switcher needs browser advice

elvedon · Feb 16, 2005

Hi,

I just switched from Windows to a Mac, and the only thing I miss is the way Firefox used to behave. I can't figure out what to do to get a browser I genuinely love.

First of all, Safari. I know a lot of people like it, and I tried to, but I hate it. It sticks and takes a ridiculously long time to load pages. I like the way it looks, the way the tabs function, etc., and could get a along with it just fine if it actually loaded pages swiftly. I have no idea how to fix that or if it's even possible.

Obviously not IE.

Firefox acts up on my mac. Sure, it's just as fast as it was on my PC, but eh. The themes won't skin properly, the extensions I cherished (TBE, for example) don't work properly, and generally it's just a big clunky headache compared to the other applications I've started to get used to. Sure, I miss my gmail notifier and the insanely useful Adblock and Sage RSS, and SuperDrag&Go, but all the other extensions I don't miss at all.

I've just tried Camino, and while it loads pages beautifully, it's not very pretty or very customizable, and the back/forward buttons only work half the time.

My choices seem to be: a sticky nightmare (Safari), a tchotche-filled mac-unfriendly ex flame (Firefox), or fast but user-unfriendly blandness (Camino). I'm really, really unhappy.

Any advice on what I can do to restore my former browsing bliss?

mkrishnan · Feb 16, 2005

There are so many threads on this general topic, that, ugh, please just search for them? But on the specific issue of TBE not working on your Mac, what do you mean? This sounds abnormal. I use FF and love it on my Mac. And I have TBE, and it works fine. The only thing that's flaky for me in TBE is closing FF and re-starting and having tabs resurrected on restart. That has never worked properly for me on PC or Mac. But TBE behaves the same for me on both OSes.

OTOH, I definitely do agree that a number of themes behave strangely on FF/Mac. Try Safarish -- http://www.aroussi.com/article/11/firefox-osx-safari-look -- if you like the way Safari *looks*. NOIA Xtreme worked pretty well for me on my Mac too.

quidire · Feb 16, 2005

I use OmniWeb 5.1 - yes, it is not free after a trial period, but it is the "power user's" browser.

Give it a go, see how you like it. They have educational discounts; its $30, $20 if you are a student.

It really is amazing.
Oh, and other than being a happy customer, I'm not affliated w/ Omnigroup

-RS

Brize · Feb 16, 2005

elvedon said:
First of all, Safari. I know a lot of people like it, and I tried to, but I hate it. It sticks and takes a ridiculously long time to load pages.

Try SafariSpeed to reduce the time it takes to load pages. It's free, and you'll likely notice a vast improvement.

elvedon · Feb 16, 2005

Brize said:
Try SafariSpeed to reduce the time it takes to load pages. It's free, and you'll likely notice a vast improvement.

SafariSpeed definitely did the trick! Thanks for your help. Why would they have incorporated a delay in page load on purpose?

I've tweaked Camino some so it works better, and since they seem pretty much the same except for some differences in appearance, I'll probably play around with them for a while and decide.

The Safarish theme suggested is still very buggy (e.g., the find bar is huge), so it looks like I'll be ditching Firefox and just picking up a RSS reader. By "TBE doesn't work properly" I mean that half of the options don't show up in preferences.

mkrishnan · Feb 16, 2005

elvedon said:
The Safarish theme suggested is still very buggy (e.g., the find bar is huge), so it looks like I'll be ditching Firefox and just picking up a RSS reader. By "TBE doesn't work properly" I mean that half of the options don't show up in preferences.

Hmmmm...that sounds like somewhere there is a corrupt file, or something strange. I get the same option set in Win2k and in MacOS. But at any rate, Safari is a good browser, and I hope you enjoy it. Another couple of Safari hints:

If you haven't already, try PithHelmet, which is, to me, not quite as nice as AdBlock, but gives you many of the same features, and AcidSearch , which to me, is in some ways nicer than FF search bar customization (you can re-order the search options in the pull-down, which for me, is in-and-of-itself awesome).

DaiKirai · Feb 16, 2005

For Firefox, is there a reason you're using Tabbrowser Extensions and not Tabbrowser Preferences?

mkrishnan · Feb 16, 2005

DaiKirai said:
For Firefox, is there a reason you're using Tabbrowser Extensions and not Tabbrowser Preferences?

Oooh, love your screenname, btw.

Yes there is: because there were some specific features in TBE that were not in TBP that I wanted. When I got FF 1.0, I installed TBP because TBE wasn't in the extensionroom anymore (because it was deprecated), but I didn't find everything I wanted in it, so I canned it and googled TBE out of hiding.

That was the main reason. And the only other extension I use is AdBlock, so I haven't seen any extension-extension grousing. But maybe I need to take another look at TBP at some point and see if I indeed want to play by the rules and migrate.

TBE is still active, running through the night like a guerilla soldier. It was updated in mid-January, at least.

EDIT: Hehehe, sorry, I thought you were asking me, but it makes more sense if you're asking the OP.

I don't want to sound patronizing, but you didn't get TBP by accident when you installed FF on your Mac, because TBE is not in the extensionroom, did you? That would explain why a lot of the options are missing.

But it sounds like you know too much to get caught by that one.

heaven · Feb 16, 2005

I'm using Firefox and l love it. Try them all out and decide which one you like better!

Enjoy your mac!

daveL · Feb 16, 2005

Well SafariSpeed works great, but PithHelmet crashed Safari when I went to CNN.com. I noticed PithHelmet hasn't been updated since 10.3.8 came out, so maybe that's the problem. Thanks for the tips!

bousozoku · Feb 16, 2005

I'm using Firefox with adblock right now and it seems to work fine, despite the fact that the page says it's not available for version 1.0+. I changed that to 1.0 and got the version that works.

Also, you might try Shiira. It uses the back-end that Safari and OmniWeb use to render pages and run JavaScript but it has its own distinct look.

DaiKirai · Feb 16, 2005

mkrishnan said:
I don't want to sound patronizing, but you didn't get TBP by accident when you installed FF on your Mac, because TBE is not in the extensionroom, did you? That would explain why a lot of the options are missing. But it sounds like you know too much to get caught by that one.

Yeah, that's it. The comments in the extensionroom seemed to claim that TBP had exactly the same features, but was less buggy. I guess they were wrong.

The only part of it I use is the forcing of new windows to open as new tabs instead, so there wasn't any visible difference to me.

mkrishnan · Feb 16, 2005

DaiKirai said:
Yeah, that's it. The comments in the extensionroom seemed to claim that TBP had exactly the same features, but was less buggy. I guess they were wrong.

The only part of it I use is the forcing of new windows to open as new tabs instead, so there wasn't any visible difference to me.

On Windows, but not Mac, I've seen some bugginess with TBE where it will sometimes fail to implement its prefs correctly on startup, so that close buttons aren't where they're supposed to be, single-window-mode doesn't work, etc, and restarting FF is required. I don't think I've seen this on my Mac. I'm not sure to be honest, though, how true all this is. The last time I tried TBP, it did not have all the features TBE did.

But when I was talking about accidentally getting TBP, I was wondering if the OP might have done that, and thought TBE was missing a lot of prefs on the Mac. But unlikely.

reh · Feb 16, 2005

daveL said:
Well SafariSpeed works great, but PithHelmet crashed Safari when I went to CNN.com. I noticed PithHelmet hasn't been updated since 10.3.8 came out, so maybe that's the problem. Thanks for the tips!

Use PithHelmet version 0.7.3. The latest versions don't work well. Always crashing, slowing down safari... ugh.

madmaxmedia · Feb 16, 2005

What changes did you make with Camino? That's the one I use. I actually prefer that it is very simple looking, rather lots of fruity icons.

I am fine with Safari too. I'm looking forward to the Mac-optimized (Aqua) Firefox, although Firefox takes longer to start up than the other 2.

daveL · Feb 17, 2005

reh said:
Use PithHelmet version 0.7.3. The latest versions don't work well. Always crashing, slowing down safari... ugh.

Thanks, I'll try that!

daveL · Feb 17, 2005

reh said:
Use PithHelmet version 0.7.3. The latest versions don't work well. Always crashing, slowing down safari... ugh.

I tried it and still no joy; it actually crashed sooner than when I used the latest version. Oh well.

Search

Search

switcher needs browser advice

elvedon

macrumors newbie

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus

quidire

macrumors 6502

Brize

macrumors 6502a

elvedon

macrumors newbie

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus

DaiKirai

macrumors member

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus

heaven

macrumors 6502a

daveL

macrumors 68020

bousozoku

Moderator emeritus

DaiKirai

macrumors member

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus

reh

macrumors 6502a

madmaxmedia

macrumors 68030

daveL

macrumors 68020

daveL

macrumors 68020

Our Staff