Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Which is the best browser for Mac, esp. for clarity?

P

Politis

macrumors regular
Original poster
Nov 10, 2010
125
0
Which browser for Mac? I am more interested in clarity than in speed. From my experience, I think that browsers work better in terms of clarity on PCs than on Macs. I have both as laptops on my desk (mac pro 15) and I browse on both. I dont play games on them.
These are my experiences but perhaps yours are different:

SAFARI: for many websites it fails to format correctly. This means that lines can go on top of each other and text can disappear. Also on some the letters look like overcooked spaghetti.

FIREFOX: I installed it today. The toolsbar line is a liitle wider than other sites, so less space on your screen. Also Firefox comes with its own Mozilla links which I cannot get rid of (type www.m and imediately mozilla links are offered)

GOOGLE Chrome: I cannot find a way for websites to go up page by page, the same applies to Firefox. Also, the resolution on google earth is very bad.

IE: My Mac refuses to accept it.

Any ideas?
 
Last edited:
Could you define clarity? Are you referring to the sharpness/contrast of the images you see with your own eyes? If that is the case, the actual web browser has very little to do with image clarity, and saying one is better than the others may be impossible. I've personally used FireFox for years, but most current browsers are great.
 
Politis said:
...Also Firefox comes with its own Mozilla links which I cannot get rid of (type www.m and imediately mozilla links are offered)...
Click to expand...

With Firefox as you type in an address it will suggest sites you have bookmarked that fit. Just get rid of the Mozilla bookmarks that come preloaded, clear your history if you visited any of them and restart the browser and type www.m again, it will suggest any sites that start with www.m that you have bookmarked or are in your history.
 
Last edited:
I feel that safari offers me the best browsing experience... i especially like the history and favorites page that opens each time you open a new tab. Also, theres not too much that clutters up the top or sides.
 
jetblk328i said:
I feel that safari offers me the best browsing experience... i especially like the history and favorites page that opens each time you open a new tab. Also, theres not too much that clutters up the top or sides.
Click to expand...

Chrome is similar in that way. They have the popular sites feature and the low profile toolbar. I see some Firefox users where the toolbar takes up half their screen :eek: It looks so stupid and wasteful...
 
Clarity and the over-boiled spaghetti look of letters

NickZac said:
Could you define clarity?
Click to expand...

From the answers it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other :)
By Clarity I mean that for some websites in Safari some of the lines overlap, or are squeezed out of their box. Also in some Safari the letters are 'thick' like overboiled spaghetti. But the same web page in Chrome looks fine.
 
with regards to spaghetti letters, i'm guessing you're referring to differences in how apple and microsoft render typefaces.

it boils down to personal preference above all else. are you comparing os x to windows browsers, or several different browsers on the mac? I just tried viewing the same page in safari, chrome and firefox on my mbp and they all seemed to use the same os-level font smoothing. i could be wrong, through.
 
Politis said:
From the answers it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other :)
By Clarity I mean that for some websites in Safari some of the lines overlap, or are squeezed out of their box. Also in some Safari the letters are 'thick' like overboiled spaghetti. But the same web page in Chrome looks fine.
Click to expand...

That is interesting; I've not noticed it myself, but I mainly use FireFox. I have no idea why that would be, but something is not being resized correctly. Could individual settings on Safari do that or is it more likely a compatibility issue?
 
NickZac said:
That is interesting; I've not noticed it myself, but I mainly use FireFox. I have no idea why that would be, but something is not being resized correctly. Could individual settings on Safari do that or is it more likely a compatibility issue?
Click to expand...

If you can, try, www.georgegreenfarm [dot] co [dot]uk on Safari and on FireFox. On Safari it automatically comes with some lines overlapping. If you make the page smaller from your pad (cmd -, or with the two fingers trick), more lines overlap.
 
I like Chrome because it has minimal screen usage and allows me to easily switch between tabs using command + 1, 2, 3, etc.

Firefox takes up more screen and essentially is the same as Chrome to me, but the limited space of Chrome is better.

I like Firefox's history search bar better but have gotten used to Chrome's.
 
Politis said:
If you can, try, www.georgegreenfarm [dot] co [dot]uk on Safari and on FireFox. On Safari it automatically comes with some lines overlapping. If you make the page smaller from your pad (cmd -, or with the two fingers trick), more lines overlap.
Click to expand...

You're coding/markup probably isn't up to par. You might want to check to see if your positioning is set in your external .css file.

As far as "form many websites" I have almost never come across a current webpage within the last year that fails to format correctly in safari.

Also, you need to fix your meta keywords and description tags, along with your title tag.

Put your javascript into an external file as well... it'll help cut load times.

Anyways, I use chrome..... I am a SEO/Web consultant and I find chrome the best for these purposes. Firefox is used for ONE thing, and one thing only, firebug. Hard to beat firebug/pagespeed... well, you can't beat it.

Safari is a great browsers, just lacks critical plugins I have to have for my daily work. Once it gets more SEO plugins I will probably swap to safari.
 
Last edited:
Everyone has their own opinion. I've used Firefox ever since it came out...and that will most likely never change. It owns. Chrome is a bit faster...but I don't like the layout as much. and I CANT STAND safari...id rather use IE.
 
I struggle with this question all the time!

I like Firefox for the few ad-ons I use, I like Chrome for the speed and cleanliness and I like Safari (my current choice) for the integration with the rest of OS X

But good grief Safari can beachball like no other application I've used, so frustrating. Sometimes it's only with 2 tabs open. I want to change, but I'm not even 70% happy with them, so at the moment, through gritted teeth, I'm saying Safari
 
Politis said:
If you can, try, www.georgegreenfarm [dot] co [dot]uk on Safari and on FireFox. On Safari it automatically comes with some lines overlapping. If you make the page smaller from your pad (cmd -, or with the two fingers trick), more lines overlap.
Click to expand...

Well, as many people have said here, it really is personal preference. I've personally come to like Firefox and the Gecko engine, and I never totally loved the WebKit engine of Chrome/Safari, but some swear by Chrome anyway. (This is coming from a Windows PoV, but I've used Chrome, FF and Safari on Mac with similar results)

On these sites that the text overlaps, have you tried zooming in instead?
 
Fonts sometimes look different but I would even go so far on OSX they look sharper in Opera than in Windows. The font smoothing/ Anti Aliasing is a little different.
In Layout I never had any problems but I never used Safari much because I cannot stand this slow bloatware that is missing so many useful features.

Like aquadisiac I prefer Opera. The browser that had most of the really good features (tab browsing being the most famous) first and still offers more features or better working features than any other browser IMO.
Chrome is not so bad too as Opera historically was a little different and too fully utilize Opera you need some time. Otherwise Opera offers little benefit over Chrome. They do teach you mouse gestures now in Opera 11 in a very nice way. When you use a mouse and not the touchpad you cannot do without mouse gestures once you are used to them and you will always pity those that do not know about them. Kind of like you are sorry for the poor lads that do not have the MBP touchpad with BetterTouchTool.
FF is imo the right choice only for those that need some specific addons. FF offers more and some very decent very exotic addons. Otherwise I think Chrome and Opera are better in their respective strongholds. Chrome simple and clean, Opera excels in usability and productivity.
Safari just sucks. It is bloated has with cover flow and its version of speeddial some fairly useless implementations that seem to need way too much resources. It is a pain to use if you are used to Browsers that have "real" features. The only good thing about it is that it saves battery and you do not need to force the Intel GPU on the new MBPs like you have to with any other browser. It is like IE on Windows a browser for those that do not ask for much.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back