Comparing Browsers. Why change from Safari?

Because Safari sucks?

A large amount of Mac users use Firefox. It just works.

Choice? Preference? standard experience across platforms? supporting the little guy against big brother?

I dunno, I love FireFox and I use it at work and at home.

I use Safari occasionally.

Every browser has strengths and weaknesses. Different strokes for different folks. Chrome and Firefox are great browsers, for those who prefer them.

I get popups all the time with Safari. Furthermore, I get fairly regular crashes. Firefox works far better for me.

eaglegray said:

Can someone answer me this? — Why would any Mac person use a Browser other than Safari?
I'm a long-time Mac user and I can't understand why anyone would move to this new Google Chrome, or any of the other third-party or Windows' Browsers.
I mean, Safari is dedicated to unique Macintosh hardware design. Why use anything else?!

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The same reasons people don't use IE on Windows.

And Firefox, Opera and Chrome are not Windows browsers if you care to take a look at their home pages.

Btw, Safari is also available for Windows.

eaglegray said:

. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yeah, but I need someone to give me a few examples, advantages, to using, say, Chrome or Firefox over Safari. I've used Firefox now and then, and you still find what you're looking for on the web, same as with Safari, same speed.

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Using MRoogle will give you plenty of threads about advantages and disadvantages of one browser over the others.

Firefox and Opera for example allow a lot of add-ons to be used, something Safari does not really allow with that much simplicity.

As there seem to be many people, who use other OSs besides Mac OS X, there are simply people who use other browser/cars/cereals/underpants/guns/space ships/knifes/telephones/TVs/drugs/... because it suits them and gets the tasks done better than the other similar appliances.

I prefer Safari/Volvo/none/the comfy ones/H&K/Fireflies/bayonet/Sony/none/nicotine/... to others, which could me also get what I want, but not the way I like it.

The best thing about Firefox is the add-ons and the fact that Firefox already has some things that should've been in Safari (saving and remembering tabs when closing, asking whether you want to delete history and cache when closing, and some other things I don't remember at the moment). Also, Firefox crashes a lot less than Safari.

eaglegray said:

. . . . . . . .
Inventive answer... and funny. Thanks. But what is an "add-on"?
Cheers.

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You said you used Firefox? Obviously not much. Add-ons are under Tools and enable you to "add on" to what Firefox can do. There are all kinds of little add-ons written by developers (and they're free).

eaglegray said:

. . . . . . . .
Inventive answer... and funny. Thanks. But what is an "add-on"?
Cheers.

Click to expand...

Google is your friend:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Add-on_(Mozilla)

eaglegray said:

. . . . . . . .
Inventive answer... and funny. Thanks. But what is an "add-on"?
Cheers.

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Firefox - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/
Opera - http://www.opera.com/addons/

Safari's always seemed slow to me, and prone to crashing. It might an issue with my version but I use Firefox mainly instead. Was very easy to setup exactly how i wanted it with the plug-ins i need that make my life and work a little faster and easier, so I'm sticking with it.

I use new opera beta 10.50, its great!!! It is the fastest browser to date.
Safari is not accepted by many school and corporate websites, they usually require firefox or IE. And the custom ability on safari is just plain bad, its not a bad browser, it just isn't the best at anything.

Also safari isnt unique, its made for windows also. ANd it looks and works identical almost.

eaglegray said:

Can someone answer me this? — Why would any Mac person use a Browser other than Safari?... Why use anything else?!

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As you can see by the responses, everyone has a different opinion on this. That's why multiple browsers can successfully compete. After being a long-time Firefox user on Windows, I decided to give Safari a try when I moved to Mac OS X. For me, Safari works great. I'm on it 15+ hours every day, very frequently with a dozen or more tabs open (sometimes 50+ tabs), yet it's very quick and rarely crashes (maybe once or twice a week). I have ad-blockers so I never see ads or pop-ups. I've added a few things to enable right-click quick searches, keyboard shortcuts, etc., so there's very little I would change, if I could. YMMV.

Should I feel embarrassed that I actually like Safari?

-aggie- said:

The best thing about Firefox is the add-ons and the fact that Firefox already has some things that should've been in Safari (saving and remembering tabs when closing, asking whether you want to delete history and cache when closing, and some other things I don't remember at the moment). Also, Firefox crashes a lot less than Safari.



You said you used Firefox? Obviously not much. Add-ons are under Tools and enable you to "add on" to what Firefox can do. There are all kinds of little add-ons written by developers (and they're free).

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I almost exclusively use Safari and I like the multitouch gestures in it. I haven't got that in Firefox (at least in the version that I have). However, in Safari, there is a function called "Reopen all windows from last session". I don't have crashes with Safari but I also do some basic maintenance on my computers and I don't bloat the HDDs.

When I used Firefox for the last time, that was for web design, by using FF's add-on. Without that feature, I would probably never use it. My severe beach ball problem got resolved by upgrading the RAM and HDD on my mid-2009 MB Pro. Is it possible that it was due to Safari?

I tried Chrome but I just never feel like using it.

I'm not ashamed to use Safari on the Mac - it just feels the most Mac-like and I haven't had any problems with it for at least 2 years.

IMO Firefox is too ugly and Windows-like (although I haven't tried the latest version on Mac) and all the other browsers I've tried don't quite get the look and feel right.

On Windows (at work), I did use Firefox until I recently realised its various memory leaks were causing my computer to grind to a halt on a twice-weekly basis and then I switched to Chrome. Nice.

I have been using safari ever since I got my uMBP and I must say that recently (last 3 months) I have been having trouble with Safari being slow, crashing and "server denies connections" for no reason...

I used to use the SeaMonkey on my PB G4 as it was fast, but not accepted everywhere so I hot-swapped between Firefox and Seamonkey.

I am thinking about switching....

I tried Chrome, Chromium, Opera and Firefox for a long time, and while they all have their strengths and weaknesses, I always missed ClickToFlash and the ability to use Ctrl + Cmd + D.

If you're considering switching, just try them out. None of them are bad.

I don't think Safari is perfect. But I think Firefox, Chrome, etc. are a lot less perfect.

Because Safari was super-unstable for me, and Camino is just as fast, just about as "Mac-Like" and has more configurability (and IMO a more usable GUI).

Been lurking a long time. Never thought this would be where I post the first time.

johnnyjibbs said:

IMO Firefox is too ugly and Windows-like (although I haven't tried the latest version on Mac) and all the other browsers I've tried don't quite get the look and feel right.

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Well, you can change the the skin of your browser. There is a thing called 'personas' and there is a full website dedicated to them. If you want to, I think I've seen some Safari personas in the past. Moreover, there is also 'themes' which is another modification you can give to your browser.

Anyways, I love firefox and it works perfect for me. It has too many great add-ons that I can't pass up. Like twitter add-ons, foxytunes, ant.com, etc...

kernkraft said:

I almost exclusively use Safari and I like the multitouch gestures in it. I haven't got that in Firefox (at least in the version that I have).

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What version of FF, out of curiosity? I'm using 3.6 and some basic multitouch gestures work for me. In fact, the three-finger swipe up/down to go to the top/bottom of a page doesn't work in Safari 4 for me, but works in FF :-( Strange.

I like all three (Safari, Firefox, Chrome), but use Firefox the most. In my subjective opinion, here are the strengths/weaknesses that matter most to me:

Firefox is the ugliest, despite the availability of so many themes (most of which are even uglier than the default)

Chrome is the most aesthetically pleasing, including some of the visual cues like when it downloads files and opens and closes new tabs.

Firefox with the smooth scrolling option set has the smoothest scrolling when using a non-Apple mouse's scroll wheel (the rest are jerky, although Chrome has some add-ons that help). Smooth scrolling isn't just nicer looking, it feels easier on my eyes.

I don't notice any speed differences between the three but I mostly just go to text and image sites. But Firefox is the fastest at going "back" to the previous page--usually instantaneous, whereas both Safari and Chrome frequently seem to reload stuff from the server before displaying the previous page.

I use different computers and different OSs. Until recently, only Firefox kept my bookmarks in sync across all computers, and it's still the only one that keeps my passwords in sync (via the Xmarks add-on)

Firefox is nice, but it's so goddamn slow rendering a web page. It does handle tabs better than Safari. Safari annoyingly hangs on CMD-T until it gets warmed up, to the point where I get beachballing on CMD-T off a cold start. No prob in Firefox. Scrolling is better in Firefox; font and web page rendering is better in Safari.

I tend to use Safari because I prefer a fast browser rather than customization.

They're both good browsers.

Chrome? Eh, needs a lot of work. And I'd rather not support Google unless I have to.