mac.

Ompa til du d�r!

[pwolfe1]

I disagree with voodoo. I think mozilla is 100% percent reliable on all platforms. Firefox is the way to go for speed though.

[Angus_D]

Use whichever you feel most comfortable with.

[voodoo]

Originally posted by pwolfe1:
I disagree with voodoo. I think mozilla is 100% percent reliable on all platforms. Firefox is the way to go for speed though.

No you don't. I think Mozilla is 100% reliable. That is why I recommended it as a backup browser. You'd want a solid backup.

Safari is nicer IMO so I recommend that as a primary browser.

[runejoha]

Originally posted by voodoo:

Ompa til du d�r!

HEHE!

[lokjah]

firefox all the way.. the latest camino builds are also coming along nicely... i really dont have a need for safari, if i want to have a change i might surf with it for a bit, but i use chris predericks web tools for firefox alot, so firefox is my all around browser, has been since chimera/camino/firebird/firefox....

i should note, im not a fan of pay browsers but the latest omniweb build is pretty nice....

l�k

[trash80]

Firefox, you won't be at the mercy of Apple's OS strategy then

[gorickey]

Originally posted by trash80:
Firefox, you won't be at the mercy of Apple's OS strategy then

What...music?!?

[wataru]

I use Firefox. Excellent browser.

[nobitacu]

I still only use Safari.

Ming

[runejoha]

Thanks for the answers. As I guessed FireFox is the best. On the Win plattfor I think FireFox or Mozilla is the better, and I never found any reasons to use IE, exception it is faster to load (I wonder..), so I guessed that Safari is something like IE +- .

Apple is a little bit expensive, but the Unix kernel is good, and you don't need to follow the "stupid" Ilife product line etc. It is nice to use a RISC again, even I would whish it was IBM

runejoha

l�k & Ost!

Originally posted by trash80:
Firefox, you won't be at the mercy of Apple's OS strategy then

Well, I am useing a Compaq with win & Debian today, but who cares that i am not supporting the Microsoft OS strategy?

[gorickey]

Originally posted by lokjah:
.. the latest camino builds are also coming along nicely...

Wow, Camino is doing good! Love the new icon set....very well done since last time I used it....

[Catfish_Man]

Omniweb 5/Safari/Camino nightly

[chris v]

I've got all those browsers, and I use Safari exclusively these days. Opera is an unusable pile of steaming dung. The others are all good, esp. Camino and Omniweb. Why not download them, though? They're all free. (except Omniweb)

CV

[Zatt]

My vote is SOLIDLY for Safari.

[Moonray]

Hey another which browser is the best thread.

It's of course iCab.

-

[gorickey]

Originally posted by Moonray:
It's of course iCab.

That browser was cool in 2000...

[brutal]

I've been using both Camino and Firefox lately, but now I'm back with Safari again. Even after havy user.js-tuning, I couldn't get the Geckos to render pages as fast as Safari. It's just so much faster!

[SMacTech]

FireFox does have good rendering speed, however, on my lowly 450 cube scrolling is abysmal and smooth scrolling is totally unusable using the keyboard.
I also cannot replicate the ability to open a new tab using a scroll wheel button on my M$ intellimouse.
While it does block pop-ups, with an annoying dialog, I need the equivalent of PithHelmet to stop the annoying animated GIFs sucking precious cpu%. Can anyone point me to such a plug-in or extension for FireFox to give the functionality of PithHelmet.
The full screen feature is nice, but it doesn't honor the dock, placing the scroll bar beneath it with the dock pinned on the right side.
It does handle security certificates well and does a good job with compatibility to standards.

[mike one]

Originally posted by pwolfe1:
I disagree with voodoo. I think mozilla is 100% percent reliable on all platforms. Firefox is the way to go for speed though.

i would choose firefox due to the wide availablility of useful extensions, like session saver for one, google toolbar for two. (themes also are readily accessible.

i have found both browsers to be equally reliable/stable.

in terms of speed (FF vs Saf) I think FF is a bit faster, but maybe it starts rendering pages earlier than safari does. dunno.

I also have the general feeling that FF is more compatible with a wider variety of sites, especially ones using https, but hey what do i know.

I have yet to need an alternate browser while using FF, while using Safari, occasionally i've had to switch for one sticky site (citibank maybe, i forget).

[mike one]

Originally posted by runejoha:

Well, I am useing a Compaq with win & Debian today, but who cares that i am not supporting the Microsoft OS strategy?

well then i hope you're using Galeon

Galeon is even better than Moz/FF/Safari etc... although i can't get it to compile for use in my X11 environment, bastards!

[Wiskedjak]

All of the above. Safari is my primary.

[Cadaver]

I prefer Safari, Aqua-ized and custom icon set via SafarIcon.


But I do keep Firefox around for the one site (work-related) that doesn't render correctly in Safari.

[runejoha]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
I prefer Safari, Aqua-ized and custom icon set via SafarIcon.


But I do keep Firefox around for the one site (work-related) that doesn't render correctly in Safari.

Thanks for all the answers. I realize that the browser selection is not
an easy issue. I am used to Mozilla, and if there are no big benefits in
useing Safari I keep on surfin' with the cool Godzilla (or Fox or whatever) You mentioned several browsers I never have heard of, so who knows which is the "best"??

IE?

[stew]

As a long-term Safari-user, I went 100% Mozilla recently. The sidebar's cool, using search engines other than Google without hacking binaries and a mail client that recognizes all of my IMAP folders and that is actually able to send attachements that Windows users have no problem with won me over. And once you're addicted to incremental search, there's no way back.

But I'm still waiting for a web browser that is able to tell me that I mistyped a URL wihtout using a modal dialog, or better, one that's smart enough to turn a macnnc.om typo into macnn.com by itsef.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by stew:
and a mail client that recognizes all of my IMAP folders and that is actually able to send attachements that Windows users have no problem with won me over.

Mail.app can send attachments to windows users, we do it all the time. But there is an obscure menu selection you must check, Edit>Attachments>Always send Windows friendly attachments. No problem with iMap folders either, and I have a lot of them.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by stew:
But I'm still waiting for a web browser that is able to tell me that I mistyped a URL wihtout using a modal dialog, or better, one that's smart enough to turn a macnnc.om typo into macnn.com by itsef.

Can Mozilla point out your spelling errors, err typos ?

[stew]

Oubivieously not

[Cadaver]

A big thing holding me back from Mozilla-based browsers is the lack of integration with Apple's spell checker (or any other spell checker).
Spell Catcher X, which I own, is a poor substitute for integrated spell checking.

Sometimes I wish Apple had written Safari with a Gecko engine. All Apple's enhancements with very few site incompatibilities (fewer than KHTML at least).

[gorickey]

Similar...

[juanvaldes]

Try them all and decide for yourself. And grab a daily build of Camino as well. Skip on Opera though, as (unless something changed) it's really out of date and buggy as hell. Of course nothing is stopping you from trying it out as well.

[_nmk]

I have never used PithHelmet so I cannot compare but I find using a custom CSS file to block ads a cleaner solution.

More info:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...=safari+css+ad

Grab CSS file here:
http://texturizer.net/firefox/adblock.html

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by voodoo:
I think Mozilla is 100% reliable.

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.

[plyxrbo]

just my two cents...

i have gone back and forth with two different browsers: safari and firefox (after giving up on mozilla as hopelessly slow on my mac digital audio g4/733/1GB ram).

i went back to safari after the upgrade and it was a little faster, but it still felt hesitant with most websites. not slow, but not as fast as i know a browser should be on my home 768k dsl connection.

i had been using firefox and decided to try it again. while i LOVE the speed, it still chokes a little on sites with passwords (sometimes they stick and sometimes they do not).

all in all, i like it almost as much as camino .7, but not nearly as much (feature-wise) as mozilla.

all this said, it is ALWAYS a tradeoff between speed and features and you just have to come to your OWN decision on what WORKS best for you.

[xe0]

Safari all the way

[nsxpower]

Safari works most of the time. Firefox when I am looking for speed and just want to get the information out, but I don't like the widgets it uses for web elements/forms and how it renders some CSS elements. As much as I hate IE some sites require it (like my bank and a few others) and I like how it renders some CSS elements (look (i.e. dotted looks nicely dashed etc.), not layout), but Safari actually treats them in a similar manner.

What I really love FireFox for are the extensions. Adblock is great!

[[APi]TheMan]

I'm overwhelmed with browsers lately. I used to love Chimera... Then I loved Camino... then Safari came out. Then I loved Safari; bye bye, Camino. Somewhere in there I was a Firebird user, then came Firefox, which I was stoked on for some few weeks. Now I hear all this talk of Camino nightlies, wow. The latest Camino nightly is stupendous. Now I just downloaded Mozilla 1.7alpha... whew! Besides being a behemoth and weighing in at 45 megs... it's pretty nice.

This day in age it all comes down to what works for you, but my problem is that they all work. I guess that I should use Mozilla or Camino, because they:
1. Work with my online banking.
2. Don't cause insane CPU usage in MacNN's forums with those silly smilies.

Though I have noticed that with Mozilla derivatives I can't use my school's portal without some hassle. I get a "Java support has been turned off" error. Preferences -> Advanced -> Java is on... Uncheck it, hit ok, go back into prefs and enable Java, reload page, and I'm in.

This happens with Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape 6.2.3, and Camino. Heh, real weird.

[simifilm]

Once you got used to Find As You Type wou will never use anything besides Firefox (Granted: Saft 6.5 brings FAYT to Safari, but it's not free...).

[wtmcgee]

camino nightlies for me

[Drizzt]

As a laptop user, I'd say Safari and/or Camino..

Why?

The Location Manager that is! Real time saver here!

[plyxrbo]

where do you get the camino nightlies?

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by plyxrbo:
where do you get the camino nightlies?

Camino nightlies: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...ightly/latest/

FireFox nightlies: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o.../latest-trunk/

(Posting from this morning's FireFox nightly build )

[Cadaver]

The current Camino nightly (3/11/04) looks nice. Haven't used it in a long time.

Still would like to see Apple's spell checker engine integrated in to it, however.

Nightlies can be found at:
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...ightly/latest/

[juanvaldes]

Originally posted by simifilm:
Once you got used to Find As You Type wou will never use anything besides Firefox (Granted: Saft 6.5 brings FAYT to Safari, but it's not free...).

type ahead find is in all mozilla browsers. But people said they would 'always' turn it on by default so to use it in camino hit '/' to activate. You can turn this off in your prefs.js

[plyxrbo]

wow ... just installed the new camino build and i am IMPRESSED ... way faster than firefox or safari on my machine.

could this be the browser i come back to permanently?

[[APi]TheMan]

Originally posted by plyxrbo:
wow ... just installed the new camino build and i am IMPRESSED ... way faster than firefox or safari on my machine.

could this be the browser i come back to permanently?

That's what I thought until I used the newest FireFox nightly and the mozilla 1.7 alpha... they're all nice these days.

Safari is nice and all, but when you have a few (three or four maybe) tabs open and Safari's hidden and you try to foreground it, it usually takes a few seconds of beachballing to bring it back to the front. That's weaksauce.

Mozilla and its derivatives are good stuff.

[Moonray]

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.

You can't say that.

The reliability of a browser does not depend on whether it renders some pages the same way another browser does.

I don't know how that webpage would look correctly, but it is up to the designer of that page to make it work good or bad. As always there is the standardized way and the Microsoft way, and you can't blame a browser if it can't guess what only Microsoft FrontPage and Microsoft Internet Explorer understand and agree about while they interpret the code a way that ensures that correctly written webpages are rendered correctly. (And the ability to use a HTML export function of a Microsoft application does not make a good web designer). Even IE 6 on Windows does not display correct greek characters in the left frame for me.

I don't say that web page contains crappy code, however you can't expect browsers to turn crap to gold, and you can't expect developers of web browsers to re-engineer the export output of every version of Microsoft FrontPage to see how a Microsoft HTML-construct would translate into a standard conforming HTML.

And you can especially not expect non-Windows machines to run

Found in the left frame of that webpage:
<script language="vbscript">

-

[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. Where do I find add-ons, etc. for Camino?

[Pierre B.]

Originally posted by Moonray:
You can't say that.

The reliability of a browser does not depend on whether it renders some pages the same way another browser does.

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.

I don't know how that webpage would look correctly, but it is up to the designer of that page to make it work good or bad.

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 .