Safari vs Firefox

[aristobrat]

I'm a cross-platform guy (Windows at work during the day, OS X at home the rest of the time).

I <3 FireFox's "FoxMark" extension that automatically syncs your bookmarks amongst different computers.

I can be on my Dell laptop at work, add a bookmark, and be sure that it'll be on my MacBook when I get home.

 

[clevin]

The text rendering is ugly at times in FF.

ooops, didn't notice that, can you show me an example?

 

[QCassidy352]

camino. firefox with an OS X feel.

 

[bousozoku]

ooops, didn't notice that, can you show me an example?

It's certainly ugly in 1.0.x - 1.5.x but 2.x is pretty much the same as what Safari can render.

 

[Aniej]

I use safari for the speed, which I often find is considerable when matched against FF. On the other hand, I tend to use FF when doing research or posting on message boards such as MR because of the functionality present in FF tabs. I have a feeling I will need to hit the edit tab on this post come Jan. 9th..... or shortly there after

 

[nichos]

camino. firefox with an OS X feel.

Exactly!!! I can't believe no one mentioned that! Camino is the way to go on the Mac. Feels great, has built in ad blocking and renders pages as good as FF. Safari is nice, but I always seem to beach ball w/it.

 

[Aniej]

Safari is nice, but I always seem to beach ball w/it.

I must respectfully request that you refer to this as the whirligig. That is undeniably the technical term

 

[dpaanlka]

I much prefer Firefox to Safari, it's faster except for the main page loading which takes forever on Firefox.

Wrong

Safari and other WebKit browsers consistently benchmark significantly faster than Firefox and the other Mozillas (Camino).

Safari is faster than Firefox

Now, you may occasionally notice that one browser loads some specific page faster than the other. However, overall Safari is the fastest of the two.

There are many other reasons to not use Safari. It is, in all reality, a really crappy Mac port of a Windows program. It's slow, a memory hog, and looks awful.

Here you will find a very useful, and detailed comparison of major Mac browsers.

New Mac converts really need to embrace the idea that Macs are different than PCs. There is no need to instantly replace the standard Mac browser with Firefox, which seems to be the habit of many PC users these days.

 

[GnrlyMrly]

Thread Over.

 

[TheMonarch]

Even though I use Safari as my primary browser, I absolutely think it is a horrible web browser due to the way it renders web pages. Its really slow and a memory hog.

But why is it my primary browser? Well for one, I think it looks better. Not to mention it has some nice extra perks like the built-in dictionary. And the two finger scrolling works much better on it for some reason [And I scroll A LOT]. And it starts up much faster.

And while it is my primary browser, I don't use it exclusively and it all depends on what kind of content I'm viewing.

For those who don't think it sucks at rendering pages, open this link: here

Watch your precious G5/Core2 duo or whatever come to a complete crawl for a while. Then open that same like with another browser such as firefox, and get a completely different result.

 

[scott523]

...Watch your precious G5/Core2 duo or whatever come to a complete crawl for a while. Then open that same like with another browser such as firefox, and get a completely different result.

Wow I get your point. At first, I was about to say that link was loaded with hundreds of comments and so it takes a while (both browsers) to load them up. OK, next I'll find Firefox is 'Done' loading. Then seconds later, I noticed Safari was still loading that link (500 of 505 items). Then I looked up at my CoreDuoTemp monitor and the temperature just spiked 30F from where I was at a few minutes ago. Finally at the same time, Safari locked up --> Force Quit.

Anyways, that link was a nice example, another good reason why I still stick with Firefox.

 

[dpaanlka]

For those who don't think it sucks at rendering pages, open this link: here

Watch your precious G5/Core2 duo or whatever come to a complete crawl for a while. Then open that same like with another browser such as firefox, and get a completely different result.

Which falls into the category I mentioned above of some pages rendering faster in different browsers. However, clearly Safari is faster in comprehensive tests.

As an aside, both browsers loaded that page so slowly (over a minute) that I didn't bother waiting for either of them to finish.

Do you want another test?

Take the Acid2 Test and see how *great* Firefox is... Here is more explanation about this test and how it works.

 

[scott523]

Which falls into the category I mentioned above of some pages rendering faster in different browsers. However, clearly Safari is faster in comprehensive tests.

As an aside, both browsers loaded that page so slowly (over a minute) that I didn't bother waiting for either of them to finish.

Do you want another test?

Take the Acid2 Test and see how *great* Firefox is... Here is more explanation about this test and how it works.

I guess I can agree with you. Recently I'm shocked Firefox couldn't load http://www.palottery.com correctly where as Safari did but then Firefox could access features at http://www.msnbc.com where as Safari couldn't. I like both browsers, it really helps when one side goes wrong and the other saves the day. However, I just feel Firefox has a bit more fame thus more compatibility among more sites (another example: CNN video on Safari? not possible). Didn't do test but I bet you're right (also hence the demi-god ranking)...off to bed.

 

[dpaanlka]

CNN video on Safari? not possible

Huh? Why do people keep saying that???



As for sites artificially *requiring* certain browsers, that's no fault of Safari. But I find that to be less and less true now. If you find a site that claims to somehow "not work" with Safari, complain to the site!

 

[solvs]

Safari is nice, and pretty fast, but I use FF for the same reasons everyone else here does. Use it on Windows, like the extensions, like the way it handles some pages. Even with Pithelmet and Saft, and using the User Agent Switch, it doesn't compare to the things I can do with FF. Seems to slow down a bit if I have too many tabs opening though, even on the G5 optimized BonEcho, but to be fair, so does Safari sometimes.

 

[bigwillis]

not convinced

i'd be interested in reading/seeing more about the speed comparisons between browsers. the link that dpaanlka provided has some data, but the author obviously is already sold on safari so it's questionable how unbiased of a test he was performing. anyway, i also use bonecho (just an os-x optimized build of firefox available here ) and for most of the sites i frequent it seems way faster than anything else i've ever used. i agree that it looks really ugly on osx and has some rendering problems, but it also has a lot of great functionality and seems fast to me, though i'd like to do a more concrete comparison.

 

[keithbennis]

I use BonEcho, with a mac skin and UNO. I find it faster than safari.

^Same.

I'm tired of everyone saying oh it's not Safari's fault that the page locks up Safari or screws it up somehow, it's the pages fault. The developers of Safari should know that people are retarded and don't code all pages perfectly, hence making Safari less picky.

Oh well. I'm very happy with BonEcho so far.

 

[X5-452]

I use FF. Been using it since version 0.6 and it was named Phoenix. I just switched to the Mac platform over the summer and the first thing I did with my shiny new MacBook was to download Firefox. Now with FF2 I find it handles tabs out-of-the-box the right way, as opposed to Safari's new window nonsense. Plus, I love the Gmail notifier and all the other little extras and extensions it has.

 

[Elrond39]

I'm still trying to find my ideal browser, and I've been using Safari, Shiira and Camino mostly.

Safari is quite quick, but I can't access my university's secure e-mail. So that's a pretty big negative (why should I have to open a different browser just to check it, after all?). I also dislike the fact that I can't move the tabs around. (They'll increase tab-functionality in Leopard, I know... Can't wait! )

Camino is nice, renders quick and accurate enough for my tastes. I can access the university e-mail, so that's always good. But, again, the tabs... I like them a bit better than the Safari ones, but they aren't very functional either - can't move them, and when you close a tab, you go to the one to the left of it automatically. I would prefer that when you close a tab, you go to the previously selected one, wherever that may be along the tab bar.

And that's one of Shiira's biggest features, the tabs. They're moveable, when closing you go to the previously selected one, and there's this neat "tab expose", which is always fun. I'm seriously anticipating version 2.0, with the new UI and features. Big minus, though, is that Shiira - too - can't open my university secure e-mail.

So, until Shiira 2.0 rolls around in the completed version (the stable beta does the tabs and allows me to access my university e-mail, but it's still beta and not completely featured), I'll likely be using Camino. If/When I upgrade to Leopard, the choice will probably fall between Safari and Shiira.

 

[clevin]

I use FF. Been using it since version 0.6 and it was named Phoenix. I just switched to the Mac platform over the summer and the first thing I did with my shiny new MacBook was to download Firefox. Now with FF2 I find it handles tabs out-of-the-box the right way, as opposed to Safari's new window nonsense. Plus, I love the Gmail notifier and all the other little extras and extensions it has.

yeah, me too, everytime you have to press "cmd" and click a link to open a new tab in safari (I know you can BUY saft to enhence safari on this, buy what the heck, BUY it?), while in firefox, direct click would do the work, this is weird, is that so difficult for safari developer to set "open new tab instead of new window" by default.?
however, for people never really get to know the power of extensions, or the fun of single window mode, safari is good enough tho.

 

[EvryDayImShufln]

I just use firefox as an FTP client, other than that I find safari to be more clean cut (and boots up alot faster as well)

 

[clevin]

I just use firefox as an FTP client, other than that I find safari to be more clean cut (and boots up alot faster as well)

there is a software called cyber duck, which is a good ftp client.

 

[bousozoku]

i'd be interested in reading/seeing more about the speed comparisons between browsers. the link that dpaanlka provided has some data, but the author obviously is already sold on safari so it's questionable how unbiased of a test he was performing. anyway, i also use bonecho (just an os-x optimized build of firefox available here ) and for most of the sites i frequent it seems way faster than anything else i've ever used. i agree that it looks really ugly on osx and has some rendering problems, but it also has a lot of great functionality and seems fast to me, though i'd like to do a more concrete comparison.

Of course, he probably provided a test that was old and Safari beat Firefox 1.0 - 1.5 but there clearly have been some huge changes since then.

Firefox 2 is a better browser than Safari.

 

[elppa]

I have so many web browser on my system, but I always come back to Safari. I like it's simplicity.

 

[Dave00]

I use primarily FireFox because on my machine, it's clearly faster. I'm using OS 10.3.9 on an iMac G5. It tends to be a little buggy sometimes however; sometimes it stops letting you type in the URL bar, and you have to restart. But overall much snappier than Safari (experience may be different on new macs/newer os).

Dave