Firefox, Safari, or other?

Which do you prefer the most? If other, please note it here.

 

I very much prefer Firefox. It's the best all around browser in my opinion.

 

Firefox for the win. IE is just the worst choice ever, and i've never used Safari since i don't have a Mac. Opera has been said to be faster than FF, but that's only out of the box. If you install Fasterfox you'll see a greater increase in speed than Opera. Others are just too low grade IMO.

 

Opera is where it's at!

 

My favorite is Firefox followed by Camino. I tried Opera on both Windows and Mac and did not like the interface layout although it gets points for it's built-in torrent client.

 

I like Camino over Firefox.

And Safari should be credited as it is a great browser, much better than Microsoft does with IE. But I don't like its heavy brushed metal look, that's why I don't really use Safari.

 

You might want to check out this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=102091

and this:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=80709

 

If you use OS X, give shiira a try. I tend to think firefox slows down over time and it's not really optimized for OS X, feels kind of foreign. Camino is okay i never really go into it but Shiira is a lot of fun to use (you can do expose for your tabs, etc)

 

Firefox, but it's better on Windows than the Mac.

I like Camino, but am too used to the Firefox add-ons to actually use it for anything.

I've just never liked Safari for some reason.

 

On OS X, it was FireFox for me as well. Love the mouse gestures extension.

I thought Safari was alright, although lacking some very essential (to me anyway) options such as to always prompt for where to put a file download and not just dump it in the default folder. I do agree about FF on OS X not feeling quite native though, hopefully that will be improved in the future.

Opera, while very full-featured just felt a bit "heavy" to me, I dunno what it was.

Camino is nice, but the reason I chose FF over it was for the lack of compatibility with existing extensions.

 

Opera works with almost any page, even many of those who are IE-infested

 

I'm interested in trying Camino but am sticking with Firefox for now.

It's all about foxmarks man... snychronised bookmarks on my laptop (OS X) work (XP Pro) and on my USB drive portable firefox version...

It doesnt seem to be possible to do that with Camino so it's no use to me

 

Camino is pretty good, but I use Firefox for my daily surfing.

 

i love safari.

 

safari loves you too.

 

Definitely not an either or question. I have all of the below installed and end up switching between them every other day (way to go consistency eh?):

With the release of Safari 3 beta and webkits, a lot of browsers have started beta/alpha testing for the next release as well.

So far, I've tried the following:

Safari 3: fast, but slightly unstable on certain sites. Certain features which I consider to be vital (bookmark keywords/shortcuts) are severely lacking. The tab interface also lacks many customizable options - and in particular handles google links poorly (google reader, gmail, etc.). Scroll speed is slow too.

Minefield: Being the trunk of Firefox and Gran Paradiso, it's got just about everything they have and more, except stability. Several of the nightly builds had interesting features (bolding of the main domain name - pretty but, no clue what the point of that was). In general, slow and cumbersome in OSX. Slow scroll speed and image rendering. No integration with Keychain or Bonjour. Zoom/maximize button doesn't work right (it follows the Windows default behavior, so I end up having to resize the window manually every 10 minutes). On the other hand, has the largest collection of extensions for any web browser - except most of them don't work for the nightlies, but that's okay. The ONLY browser that supports a history backlog of tabs (Safari does Windows, but that's worthless). However, honestly, I find firefox a bit boring and I have no use whatsoever for 99.99% of the extensions out there. The only real reason I use Minefield at all these days is because the nightly builds are so interesting - you never know what you're going to get!

Camino: Well the browser is fast. Page load-up and whatnot isn't the fastest, but did I mention that the browser itself is fast (scrolling speeds through the roof!!). Great integration with OSX, but no history of tabs (annoying). Not as feature-packed as Firefox.

Shiira: Recommended by Mick, the interface of this thing is amazing. Great integration with OSX, and the semi-transparent windows are quite pretty (if not as feature-packed as firefox). Incredibly fast, with support to match the latest Safari 3 beta for webkits. It's the only browser that offers tab-exposé!!! (what it sounds like - expose except only for the tabs in the browser.) It offers the option of using standard tabs, or a page dock at the bottom of the screen that shows mini-thumbnails of webpages (and doubles as a progress bar that fills up the thumbnail). Unfortunately, each of the two styles has a few drawbacks: 1. there is no way that I've found yet to hide the tab bar when only 1 tab is loaded; and 2. the page dock at the bottom of the screen takes up a ton of real estate, whereas having to open and close the drawer, while not horrible inconvenient, is still annoying. Finally, it appears to lack certain features: such as bookmark keywords and I still haven't found a way to open a location-bar address in a new tab via the keyboard (e.g. like command-enter or alt-enter). I haven't used this for very long yet though, so maybe these issues will find solutions for themselves with more time. Also doesn't work with certain websites, so I'll still need to keep Mozilla's apps around when I need to run those sites.

Omniweb: 5.6 alpha has support for webkits ala Safari3-style. Another pretty browser. Decently fast. Tabs are to the left or right (thumbnails) instead of the top, which is great for real estate. Unfortunately, I keep stuff on both sides of the screen, so having a drawer to take up space on the sides doesn't solve anything - I'd prefer having the option to choose between normal tabs and the drawer (like Shiira). Also, once the drawer is open when you have multiple tabs open, it doesn't auto-close when you close all the tabs except 1. It's the only browser so far outside the Mozilla ones that allows for bookmark shortcuts. On the other hand, Omniweb has a ton of unique features - such as workspaces (it's like bookmarking tab groups, except a lot more), a search bar that lets you enter regular expressions, and more. In fact, the unique features of Omniweb are simply too numerous to list, but taken as a whole, it is probably the single best browser for OSX (although each of the others may beat it in certain areas). It's not the "fastest" browser in terms of loading pages (but its scroll speed is right up there with Camino), but 5.6alpha seems to be much improved in this area. The major downside? It costs $15. Yes that's right. It costs money. Everyone that I've heard who paid has never regretted it, but simply having to pay for a web browser irritates me to no end. In the end though, if for some reason I don't stick with Shiira, I may well end up throwing in the $15.

Opera:For many years, Opera had this "pay for this program or be stuck with permanent ads" feature. Luckily that feature is gone. However, while I find Opera to be a very fast browser (and a pretty one to boot, although not as much so in OSX with competitors like Shiira and OmniWeb around as it was in Windows), it renders many pages quite poorly. It's also quite stubborn about its key bindings - using a default set that is completely different from most of the known variations (ala MSIE, Safari, Mozilla style), although this can be recustomized. In fact, whereas just about everything in Firefox can be extended, just about everything in Opera can be customized. Unfortunately, recent versions tended to be a bit bloated (e-mail? chat? irc?! bitorrent!? what is this...did we return to the days of Netscape bloatware 6.0 or something? I just want a web browser!). * much of my experiences with Opera has been biased with using its Windows version, so I didn't bother to play too much with it in OSX. If something seems completely out of wack with the OSX version, sorry*

It should also be noted that not a single one of these browsers offers complete and full integration with certain sites I use, or allow use of all features in such sites, although the Mozilla ones come closest and have the fewest issues (enough so that it's almost 100% workable).

In short, still on the search for the perfect browser. It's looking like this for now though:
OmniWeb > Shiira > Camino > Minefield > Safari > Opera.

Of course, I will have all of the above installed at any moment anyway...it's just importing the bookmarks and settings each time that gets annoying (although notably, both Shiira and OmniWeb autoimport all Mozilla and Safari bookmarks!).

 

I use firefox optimized for intel-based macs which can be found here:
http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/07/02/firefox-2004

 

I actually tried several builds of firefox optimized for macs (including several pre-release builds as well), although not from that particular site, but while they seemed to be decent, I wasn't really impressed that much. I think at this point, my main incentive for using firefox is the thrill of getting a weird nightly and checking out the new features every day (although half the time nothing really significant ever changes , and os-x optimized builds don't get updated as often.

Thanks for the link though. I'll try it out

 

When I used my Macbook, my favorite browser was Shiira.

Look it up. It's a slick little browser, and as quick as it gets.

 

Why am I getting the feeling we had the exact same conversation yesterday?

 

Firefox, definitely. But like count schemula said, it is better in Windows for some reasons. Hopefully, it gets better.

 

camino ftw

but it has the firefox engine so it's at least equivalent to firefox lol

 

safari 3 crashes MSn messenger. forced me to use adium.

 

LOL, no one's going to try to convince me to buy OW? I'm looking for reaffirmation of my possible decision to spend the $15 here!

Is that a bad thing?

 

If we were talking Windows, I'd agree with you on Firefox. For Windows, it's second to none.

For the Mac, Firefox is way too unstable and slow.

 

It's deja vu all over again.

 

im gona say camino. shiira wont even run on my comp. so i use camino and the only thing i miss about safari is the fast ability to get to your favorites (cmd + #).

 

If you can get used to the tabs on the side all the time, then OmniWeb is an astonishing browser. I have it, and use it sometimes. Unfortunately I'm used to Firefox, so it's not as easy to just use OW as I'd like(just me being stubborn, nothing against OW).

 

I had a lot of crashing issues with Camino. It looked nice and was quick, but if you can't consistently run, then you're off my list.

Sounds pretty similar to your Shiira experience.

 

I use Safari mostly now. I used to use Camino, and I still sometimes use Camino but I've gotten used to the lack of colourful icons on Safari that would normally distract me from the webpage.

 

I use safari 3, if there is a weirdo page I can't get to I have firefox just in case.

 

Every once in an elephant pink moon, I still run into sites (usually government-run sites or sites using some sort of weird script that they refuse to update to get with the times) that use MSIE only. Not even Safari or Opera identified as IE works. Annoying as anything.

Incredibly annoying.

 

Camino for me.

 

I use Safari for my iMac. But, I use mozilla firefox for my PC computer.

 

I have never really liked Safari much, I am a tried and true FF user, both on Mac and Windows.

 

The thing that bugs me about Safari, and a lot of OSX browsers, is the lack of a drop down history on the address bar.

I'm mainly a FireFox user and the drop down address bar is how I do most of my surfing.

 

firefox all the way, i personally give preference to the portable version that can be run off a flash drive.

 

I love Safari. It will always be first and foremost but Firefox comes to the rescue when Safari won't render pages correctly. How is Firefox on Windows better? I've used it on Windows Vista, couldn't tell the difference between Vista and the OS X version.

 

Safari is good, but it always quits (at least in my experience). I'd go with Camino. It's like Firefox optimized for Mac. Shirra looks cool though. So guys, when you do the click for Expose', all your tabs are in it also, easy as that? That's an very alluring feature...something I wish Vista would do with IE 7's tabs.

 

Camino IS FF optimised for mac

 

It's a shame it doesn't work exactly like FireFox, but look like a mac app.

 

It's incredibly fast (on par with Safari, Camino, Shiira, etc. for Macs), both in terms of loading pages and as a program itself. Still can be a resource hog at times though.

Firefox for OSx just is slow and bloated, and doesn't really go well with the rest of the OS.

 

just for fun, open a web page and scroll up and down in safari and then do the same in firefox. you will immediately see a problem.

 

You forgot unstable.

I've never had Firefox crash in Vista. In OSX, I've had FireFox crashes more times than I can count.

 

Better yet, try it in Camino (which scrolls even faster than Safari) vs Firefox.

I couldn't resist and did end up buying OmniWeb though. Was too good a browser to pass up, especially since the new alphas fixed some of my peeves about the older version.

 

I actually use only Minefield now if I want my Mozilla fix, so I can't really say if the instability and frequent crashing I experience is due to the nightly pre-release builds, or if they're still part of Firefox 2.

But yea, it crashes tons

 

It's part of FireFox.

 

one thing i don't get about safari:

why can't i just click on a picture and set it as the wallpaper?

i mean, even internet freaking explorer can do that!

 

Yes you can...

Right click the image and select Use Image as Desktop Picture. Voila!

 

no i can't.

i can save it on the desktop and then go to an additional step of selecting the pix as desktop wallpaper.

i can do that in opera and ff, though.