Which is the better internet browser for Lion?

[nick123222]

Type “about:flags” in the Chrome URL bar and hit return
Under “Experiments” look for “Tab Overview” and click on ‘Enable’
Restart Chrome for changes to take effect
Relaunch Chrome and open a few tabs, then use a three-finger swipe down on your multitouch trackpad or mouse to activate the Expose-like tab overview.

Voila

Thanks! It is quite beautiful!

 

[SXR]

Im using chrome on snow leopard right now and ill test both browsers out when lion ships. Theyve made a few improvements to safari in lion.

 

[Anathallo]

... but Chrome has Tab Exposé! Not the lame Safari extension, but a proper good Exposé that works with a 3-finger down gesture. It's amazing and fast.

Chrome also allows you to move items around and delete items from folder in the Bookmarks bar. In Safari, once you add a bookmark to a folder, there's nothing you can do with it. You have to enter the annoying and horrible "bookmark editing mode with Cover Flow" and hunt everything down one by one.

Chrome also eats almost twice as less RAM as Chrome. It uses more CPU, however.

Safari, on the other hand, doesn't annoy you with "update Shockwave plugin" and other similar messages all the time, which Chrome does.

Safari also has Top Sites, which I just use as a nice visual bookmark system. I pin all my sites to it and it's awesome. Chrome does that too, but it's much more ugly and less flexible. It does have an extension called "SpeedDial", but it's not as good as Safari's Top Sites.

Safari doesn't have the Omni Bar, and you can't do a Google Instant search from the search bar either, which makes me go to Google.com all the time by pressing the Home button, which is annoying. Chrome gives you a view of Google Instant as you type things into the Omni Bar.

I made this awesome table to sum things up:
View attachment 294132

I'm really on the fence with deciding which one's better at the moment. Lion shall decide I guess! What do you all think?

Absolutely fantastic post. I'm with you on the pros/cons of both browsers. It's unfortunate how they're both so apt at the things they do well (and the things they don't).
The CPU-RAM tradeoff is essentially a preferential thing, in my eyes. It all depends on which part of your computer you're more willing to sacrifice. For instance, running Chrome, it's easy for my processor to reach 70-80 degrees celsius when anything flash-based is running.

The ease of bookmark use is something I deal with on a near daily basis. Firefox also allows for editable bookmarks outside of the bookmarks browser, so it's ahead in that category as well.

Top Sites is great on Safari, but I think the Tab Overview on Chrome NAILS the concept. They're entirely different features, I know, but they're both features that lean me towards one or the other browser equally. I hope the Tab Overview becomes a regular feature because it's FANTASTIC.

The Omnibar is great, but I love the functionality of the Safari search button when using Glims. Otherwise it's no comparison in favor of Chrome.

EDIT: I must also mention that while Safari's support of extensions is generally fine, Chrome's extensions feel fully cooked in comparison. For instance, the Chrome extension for Evernote is without question more functional and useful than the Safari and Firefox extensions in how it's so seamless within Chrome.

Anyway, the prime point here is thank you for pointing out the Tab Overview. Now it's clearly impossible for me to decide on a browser.

 

[Jerome Morrow]

Using Safari since Tiger and don't see a reason to fix something that is not broken.

 

[stewacide]

Prefer Firefox but waiting for it to be updated for Lion. Really, all the leading browsers are pretty damn impressive these days, although Safari could do a better job at extensions. Also lack of in-browser PDF viewing in Firefox on OSX has long been annoying (and not a problem on Linux and Windows).

Not sure why Chrome has become so popular: now that Firefox and Safari do process isolation (IE on Windows also) what does it do better than the incumbents?

 

[aussie_geek]

Until chrome catches up with Safari with its full screen and multitouch gestures, it will be safari for me.

Safari is a lot better in Lion though. Much snappier.

 

[bushido]

i use chrome but i kinda miss the left and right swiping to go back on pages and the double tap to zoom like on the iphone. i hope they add those gestures at some point

 

[Roman2K~]

Not sure why Chrome has become so popular: now that Firefox and Safari do process isolation (IE on Windows also) what does it do better than the incumbents?

Neither Firefox nor Safari isolate tabs in separate processes. They might isolate plug-ins but not tabs. IE9 does isolate tabs.

You can tell easily by watching the list of processes in Activity Monitor while opening and closing tabs.

Chrome has done that from the start IIRC, and it's done right . At some point, Mozilla had plans to isolate tabs in Firefox, but even in the 7 Aurora, still nothing.

 

[Izis]

Currently I'm using Firefox 5.0.1. I'd like to change because it's too laggy and use too much memory.

I don't know how you people can use Safari. I tried to use it but there's a lack of essential functions :

- No search in adress bar (seriously ?)
- No Favicon in Tabs (This is maybe the function that i miss the most : I'm on of these geeks who have always around 20 tabs opened, and when you don't have favicon you have to read all the titles to fin the one that you're looking for)
- When you click in adresse/search bar, It doesn't select to wall sentence. You have to triple-click to select all (not very easy to do when you're on the magic pad)

So I also tried Chrome but :

- Tabs are on the top and you cannot move them at the bottom.
- You cannot delete Favicons of the bookmark bar (which means less bookmarks in it)
- Awful Icon but I can do with it.

 

[Jerome Morrow]

Currently I'm using Firefox 5.0.1. I'd like to change because it's too laggy and use too much memory.

I don't know how you people can use Safari.

You know i'm not sure, but that might have something to do with people having different tastes and ways of doing things. Just a guess though.

P.S. try Glims (http://www.machangout.com/). You can enable all kinds of things using it. I'm not sure if it works with Lion Safari.

 

[endless17]

Using Firefox Aurora's branch (the 7.0 alpha) and it works great on OSX - oddly more stable than Chrome's beta, which still crashes randomly on pages and forces a reload.

I'll only use Safari when streaming anything substantive in Flash or Silverlight (ie: Netflix, Youtube, etc.) since it seems to be less resource-intensive than in Chrome or Firefox.

 

[Wormald]

I prefer Safari's interface, but after doing some testing it's clear that Chrome is noticeably faster.

Faster for javascript-heavy sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Gmail etc. - the sites I spend the most time on.

Safari noticeably stutters opening these pages, Chrome blazes the render through.

So, somewhat reluctantly, I've switched to Chrome, despite the relative immaturity of its UI.

 

[Roman2K~]

So, somewhat reluctantly, I've switched to Chrome, despite the relative immaturity of its UI.

What do you find immature about Chrome's UI?

 

[Stok3]

i use chrome but i kinda miss the left and right swiping to go back on pages and the double tap to zoom like on the iphone. i hope they add those gestures at some point

same here.. I wonder if the double tap to zoom can be added to Chrome (via API) or is it strictly a Safari thing

 

[Razeus]

Chrome. Absolutely no reason to use Safari whatsoever. Ever.

 

[fivenotrump]

there is no 'better' or 'best'

Use the one that you like best: try them and see!

 

[mwxiao]

If you change the two-finger swipe gesture in preference, Chrome would crash every time you swipe. That's the reason I don't use Chrome in Lion right now, along with the half-implanted full-screen feature.

Safari is snappier in Lion. But I hate the separation of the address bar and search bar.

 

[stefan1975]

But I hate the separation of the address bar and search bar.

the fact that safari is 404-ing on me every time i type in anything but a fqdn is driving me nuts!

I have grown so accustomed to google instant and the omnibox of chrome. search while you type and preloading each and every URL as you type is saving me sooooo much time in Chrome.

not to mention tabs on top and especially saving preferences, extensions and passwords in the cloud are what make Chrome the best webkit browser on the block.

.....but i do like safari's two finger swipe. it's really nifty.

 

[Wormald]

What do you find immature about Chrome's UI?

A few bits and pieces I think let Chrome down, although non are deal breakers:

• The omnibar doesn't suggest commonly accessed deep-URLs as well as Safari, and the suggest algorithm is less consistent and predictable than Safari.
• There are no keyboard shortcuts to access Bookmark Bar bookmarks.
• The History tab doesn't have coverflow.
• The page-loading indicator, and active tab indication in Chrome is too subtle.
• The downloads bar is tacky looking, and doesn't auto-dismiss.
• Chrome doesn't allow OSX's quick dictionary look-up (^-⌘-D).
• Chrome's toolbar look and feel deviates from general OSX UI standards.
• No option to merge all windows in Chrome.

I do like the tabs-on-top in Chrome, and was disappointed when Apple dropped them from their Safari 4 beta.

But as I said above, Chrome is my choice now just because so much faster with javascript-heavy sites.