Alternative browsers

[ifjake]

i've just recently taken a stab at other browsers. Firefox works great on this here Windows machine that the rest of my family uses (poor, poor people), but i see at the Mozilla website there's this Cocoa based "Camino" browser they made especially for Mac. which is interesting i guess. i was just curious to know what some people with experience with multiple alternative browsers including Camino think of the selection that's there. i'm starting to consider switching browsers, i'm just wondering which ones are the most supported. Firefox seemed a little quicker than Safari on my Mac. i haven't even tried Camino. and who knows the rumored speedier Safari update might convince me to stay with it.

[crees!]

It's Safari hands down for me. No ifs, ands, or buts.

[Chaszmyr]

imo, Safari and Firefox are the only two mac browsers worth using... They both have their strengths.. Personally i use safari most, but I do like Firefox

[Makosuke]

Camino was a spectacular browser; it has pretty much all the features of Safari, a few Safari doesn't have, feels more Mac-like than Firefox, is VERY fast, and since it uses the Mozilla project's Gecko rendering engine, it produces nice looking pages.

Unfortunately, there's a weird bug with the text rendering engine in 10.3 (at least in .3.0 through .3.3) that causes Camino to be more trouble than it's worth for Panther users at this point--there are enough rendering glitches to make it between annoying and useless depending on the page (though it works fine 80% of the time).

I still use it out of force of inertia (and the latest nightly builds are quite nice), but I'd probably go with Safari or Firefox at this point.

You might have a look at Opera 7.5, too--it has some very nice features and a decent rendering engine of its own.

[superbovine]

beside safari, firefox is great. although internet explorer is always good to keep around. there is always some website that needs ie.

[ifjake]

there is always some website that needs ie.
yeah i hate that. that needs to stop.

[mms]

OmniWeb is pretty nice. I've tried the beta and I like it, though I wouldn't pay for a browser when we have Safari. I don't really like FireFox, takes too much time to start. I haven't used Camino in a while (used to use it in Jaguar, but quit when I heard about probems with Panther) but it was my primary browser for a long time.

[abhishekit]

i also second firefox..also have opera, although hardly ever use it. i uninstalled IE long back.. :p

cheers

[Kevlar]

The latest build of camino is awsome. I use it everyday and for xml things I am forced to use firefox since safari and camino both screw them up.

[tjwett]

OmniWeb 5 will set the new standard.

http://www.omnigroup.com

[stevietheb]

Currently playing with the beta of OmniWeb 5. Quite frankly, once little tiny bugs get fixed--it will rule the world.

Anyone know when it will be officially released?

[wrldwzrd89]

Currently playing with the beta of OmniWeb 5. Quite frankly, once little tiny bugs get fixed--it will rule the world.

Anyone know when it will be officially released?
I'm an OmniWeb fan, although I use Safari as my primary browser. I've also tried Mozilla for Mac and liked it - I just wish it had a feature that could block Flash and other embedded content on a site-by-site basis (I hate Flash ads!).

[tace]

Do you mean alternative to Firefox? Camino was fun for about 2 seconds. Mozilla is a beast. IE is one big security hole. So, I have switched to Firefox both at work (Windoze) and at home for the last year and a half, with little to no need for IE or anyother. Unfortunately, working for a web software firm, I don't understand anyone's fascination with Safari.

[wrldwzrd89]

Do you mean alternative to Firefox? Camino was fun for about 2 seconds. Mozilla is a beast. IE is one big security hole. So, I have switched to Firefox both at work (Windoze) and at home for the last year and a half, with little to no need for IE or anyother. Unfortunately, working for a web software firm, I don't understand anyone's fascination with Safari.
You can't be serious! If you work for a web software firm and you want to ensure that your site works on Macs, you MUST test on Safari - there's no way around it. Do you not like Safari for some reason? I agree with you regarding IE - it's terrible. I've never tried Camino or Firefox, and I don't mind the fact that Mozilla is large and slow to launch.

[tace]

:confused:
Let me get this right. You never tried Firefox but you think Safari is great and all web software needs to work with Safari? A) Safari doesn't have much of a market share. Which means it is not feasible for most small companies to certify against. B) It doesn't even support things like tabbed browsing. C) From the point of view of SW companies they test against IE becuase of its market share, and Mozilla variants, because they are proven and accepted cross platform open source. Also, cross platform is a major word there. Even IE supports more than 1 platform, or at least it did.

[stevietheb]

I think the point was that many people with macs just go for Safari, and therefore, when developing, one should test with Safari in addition to others.

Second,Safari doesn't support tabbed browsing? News to me.

:confused:
Let me get this right. You never tried Firefox but you think Safari is great and all web software needs to work with Safari? A) Safari doesn't have much of a market share. Which means it is not feasible for most small companies to certify against. B) It doesn't even support things like tabbed browsing. C) From the point of view of SW companies they test against IE becuase of its market share, and Mozilla variants, because they are proven and accepted cross platform open source. Also, cross platform is a major word there. Even IE supports more than 1 platform, or at least it did.

[Giaguara]

i liked chimera.

i dont like the way the bookmarks are treated in version 0.7 and later.

and i dont like the name camino. so i quit using it after name change.


i use 2 browsers. firebird (a release before the changed the name again), and safari.


i have ie somewhere for testing some sites.

and links compiled.

[abhishekit]

B) It(safari) doesn't even support things like tabbed browsing.

:D :D define 'prejudiced'

[encro]

I am a Camino disciple ;)

The latest nightlies are awesome and 0.8 beta should be out very soon. The issues related to screen drawing will be fixed by Apple with the release of the 10.3.4 OS X Update. :)

[Benjamin]

This is what I have in my dock

Safari with pith helmet -- Great but only with pith helmet to block more ads.
Opera -- Probably the fastest.
OmniWeb -- Still beta.
Camino -- Good.
Mozilla -- Pretty fast, but not really needed, kinda bloated if just using it for browsing.
FireFox -- Great, but scrolling imo is crap.

[Kevlar]

heh, whoever said that safari didn't have tabbed browsing must not of used it in a really long time..................

But I say Camino and firefox make an awsome combo.

[BornAgainMac]

:confused:
Let me get this right. You never tried Firefox but you think Safari is great and all web software needs to work with Safari? A) Safari doesn't have much of a market share. Which means it is not feasible for most small companies to certify against. B) It doesn't even support things like tabbed browsing. C) From the point of view of SW companies they test against IE becuase of its market share, and Mozilla variants, because they are proven and accepted cross platform open source. Also, cross platform is a major word there. Even IE supports more than 1 platform, or at least it did.

I feel like I am reading a really old post. Doesn't support tabbed browsing. Are you talking about the old beta version of Safari? Also, whenever I read about a company supporting Macs, they always mention Safari too.

I'll check out Firefox to see if it's any good. I have been happy with Safari so far. Much better than IE for Windows.

[tace]

Oh, I am sorry, it appears that in Safari "tabbed browsing" is an option you have to go, find and turn on. You don't even get the "new tab" menu item until you go through 5 clicks to enable tabbed browsing.

After years in software development my principle is that if you need a class or book to use it than you failed in design. Along the same lines, if you have useful/helpful features then make them available and accessible.

And thanks for pointing out how to turn on tabbed browsing, you guys were very helpful. NOT

/flame on

[ifjake]

yeah i suppose Apple should have tabbed browsing turned on by default from the next release onward. though i think exploring the preferences of each program is a smart habit that every user should learn.

and something about writing webpages that don't work on every browser seems kinda wrong to me. kind of a monopolizing thing, or at least in support of one. i'm all for some kind of web standard so that no matter what the browser, the page will load and display correctly. then you can be free to pick the browser for its speed (which increases the competition to make the speedier browser as well) or refuse it over something as trivial as its name. ;)

[ingenious]

imo, Safari and Firefox are the only two mac browsers worth using... They both have their strengths.. Personally i use safari most, but I do like Firefox

i agree

its safari all the way for me, unless somethin' happens... then firefox is my back up

apple.com/safari

mozilla.org

[DGFan]

I liked Camino but it got outdated fast. I checked out Firefox but I use it at work (on Windows2K) and it is the crashiest piece of crap I have ever seen. That has kept me from using it much on OS X. Right now I use Safari and, for a change up, a recent nightly build of Camino. The 0.8 builds of Camino really rock. I don't like the look of the tabs but everything else is great. Downloads actually work now (they had a habit of simply stopping in the middle before). And it hasn't crashed on me once. I have the Camino RC1 downloaded but haven't installed it yet. I'll probably do that this weekend.

[MisterMe]

:confused:
Let me get this right. You never tried Firefox but you think Safari is great and all web software needs to work with Safari? A) Safari doesn't have much of a market share. Which means it is not feasible for most small companies to certify against. B) It doesn't even support things like tabbed browsing. C) From the point of view of SW companies they test against IE becuase of its market share, and Mozilla variants, because they are proven and accepted cross platform open source. Also, cross platform is a major word there. Even IE supports more than 1 platform, or at least it did.Talk about just plain wrong. Small companies don't have to write to specific browsers. They can write to W3C standards (http://www.w3.org/) and be well-assured that their sites will work as intended in Gecko-based browers (Mozilla, Camino, Firefox, etc.), Internet Explorer, and most other browers out there. Furthermore, you downplay the marketshare of Safari. Safari is based on WebCORE. OmniWeb uses the same engine. WebCORE is derived from KHTML, which is the basis of Konqueror, the popular Linux brower.

[tace]

Talk about just plain wrong. Small companies don't have to write to specific browsers. They can write to W3C standards (http://www.w3.org/) and be well-assured that their sites will work as intended in Gecko-based browers (Mozilla, Camino, Firefox, etc.), Internet Explorer, and most other browers out there. Furthermore, you downplay the marketshare of Safari. Safari is based on WebCORE. OmniWeb uses the same engine. WebCORE is derived from KHTML, which is the basis of Konqueror, the popular Linux brower.

Actually we write according to W3C standards but some of the applications we integrate with (Small stuff like SAP, PeopleSoft, SalesForce, etc.) actually render different code depending on which browser is used to display their pages. This becomes an issue with us since we have to test integration with all the iterations they provide. Shortly, IE and Mozilla is what all the big boys write code to and we get forced into testing stuff with those even if we certify to W3C standards.

I can tell you that even though we use lots of *NUX, none of the SW companies I deal with test stuff on Konqueror.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I use Safari, it has been the best browser on OS X for a while now.

My browser history (in brief):

The Netscape/Mozilla family and I go way back (started using Netscape 0.9.x on my Performa 630 in 1994), but even I had to abandon that browser somwhere between 4.0 and 4.76 when it was just plain awful. For a while there at the end of the 90's IE actually was the best browser for the mac platform - this was dark times. Things got better when Mozilla 1.0 was getting closer, and for a while there Mozilla 0.9.x-1.2.x was my primary browser, until Safari got rid of the worst bugs and came out in version 1.0.

A future without Safari?

I really look forward to Firefox 1.0, if they manage to develop it in to a slick fast (loading) browser I might switch later (if they don't fix some issues I have with Safari, like its poor, proprietarian bookmark handling - why can't I import/export from/to html?). I actually perfer Firefox over Camino, but that is more feeling, and, maybe, because I'm used to Mozilla and Firefox from the Linux environment at school.

Opera has always been a good browser on other platforms, but the mac versions have always been really crappy... the new 7.5 seem to redeem this and is now my backup-browser (it can even maskerade as IE for the sites that want to be "exclucive"...).

[wrldwzrd89]

if they don't fix some issues I have with Safari, like its poor, proprietarian bookmark handling - why can't I import/export from/to html?
Maybe it's because Apple doesn't want you to switch browsers after you start using Safari :D That's the only thing I don't like about Safari's bookmark handling - everything else I like.

[dizastor]

B) It doesn't even support things like tabbed browsing

Safari doesn't support tabbed browsing? since when? wasn't that like one of the first major revisions to the Safari beta?

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Maybe it's because Apple doesn't want you to switch browsers after you start using Safari :D That's the only thing I don't like about Safari's bookmark handling - everything else I like.

But I don't really want to switch, I just want to be able to export my bookmarks to Mozilla/Firebird(/Opera) on the Linux environment I'm using some of the time at school.

I also would like (at least the possibility to) have the favicons showing in the Bookmarks Bar (even though it would eat up some of my precious 12" screen space).

Apart from this I quite like the bookmark handling... ;)

On other issues:
- Safari could be snappier, especially when having several tabs open...
- Sometimes lately, some links doesn't respond when I click them - I have to move the mouse cursor befor it reacts (I guess it some kind of redraw issue in either Safari or even OS X 10.3), and I hope this is dealt with...
- I would like to have more control over the pop-up killer (places like my Internet bank depends on pop-ups), like in Mozilla where you can say Kill all pop-ups EXCEPT these specified sites...
- The ability to say which plugins to enable and which not to, like when I surf on news sites it very handy to disable flash content (as many on-site ads are flash-based), but I still want to be able to display film or sound clips...
- There is also some problems with uploading files via Safari, so I had problem with both certain webmail sites and a system for delivering school papers on-line, and my girlfriend, who is a webdesigner, has to use IE/Mozilla when updating certain sites with Zope.

So all's NOT well, but Safari is still better than most... ;)

[FightTheFuture]

Safari with pith helmet -- Great but only with pith helmet to block more ads.

thanks for the tip! i'm trying it out right now! what a great plug-in! now is it me or does firefox take at least 3 times longer then firebird took to load up? firefox is a necessity though. i couldn't keep all of my accounts balanced without it :)

[Makosuke]

I find it amusing that anybody espousing web standards would complain about Safari; it's not perfect, but being that it does pretty darned well with W3C specs, there's little if anything to complain about. Assuming that the site isn't using a very broken browser sniffer (which sounds like what tace is dealing with), so long as it validates and looks right in Mozilla or Opera (or any other decent standards-compliant browser), it'll look fine in Safari, too.

I admittedly don't do much tricky stuff, but in my experience if I'm writing for the Mozilla engine, and the layout looks fine, I can pretty much invariably have it look almost exactly the same in Safari, since it's actually using standards unlike the disaster that is IE.

Safari's only big weak point is it's mimicking of IE's behavior on broken markup, which is a tragic reality of the web today; if the site is coded right, render it right. If it's coded wrong, render it wrong, but very specifically wrong in the same way IE does it, otherwise all those badly written sites that "look just fine in IE" won't look just fine in your browser.

Incidentally, tace, if you're not trying to come across as sarcastically biased against Safari, you're doing a good job of it anyway. Your point about good design meaning that it just works out of the box is a good one, but misses the fundamental point that the average user doesn't use tabs, and if the average users I know are any indication, would be thoroughly confused by them--most still double click on web links, for heaven's sake.

Since it takes exactly one menu selection and two clicks into the very simple pref window to enable tabs, and 95% of the people who are interested in using tabs are computer competent enough to take a peek at their preferences anyway (to set their homepage and such), not enabling them by default seems like a smart move to me. The simpler the better, with thanks for making the preference an option at all.

And by the way, the point those guys were making is that Safari is dominant on the Mac (at least, the OSX using portion of us), so if you're interested in supporting the Mac you should make an effort to support Safari as well, which should be painless due to the standards compliance. It's not a requirement, and if you don't want to make any special concessions for the small market that is the Mac, then you can safely ignore Safari, but if you're specifically targeting the Mac a lot of people use it.

[kewp04]

i just tried out firefox. it seems to be a little bit faster than safari to me, but i have been noticing some kinda weird blank window whenever i press F9 or F10. did anyone else notice this too?

[mms]

Yeah, I think it happened in all Mozilla browsers, but I don't know why. You can only see it when you do Exposé, which is weird.

[BornAgainMac]

I tried Firefox and I think I'll just stick with Safari since I have no issues with it. Firefox really didn't bring anything new for me. The feature that Safari has that no other browser does for me is use iSync to sync my bookmarks with all my Macs. Safari works with my bank too. I just can't see a major reason to switch. I hope Apple continues to improve Safari with features not found with any other browser and think out of the box.

Some sites only work for Windows so I use IE for those Microsoft sites and Safari for everything else on the planet. I am glad there are so many choices for browsers besides Microsoft. I have no problem switching if I see something better than Safari.

[five04]

safari has serious issues with the javascript engine which i've read will be fixed in tiger. khtml is also a crappy engine to build a browser on. oh and one thing i've noticed with my site is that it doesn't show the correct colors with png files. they're all darker than they should be. ie also seems to have this problem, but firefox and mozilla show the correct colors. png's been out for a while and i wish browsers were better with handling them.

[x86isslow]

I don't understand people who claim Safari to be the best Mac browser- it can't even download MSN/Hotmail attachments: kb article (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107903)

I think I'll try some of these alternate browsers.

[mms]

Safari doesn't support tabbed browsing? since when? wasn't that like one of the first major revisions to the Safari beta?
Preferences --> Tabs --> Enable Tabbed Browsing

[blue&whiteman]

I love both safari and firefox. I keep only those 2 installed. I use firefox about 95% of the time though simply because it scrolls so fast. much faster than safari.

i'm sure others have noticed how much faster firefox can scroll a page.

[Sparky's]

i liked chimera.
i dont like the way the bookmarks are treated in version 0.7 and later.
and i dont like the name camino. so i quit using it after name change.
i use 2 browsers. firebird (a release before the changed the name again), and safari.
i have ie somewhere for testing some sites.
and links compiled.

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/03/25/safari.html

Just because of legal issues you "don't like the name change"?

That's kind of arrogant don't you think?

[Sparky's]

In another Thread I asked the question of compatability with Safari and some web sites. I have since downloaded and tried "OmniWeb 4.5" (had to pay $29.95 and get a free upgrade to 5.0), Camino v. 0.7, and Firefox v. 0.9. Both Camino and Firefox do not recognize Safari when it comes to "importing bookmarks". Camino was the only one that would not crash when I went to "homedepot.com". They all seemed to be equally fast, (I'm not aware of any benchmark apps to prove otherwise). I'm going to dedicate a full test period of each to see which one I feel meets my needs then stick with it, but I will keep the others for back-up.

[ZildjianKX]

In another Thread I asked the question of compatability with Safari and some web sites. I have since downloaded and tried "OmniWeb 4.5" (had to pay $29.95 and get a free upgrade to 5.0), Camino v. 0.7, and Firefox v. 0.9. Both Camino and Firefox do not recognize Safari when it comes to "importing bookmarks". Camino was the only one that would not crash when I went to "homedepot.com". They all seemed to be equally fast, (I'm not aware of any benchmark apps to prove otherwise). I'm going to dedicate a full test period of each to see which one I feel meets my needs then stick with it, but I will keep the others for back-up.

I think I imported my Safari bookmarks into Camino by using the Safari debug menu to export them into an HTML file and then Camino was able to import them... it was awhile ago, but I know I got it to work.

[Sparky's]

Oh, I am sorry, it appears that in Safari "tabbed browsing" is an option you have to go, find and turn on. You don't even get the "new tab" menu item until you go through 5 clicks to enable tabbed browsing.

After years in software development my principle is that if you need a class or book to use it than you failed in design. Along the same lines, if you have useful/helpful features then make them available and accessible.

And thanks for pointing out how to turn on tabbed browsing, you guys were very helpful. NOT

/flame on

"Interesting how my post earlier in this thread got yanked (I mean completely wiped out of the forum) and this one stays." disregard this statement, I am blind

PS this preference was reached in 3 clicks = Safari>Preferences>Tabs

PSS also Bookmarks>(scroll to bottom)Open in Tabs = 2 clicks

[dragula53]

wow, I just downloaded the 5.0 beta

holy cow it is awesome

[Sparky's]

Just a point of reference, I finally found out how to export my bookmarks from Safari and set them up for any other browser.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19266

Works like a charm ;) :cool:

Since I now have Safari, M$IE, OmniWeb 4.5, Camino 0.7, and FireFox 0.8, as well as Netscape in several versions I wanted to give them all a fair shake. Since Safari was the only one that wouldn't "export" bookmarks you need to go to 3rd party stuff, and it works so easily with "SBE".

[Mav451]

In another Thread I asked the question of compatability with Safari and some web sites. I have since downloaded and tried "OmniWeb 4.5" (had to pay $29.95 and get a free upgrade to 5.0), Camino v. 0.7, and Firefox v. 0.9. Both Camino and Firefox do not recognize Safari when it comes to "importing bookmarks". Camino was the only one that would not crash when I went to "homedepot.com". They all seemed to be equally fast, (I'm not aware of any benchmark apps to prove otherwise). I'm going to dedicate a full test period of each to see which one I feel meets my needs then stick with it, but I will keep the others for back-up.

the "Home Deport" benchmark? When I used Camino on my iBook, it crashed at least 2-3 times from SIMPLE blogs and pretty much "regular" websites. If it crashes from blogs, I can't imagine using this for anything more serious than simple browsing purposes (vs. research or work, when you want to keep multiple tabs open). Firefox, on the other hand, rarely crashes in comparison, and I'm even using a NIGHTLY!

(Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8a) Gecko/20040430 Firefox/0.8.0+ (BlueFyre)

And for the homedepot.com site, shall i post a picture to show you that Firefox does not crash?

For the bookmark issue, would Camino be able to import the .html from Firefox (PC) or vice versa? I mean I can ftp it to my site, but I'm worried bout compatability issues.

[Kevlar]

About the exporting from safari:

You can always just select them all and drag and drop them to any other bookmarks menu.....

I did it first to Camino, exported the bookmarks from there, and now can load them anywhere I want.

[five04]

i think it should also be stated the omniweb is safari. right on their website it says this: "Omniweb 4.5 uses the WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks from Apple – the same technology used in Safari for rendering web pages."

if you know how you use interface builder you could make your own web browser as well. omniweb doesn't even count as another web browser.

[encro]

safari has serious issues with the javascript engine which i've read will be fixed in tiger. khtml is also a crappy engine to build a browser on. oh and one thing i've noticed with my site is that it doesn't show the correct colors with png files. they're all darker than they should be. ie also seems to have this problem, but firefox and mozilla show the correct colors. png's been out for a while and i wish browsers were better with handling them.

Yes, the new kJS engine will be a lot faster.

kHTML is actually a great engine to base a new browser on. Apple had to start with a small code/efficient choice for their developers to completely get their head around it and kHTML was perfect for that. At the time Gecko was overengineered and had too much unneccesary code. Fortunately Gecko is also a very good engine choice now.

Your site doesn't display your .png files correctly because you failed to properly setup ColorSync and calibrate for your system. There is nothing wrong with .png files, Safari is displaying them 100% correctly based on your selected ColorSync profiles.

[encro]

i think it should also be stated the omniweb is safari. right on their website it says this: "Omniweb 4.5 uses the WebCore and JavaScriptCore frameworks from Apple – the same technology used in Safari for rendering web pages."

if you know how you use interface builder you could make your own web browser as well. omniweb doesn't even count as another web browser.

Yes it does because it's not as clean cut as you think. Safari uses Webkit and OmniWeb uses WebCore. While it may be in essence the same thing it is actually very different.

Omni has to use WebCore (as a omniweb framework) to implement many of the changes to their browser because WebKit is limited to what Apple decide to include. Simply creating a WebKit binding in IB would not even get close to the amount of work Omni have put into Omniweb. The disadvantage is Omniweb's engine will most likely never be as up to date as the system webkit that Safari uses.

[encro]

the "Home Deport" benchmark? When I used Camino on my iBook, it crashed at least 2-3 times from SIMPLE blogs and pretty much "regular" websites. If it crashes from blogs, I can't imagine using this for anything more serious than simple browsing purposes (vs. research or work, when you want to keep multiple tabs open). Firefox, on the other hand, rarely crashes in comparison, and I'm even using a NIGHTLY!

For the bookmark issue, would Camino be able to import the .html from Firefox (PC) or vice versa? I mean I can ftp it to my site, but I'm worried bout compatability issues.

Camino 0.7 uses the Gecko 1.0 engine
Camino 0.8 uses the Gecko 1.7 engine (exactly the same as FireFox 0.8)

You should notice no difference between the page rendering and the only difference is in the GUI (Cocoa vs XUL). Gecko is also currently faster than kHTML(Safari).

You can import/export the html bookmarks for Camino using the Import Bookmarks.../Export Bookmarks options in the Camino menu.

[Sparky's]

So tell me all you Camino maniacs out there, how do you spell check???

[encro]

So tell me all you Camino maniacs out there, how do you spell check???

I don't think it has been done yet :(

Maybe there is a utility that could be added into the services menu item?

[Makosuke]

So tell me all you Camino maniacs out there, how do you spell check???We don't.

Maybe there is a utility that could be added into the services menu item?There are several utilities that add this feature to the services menu, but it'd sure be nice if the Camino guys took advantage of the built-in spelling service.

Incidentally, what's all this hulabaloo about Homedepot.com? The site has so much hideous orange I wish my browser would crash, but the current versions of Safari and Firefox both open and browse it just fine, as does the Camino nightly I have installed. What's the issue?

[melchior]

which browser is the fastest page renderer? other performance factors like cpu usage and memory are important to me too. can anyone who has done this research (saving me from doing it) please give advice?

[Makosuke]

which browser is the fastest page renderer?Depends on the page. Apple will tell you Safari is fastest, and it is on some systems and some pages. Camino fans will tell you Camino is faster, and it is under some conditions, too. And Firefox users will tell you it's the fastest, which it probably is in some situations.

Bottom line, any of those three will probably work pretty well. If you're using Panther, the latest version of Safari is pretty zippy under most circumstances, but Firfox will probably work well too (though it won't boot as fast). If you're on 10.2, I'd recommend a Camino nightly instead of either.

They're all in the same general range, though.

[encro]

Camino 0.8b Beta has been released!

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/camino/releases/Camino-0.8b.dmg.gz

[Datazoid]

Well...in my highly unofficial tests just now (consisting of me loading a few webpages and counting time as "one-onethousand", Camino was faster at loading all the web pages than Safari.

Tested Pages:

Macrumors: C: 2s vs S: 3s

eBay: C: 5s vs S: 15.5s

Yahoo: C: 3s vs S: 5s

Slashdot: C: 2s vs S: 5.5s

Of course, this is all very unscientific, but it does "confirm" the fact that every time I use Camino, it feels much faster than Safari. Then again, it is lagging behind me typing this posting. In addition, Camino is known to have some Java problems, and lacks some of the features and interface niceties of Safari. Its a hard choice.

[tace]

"Interesting how my post earlier in this thread got yanked (I mean completely wiped out of the forum) and this one stays." disregard this statement, I am blind

PS this preference was reached in 3 clicks = Safari>Preferences>Tabs

PSS also Bookmarks>(scroll to bottom)Open in Tabs = 2 clicks


That'll be 3 clicks to get to and an extra 2 clicks to check the option and close the window for the tabbed browsing to take effect.

Anyhow, as decent a browser as Safari might be, IMHO, it is nicer to have the same decent browser across multiple platforms. That's why I used to use Opera before FireFox/Bird. From the POV of a SW person, these types of apps make my life easier.

[Sparky's]

Now after several days of analyzing Omniweb, Camino, and FireFox I am not impressed with any one of them over Safari. One major gripe I do have however is that neither Camino or FireFox has a spellchecker. I am also not impressed with the fact that both have a very poor help menu if any at all!!
I like keyboard strokes short cuts and full function-ability within a web browser, and Camino and FireFox at this time just don't measure up to Safari. Sorry sad but true

I'm still in the process of using all mentioned and am evaluating each as much as I can.

Sparky