[besson3c]

Seems like there is a lot of Apple faithful using Firefox and Camino. There are a number of sites Safari has difficulty with, and Safari also has memory leak issues and of course does not support all of the Firefox extensions out there.

Do you think Apple should have put their energy into coming up with a Mozilla Mac derivative? I honestly think that they should have, at this point... I don't care about the browser having Mac form widgets (I think this is silly), but a browser with Apple's name on it should probably represent the best browser offerings available on the Mac. As it stands, this is certainly debatable since Gecko has already been declared the gold standard for W3C compliant web development, and Safari's ability to mimic Mozilla's behavior has been hit and miss. What is the point of one open source rendering engine mimicking another?

[CaptainHaddock]

I've heard anecdotally that the Safari/KHTML code base is newer, leaner, and cleaner than Gecko (Firefox/Camino). That's why we see it being ported to mobile devices and used in Adobe's Apollo, for example.

I've been using Webkit — i.e. a beta build of Safari — for a few months as my main browser, and I think it's ahead of where Firefox is in terms of speed and proper HTML/CSS support. Why they haven't released it yet as Safari 2.5 or 3.0 I don't know, but they should soon.

[mac128k-1984]

I don't know the ins and outs about safari trying to "mimic" gecko, but I really have had little problem with safari (memory leak aside). There maybe a handful of sites that it had a problem with but to be honest I really cannot recall any site that I frequent which does not work for safari.

I do think that Apple needs to stay on the ball and improve its features and fix its bugs but overall I believe the majority of typical of Mac users use safari over anything else.

[zro]

Where did you hear that Safari supports any Firefox extensions? Or even that WebKit it is "mimicking" Gecko? I've never heard of Gecko being used the way WebKit is.

Safari does a perfect job for me. Plus I love running PithHelmet. I've never had one single reason to keep Firefox as my regular browser over anything else. Except Opera. *guhhn*


And yes, Safari has been a success.

[mac128k-1984]

Originally Posted by zro 

Where did you hear that Safari supports any Firefox extensions? Or even that WebKit it is "mimicking" Gecko? I've never heard of Gecko being used the way WebKit is.

I agree this is the first I've heard about mimicking gecko.

I don't use plugins either so the compatability/issues that plugs can bring are not an issue with me.

[macintologist]

At my university, all the Mac lab computers have Safari and Firefox in the dock, but everyone I've seen always clicks on Firefox. Does that have anything to do with the lack of recognition that Safari is the Mac's official web browser?

[JKT]

Given that WebKit was the first to pass the acid2 test I don't see how gecko can be held as the gold standard for meeting the W3C standards. It might be the one that people have started coding for due to its better than IE/higher market share than WebKit standing, but it doesn't mean that it is the most compliant.

[TETENAL]

To understand what is wrong with Gecko, read what Mike Pinkerton, the project leader of Camino, has to say about it:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/pinke...es/017550.html

"Gecko is a liability. The architecture from day one was light years better than what we had (a grad-student project gone horribly wrong), but by no means was it well-designed. The horrible misapplication of COM, misguided pre-optimization, a singular focus on Windows, and a variety of other serious design flaws made Gecko difficult to understand and in some cases impossible to fix. The learning curve is immense (think Mt Everest), just ask my students every year; the look of terror in their eyes is proof enough. Gecko is as impenetrable and bloated as it is fast and compatible. WebKit, on the other hand, is sleek and svelte. It's approachable. It's really easy to fix bugs. If you ask developers which they'd rather work on, the ones who pick Gecko should get their heads examined."

That pretty much sums up why Apple chose KHTML over Gecko. They can develop it faster and easier as can be seen in the nightly builds which support more web standards features than Gecko. Unfortunately Apple releases in very long intervals only.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Seems like there is a lot of Apple faithful using Firefox and Camino.

In the same sense that there are a lot of Windows users on Firefox, but I think pretty much everyone agrees that Explorer is a runaway success. (Actually, that's not fair — Firefox is actually taking a bigger bite out of Explorer. But you get what I'm saying.)

Originally Posted by besson3c 

There are a number of sites Safari has difficulty with

If you're talking about ones that it has trouble with in the latest nightlies and Firefox doesn't, a very small number.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

and Safari also has memory leak issues and of course does not support all of the Firefox extensions out there.

Safari doesn't support all the Firefox extensions out there? Really? Next you're going to tell me that InDesign doesn't support all the Quark Xtensions out there.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Do you think Apple should have put their energy into coming up with a Mozilla Mac derivative?

No. Apple is one of the few companies that actually understands how vital code usability is. Better to have a codebase that needs a few improvements but is also really easy to improve than a codebase that works pretty well but will take you ages before you can reasonably change anything. It also wouldn't necessarily fix any of your gripes above, with the exception of the compatibility one (which, again, hasn't been much of a problem for me with recent nightlies).

EDIT: Thank you to TETENAL. I was looking for that Pinkerton post, but I couldn't find it.

[kmkkid]

Well it pisses me off that I can't load the new Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail pages in Safari. Anyone know if 3.0 is going to have the features necessary to load these pages?

[mduell]

Gecko has some technical issues and cruft, but it also has enough momentum that sites are designed to work with it. WebKit/KHTML is a bit nicer/cleaner, but it's such a marginal player that many sites, including big ones, don't test against it and can even cause it to crash (CBS sports, some Dodge site, etc).

[rickey939]

Yes.

[allblue]

It was actually the introduction of Safari that finally tipped me into upgrading my G3 iMac to my current G4 as the G3's 192 ram couldn't really handle OSX, hence I couldn't get Safari for it. I think it's great, very much a Mac app. Like zro, I find PithHelmet indispensable, I remember when there was a Safari update which broke PH and it took a few days for it to catch up - it was a nightmare! Flashing lights and things running all over the screen - it's a jungle out there! AcidSearch is a very useful augmentation as well.
There are some issues certainly, although as I'm still on Panther I'm stuck on 1.3.2. Sometimes when it has been up for a long time and very busy it has difficulty quitting, on one occasion it actually managed to freeze the whole system requiring a Windows style power button scenario (how rare is that in OSX!), so I do resort to Force Quit if it looks like it's struggling.
It couldn't get to https sites, then it could, now it can't again, so I keep Camino on the subs bench just for that purpose.
Video on YouTube is almost unwatchable as it keeps sticking, although Google video plays perfectly. Still love it though.
Has it been a success? From my point of view, yes, absolutely.

[Dakarʒ]

Originally Posted by rickey939 

Yes.

Concise.

[CharlesS]

I think Safari's compatibility problems are really overstated. I've run into one or two site here and there, but it's rare - the vast majority of sites work fine. And of course the engine is going to keep on improving as time goes by.

I don't understand why some people think that every browser needs to use the exact same rendering engine. Competition == good, and it causes web designers to pay more attention to using standards rather than writing to IE's bugs (or to Gecko's bugs, which I'm sure would happen if everyone were using Gecko).

[hmurchison2001]

I switched from Firefox to Safari.

My reasoning was simple. Firefox on Mac isn't that hot of a browser and I don't use extensions all that much.

I figure that my work in developing an extensive bookmark list would be better served in Safari and judging from what I've seen with version 3 coming in Leoparda, I think I've made the right decision.

[Rumor]

I've used Safari, Camino and Firefox. Firefox was sub-par, IMO. Camino was better, but still didn't load as fast a Safari. The only website I really ever have a problem with is MySpace, but the problem persist on all three browsers, which means it's just an issue with the **** coding of myspace.

[ashrjordan]

I prefer Safari myself, Firefox i think, just seems to ruin the flow of the nice metalic clean appearance of the rest of the mac apps.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Dakarʒ 

Concise.

Indeed.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Gecko has some technical issues and cruft, but it also has enough momentum that sites are designed to work with it. WebKit/KHTML is a bit nicer/cleaner, but it's such a marginal player that many sites, including big ones, don't test against it and can even cause it to crash (CBS sports, some Dodge site, etc).

Exactly... Being completely pragmatic about it, Firefox is the alternative browser standard.

I've heard all the arguments in here before and I understand them, but at the end of the day a nice code base doesn't do much to Joe Apple user when several popular applications don't work properly with it. And, this is not all developer laziness. In some cases, there are outstanding Safari bugs (some fixed in the Nightlies).

We could go back and forth about which is more compliant and which browser passes which tests, but the Mozilla team is targeting W3C standards, so it is on the winning side of this conflict. Seeing that it is the standard and simultaneously open source, I just don't think Apple is doing its customers a favor providing them with a non-standard browser that is not the most compatible out of the available options. At the very least, they could have included Firefox with new Macs.

Apple should have either opened up the Safari GUI and framework in addition to the rendering engine to allow a Windows port, or spend their resources fixing the shortcomings of Gecko and building a Mac browser around this engine.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by allblue 

It was actually the introduction of Safari that finally tipped me into upgrading my G3 iMac to my current G4 as the G3's 192 ram couldn't really handle OSX, hence I couldn't get Safari for it. I think it's great, very much a Mac app. Like zro, I find PithHelmet indispensable, I remember when there was a Safari update which broke PH and it took a few days for it to catch up - it was a nightmare! Flashing lights and things running all over the screen - it's a jungle out there! AcidSearch is a very useful augmentation as well.
There are some issues certainly, although as I'm still on Panther I'm stuck on 1.3.2. Sometimes when it has been up for a long time and very busy it has difficulty quitting, on one occasion it actually managed to freeze the whole system requiring a Windows style power button scenario (how rare is that in OSX!), so I do resort to Force Quit if it looks like it's struggling.
It couldn't get to https sites, then it could, now it can't again, so I keep Camino on the subs bench just for that purpose.
Video on YouTube is almost unwatchable as it keeps sticking, although Google video plays perfectly. Still love it though.
Has it been a success? From my point of view, yes, absolutely.

I got sick of PithHelmet and Saft breaking all the time with Safari updates. At least Mozilla provides a roadmap for its releases and provides developers time to update their extensions. I've never had the same sort of problems with Firefox's Ad Block extension.

I understand Apple's desire for secrecy, but when there are third party developers who need to know about future releases and how to prepare for them, why can't Apple cater to them? When was the last astounding Safari innovation anyway? It's just a damn web browser, Apple doesn't need to be hush hush about point releases!

If this is misguided and misdirected, I apologize, but it seems as if this is the way Apple works in this regard.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

I think Safari's compatibility problems are really overstated. I've run into one or two site here and there, but it's rare - the vast majority of sites work fine. And of course the engine is going to keep on improving as time goes by.

I don't understand why some people think that every browser needs to use the exact same rendering engine. Competition == good, and it causes web designers to pay more attention to using standards rather than writing to IE's bugs (or to Gecko's bugs, which I'm sure would happen if everyone were using Gecko).

Well, for starters, there is a long list of CMSes that use the TinyMCE toolbar which doesn't work in Safari (Apple's fault, this is fixed in a nightly). There are many applications that do not support Safari, or at least do not recognize Safari as a compatible browser in browser checks.

It pisses me off to no end when I come across sites that require IE, or sites that do not support alternate browsers for no great reason. However, when these same sites work in Firefox, I wonder whether there are bugs or shortcomings in Safari that prevent it from being supported. It should be low dangling fruit once you've supported Mozilla. In fact, Apple would be smart to mimic Firefox's level of compatibility and behavior as closely as it can so that there is absolutely no barrier to including Safari in your list of supported browsers once you've de-IEized your site and provided Gecko support.

In my own programming, I've come across a few Javascript routines that worked in Firefox and not in Safari. I don't have examples I can reproduce on demand to share though...

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by ashrjordan 

I prefer Safari myself, Firefox i think, just seems to ruin the flow of the nice metalic clean appearance of the rest of the mac apps.

Is the appearance of the frame which webpages load in really as important to you as the other variables that can make or break a browser?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Well, for starters, there is a long list of CMSes that use the TinyMCE toolbar which doesn't work in Safari (Apple's fault, this is fixed in a nightly).

Great example.

[hmurchison2001]

This thread seems tantamount to

"I like Firefox..why couldn't Apple choose my favorite engine?"

If Gecko was more efficient and compatible Adobe wouldn't have chosen it over Webkit for Apollo. End of story.

Safari's done well in only 2 generations. Version 3 should reduce most of the niggling problems I have today at any rate.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Great example.

It remains a great example as long as the version of Safari downloaded through Software Update still has this problem. You can argue that it took Apple longer than it should have to fix this too.

[EndlessMac]

It depends on how you define successful. Like Microsoft's IE, Safari is preloaded without having the competition preloaded also. There are many casual Mac users who don' t even know about Firefox or other alternatives. These people use Safari just because it's there. If most people who know about alternatives choose to use Safari instead then I would say that it's successful.

[TheoCryst]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Apple should have either opened up the Safari GUI and framework in addition to the rendering engine to allow a Windows port...

I think that's a spectacular idea, actually. It can't really hurt Mac sales, and it can only help make Safari a more viable browser - an increase in marketshare will undoubtedly result in improved compatibility overall, and the only way to get significant marketshare is to appeal to the enormous majority of computer users (read: Windows users). After all, how many sites were incompatible with Firefox a few years ago, compared to today?

[hmurchison2001]

Occams Razor

If web developers would just adhere to "Web Standards" there'd be no need to have a Safari for multiple platforms.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001 

Occams Razor

If web developers would just adhere to "Web Standards" there'd be no need to have a Safari for multiple platforms.

It's not that simple. Javascript interpretation is rather complicated, AJAX is a hack, and designing complicated web applications sometimes results in a developer doing everything by the book and the application flat out not working due to browser bugs, shortcomings, and quirks.

[monkeybrain]

Why doesn't Apple just get all these fixes they've made in the nightlies and put them into a Safari 2.5 release? The only reason I can think of is because they want to save stuff for Leopard and use it as another 'new' feature.

Also, does anyone know why the 'Search with Google' command is disabled in the Webkit nightly?

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by monkeybrain 

Why doesn't Apple just get all these fixes they've made in the nightlies and put them into a Safari 2.5 release?

My guess: It's because WebKit hasn't been in a production-quality state for a while. They're currently trying to get it there for Leopard.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

In fact, Apple would be smart to mimic Firefox's level of compatibility and behavior as closely as it can so that there is absolutely no barrier to including Safari in your list of supported browsers once you've de-IEized your site and provided Gecko support.

Why de-IEize your site just to Firefoxize it? If we're just going to "mimic" someone rather than implement the standards, may as well be the market leader.

Seriously, I hope your argument doesn't boil down to "Let's make Firefox into another IE."

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Apple should have either opened up the Safari GUI and framework in addition to the rendering engine to allow a Windows port

Making a Cocoa GUI open-source isn't going to help that much.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

or spend their resources fixing the shortcomings of Gecko and building a Mac browser around this engine.

Just because you've got a hard-on for Firefox or what? They considered this. They looked at the possibilities and decided that KHTML's shortcomings were easier to fix than Gecko's, because KHTML was a far more stable foundation to begin with. I mean, the creator of Safari is the same guy who made Camino and Firefox. He knows his ****. I don't feel qualified to argue with him. Honestly, do you?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Why de-IEize your site just to Firefoxize it? If we're just going to "mimic" someone rather than implement the standards, may as well be the market leader.

Seriously, I hope your argument doesn't boil down to "Let's make Firefox into another IE."

No, my argument was to provide a parity of compatibility between Firefox and Safari

Making a Cocoa GUI open-source isn't going to help that much.

What framework was used for iTunes?

Just because you've got a hard-on for Firefox or what? They considered this. They looked at the possibilities and decided that KHTML's shortcomings were easier to fix than Gecko's, because KHTML was a far more stable foundation to begin with. I mean, the creator of Safari is the same guy who made Camino and Firefox. He knows his ****. I don't feel qualified to argue with him. Honestly, do you?

The rationale I heard for going with KHTML was that it would be easier to put together into both Safari, Webkit, and provided a better option for Apple's web page rendering engine framework. This may be true, but what is sacrificed is that Apple's customers have to deal with a web browser that is less compatible. Perhaps Apple underestimated the task of making Safari work with the web, I don't know.

My argument here is based on the implications of the decision, not on the technical merits of developing using one rendering engine over the other in order to fulfill Apple's goals.

I guess this argument is not terribly strong though. On thinking about this some more, perhaps it is best not to try to characterize the decision as a success or failure, but to question whether Apple has carried out their plan as well as they could, and whether Safari has realized its potential.

[rehoot]

I use Safari, but I sometimes have problems with videos, such as Yahoo news videos (which are mostly junk anyway). Sometimes the problem is the settings for the web site or a battle between .wmv and .mov format.

I keep a copy of Firefox for emergencies. I did find some sites that did not work in Safari (about 6 months ago) that worked in Firefox, but it was because the security certificate had expired. It is probably good that Safari didn't display the page, but it could have shown a better error message (not sure if this has changed since then).

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

No, my argument was to provide a parity of compatibility between Firefox and Safari

Both should aim for maximum compatibility, in my personal opinion. They should not settle for being consistently noncompliant like Explorer.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

What framework was used for iTunes?

Obviously I don't have access to the source, but I've heard it's QuickTime and a subset of Carbon.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

The rationale I heard for going with KHTML was that it would be easier to put together into both Safari, Webkit, and provided a better option for Apple's web page rendering engine framework.

Here is what Apple told the KHTML devs when they selected that engine:

Not only were [KHTML and KJS] the basis of an excellent modern and standards compliant web browser, they were also less than 140,000 lines of code. The size of your code and ease of development within that code made it a better choice for us than other open source projects. Your clean design was also a plus.

So yeah, they basically felt that Konqueror was much more malleable to Apple's will than Mozilla. Neither was exactly what Apple wanted, and KHTML may have been less far along, but Apple could move KHTML much faster than Gecko.

Originally Posted by besson3c 

On thinking about this some more, perhaps it is best not to try to characterize the decision as a success or failure, but to question whether Apple has carried out their plan as well as they could, and whether Safari has realized its potential.

I think that is a better question. If you ask me, the answer is that Safari has not realized its potential, nor has Mozilla. It's a pretty good competition. WebKit has progressed much further in the time it's been around than Mozilla has, and people are starting to respect it. It's not going to supplant Firefox, but the fact that there's more than one standards-compliant implementation of the Web is a very good thing. And like I've said, for most purposes, I prefer Safari.

[hldan]

I love Safari too but at the end of the day I need a very low drama browser on my desktop and Safari is number one on the list for highest drama. I'm tired of being on MySpace and page scrolling is like squeezing cold honey out of a bottle. I'm also tired of some websites not viewing correctly in Safari. As soon as I click on Firefox nearly all of my drama is over. Firefox addresses all of those issues without a hitch.

I just ignore those sites that recommend using Internet Explorer when they realize that you're not. They work just fine with Firefox and sometimes Safari. Unless the site is based upon active x controls (which is rare) well Intel Mac users are in luck using Codeweavers but PPC Macs are out of luck.
That being said, since I had to reformat my hard disk I decided to start out fresh and use Firefox as my default browser (using a nice aesthetic theme) and let Safari go for now until version 3 comes out in Leopard.

[Gamoe]

I remember the dark days before Safari. I used the cursed Netscape Communicator for way too long. But it was the only alternative to IE, and I wasn't going to use IE, if only not to support Microsoft in its quest for totalitarian dominance.

If I remember correctly, Firefox (Firebird) was not nearly as mature as it is today and there were no other serious alternatives to IE. I remember one of the lead guys for Firefox blasting Apple for not using Gecko for Safari's core, goings as far as to say that it was a "slap in the face to Mozilla developers'.

I don't see it that was at all. Safari was needed at the time, and I find it fortuitous that Apple chose another, very capable and comparable rendering engine for it, because now we have two great browsers using two different rendering engines, and I for one, think variety and alternatives are generally good things. I find in practice that a lot of sites which don't work well with Firefox work well with Safari, and visa-versa. I think it's great that we have two stable, relatively mature rendering engines around to choose from!

So yes, I think Safari has been a success within its purpose and even beyond.

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

It pisses me off to no end when I come across sites that require IE, or sites that do not support alternate browsers for no great reason. However, when these same sites work in Firefox, I wonder whether there are bugs or shortcomings in Safari that prevent it from being supported. It should be low dangling fruit once you've supported Mozilla.

You're blaming the browser for web sites that are doing user-agent checks for IE and/or Firefox?

Originally Posted by besson3c 

This may be true, but what is sacrificed is that Apple's customers have to deal with a web browser that is less compatible.

Have to? Last time I checked, Firefox and Camino were still available as a free download for you to use if Safari wasn't suiting your needs.

What would be pointless IMO would be if Apple had spent its development resources creating yet another Gecko browser when we've already got two of them that work just fine. What is wrong with Camino and Firefox that a Gecko Safari would do better?

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

What is wrong with Camino and Firefox that a Gecko Safari would do better?

I guess he is sort of complaining that Apple's development resources don't flow into Gecko.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Have to? Last time I checked, Firefox and Camino were still available as a free download for you to use if Safari wasn't suiting your needs.

What would be pointless IMO would be if Apple had spent its development resources creating yet another Gecko browser when we've already got two of them that work just fine. What is wrong with Camino and Firefox that a Gecko Safari would do better?

How many novice users are going to know to do this? Maybe Apple ought to bundle one of these browsers with new Macs?

[hmurchison2001]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

How many novice users are going to know to do this? Maybe Apple ought to bundle one of these browsers with new Macs?

Because it doesn't give Apple control over the user experience. I don't understand the fascination with Firefox. I used it on my PC for a long time I enjoyed it but the Firefox experience on Macs isn't as good IMO.

Clearly Apple serious about web support. They just joined the HTML Working Group and Safari 3 looks to have support for almost everything we need.

I don't think the compatibility issues have really reared their heads all that bad. Most of the people in this thread don't seem to have major compatibility problems.

Not being able to access Dodge.com ....not much of an issue. Not being able to access your online bank website ...issue.

If someone wants a Gecko browser it's a simple download and install away. I don't think Apple should be including Browsers that aren't fully Mac like. Firefox looks like a bad PC port.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001 

Because it doesn't give Apple control over the user experience. I don't understand the fascination with Firefox. I used it on my PC for a long time I enjoyed it but the Firefox experience on Macs isn't as good IMO.

Clearly Apple serious about web support. They just joined the HTML Working Group and Safari 3 looks to have support for almost everything we need.

I don't think the compatibility issues have really reared their heads all that bad. Most of the people in this thread don't seem to have major compatibility problems.

Not being able to access Dodge.com ....not much of an issue. Not being able to access your online bank website ...issue.

If someone wants a Gecko browser it's a simple download and install away. I don't think Apple should be including Browsers that aren't fully Mac like. Firefox looks like a bad PC port.

In a perfect world, Firefox would be a beautiful Mac port (and of course, there is always Camino). However, to me not being able to access major sites is a show stopping problem. All the usability in the world does not matter if you are affected by a problem of this nature.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

In a perfect world, Firefox would be a beautiful Mac port (and of course, there is always Camino). However, to me not being able to access major sites is a show stopping problem. All the usability in the world does not matter if you are affected by a problem of this nature.

Then go yell at the Firefox team about supporting ActiveX, because Firefox has this "show-stopping problem" as well!

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by Chuckit 

Then go yell at the Firefox team about supporting ActiveX, because Firefox has this "show-stopping problem" as well!

There is nothing that can be done about this problem though, since ActiveX is closed and complicated to reverse engineer. Safari can be made to work in an identical fashion to Firefox with these kinds of apps, I'm certain of it. They even have access to the Firefox code base if they want to pour over how Firefox managed this feat.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by hmurchison2001 

If someone wants a Gecko browser it's a simple download and install away. I don't think Apple should be including Browsers that aren't fully Mac like. Firefox looks like a bad PC port.

I would disagree with that. Firefox looks the same on every OS - Linux, OS X, Windows...it uses its own skinning engine that is independent of the OS. If you install it and use its default skin, it looks identical on every OS, aside from possibly different system fonts. There are plenty of OS X/Aqua skins for Firefox if that's your only complaint.

In using IE, Firefox, Camino, Safari, and a couple other small-time browsers on my slow-as-molasses 466MHz G3/320MB RAM iBook, Safari definitely loads faster (the app itself, not the pages I access), but I just cannot give up the number of extensions I have in Firefox. I use roughly 25 extensions in Firefox on a regular basis, to the point where there is no replacement for them in any other browser.

If Apple wants to keep the interface of Safari, it would benefit them to provide compatibility with Firefox extensions. As I have experienced with other Apple products (iTunes and iPhoto come to mind), ultimate UI simplicity is not always the best choice.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

Safari can be made to work in an identical fashion to Firefox with these kinds of apps, I'm certain of it.

First and foremost Safari should be made to work correctly according to the standards. There needs to be a quirks mode in a web browser, yes, but in most cases it makes more sense probably to mimick IE than Firefox. In either case, coding websites for Firefox is as wrong as coding for IE.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

There are plenty of OS X/Aqua skins for Firefox if that's your only complaint.

A different "skin" is not what differentiates different operating systems and a bad skin is not the only thing that is wrong with Firefox on Mac. It's the lack of support for features that make the Mac special. And Firefox' multi-platform nature will always make support for such special features weak (on all platforms).

If Apple wants to keep the interface of Safari, it would benefit them to provide compatibility with Firefox extensions.

That's an impossibility since the Firefox extensions rely on Firefox's UI system.

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I would disagree with that. Firefox looks the same on every OS - Linux, OS X, Windows...it uses its own skinning engine that is independent of the OS. If you install it and use its default skin, it looks identical on every OS, aside from possibly different system fonts. There are plenty of OS X/Aqua skins for Firefox if that's your only complaint.

In using IE, Firefox, Camino, Safari, and a couple other small-time browsers on my slow-as-molasses 466MHz G3/320MB RAM iBook, Safari definitely loads faster (the app itself, not the pages I access), but I just cannot give up the number of extensions I have in Firefox. I use roughly 25 extensions in Firefox on a regular basis, to the point where there is no replacement for them in any other browser.

If Apple wants to keep the interface of Safari, it would benefit them to provide compatibility with Firefox extensions. As I have experienced with other Apple products (iTunes and iPhoto come to mind), ultimate UI simplicity is not always the best choice.

Good points here.

As usual, it seems that Apple has concentrated effort on creating a little bubble for new users, and in doing so making the product much less valuable to those that want to leave this bubble.

This design approach makes sense for iLife and a number of other Apple apps, but I question its wisdom with a web browser. PithHelmet and Saft and the like are hacks, difficult to install and maintain, break between releases, etc. It seems futile trying to make Safari more than it is designed to be.

However, web browsing is a very personal thing. You don't have to be an uber-geek to install a Firefox extension and use it, it is about as complicated as installing a dashboard widget. Why not make Safari robust enough so that it can be used by a wide variety of users? If the rendering engine is really the most complicated part of the browser and the UI comparatively pretty simple to manage, why not make the UI a little more robust, especially if it can be neatly separated from Webkit? Throw the advanced features in the advanced pane in preferences, I don't care. Most novice users probably don't play with this options anyway, they just turn the key and go.

Shulfiman: just out of curiosity, which extensions are you using right now?

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by TETENAL 

A different "skin" is not what differentiates different operating systems and a bad skin is not the only thing that is wrong with Firefox on Mac. It's the lack of support for features that make the Mac special. And Firefox' multi-platform nature will always make support for such special features weak (on all platforms).That's an impossibility since the Firefox extensions rely on Firefox's UI system.

It's just a web browser. I'll grant you that bookmarks management is important and can be improved, but the web browsing interface is just not all that complex. For most people, it's just turn the key and go. What else (other than bookmarks) suffers greatly not being a poster child Mac app UI wise?

I'll grant you that many Firefox extensions also have clumsy UIs that are not very Mac like, but I'd prefer that over not having them at all.

I disagree strongly that form widgets on websites should look like OS X GUI controls, and even then the only real arguments I've heard in favor of OS X style form widgets are just aesthetic reasons.