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Best Browser for Mac?

i use safari with safari enhancer, aqua looks nicer than brushed steel. firefox is too slow on my 700mz. camino is a tad more sluggish over safari.

tho i have tried shiira and i like it alot. it has a very cool expose feature that lets you see all of your tabs. very cool, and it's open sourced and it's based on webkit [safari]. i'd like to see it become a little smoother tho. so until then i get sexy safari.
 
Eraserhead said:
???? I'm having no problems with Facebook or Gmail, (though my user agent is spoofed as Firefox 1.5) I'm using the 24th September Camino Nightly currently.
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It's possible there was an issue with installation when I upgraded. Maybe I should try it again.

edit: It's most definitely the nightly build. I tried updating again and both Gmail and Facebook went haywire.

With Facebook it's if you're looking at someone's photo and you scroll over the tags at the bottom. Normally it draws a square around their face, but with the nightly update it just flips out and starts scrolling up and down at high speed.
 
Warbrain said:
It doesn't emulate it, it spoofs it. It sends the code to the server you're trying to access stating that it's IE, not Camino.
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imitate the function of (another system), as by modifying the hardware or the software
 
tekmoe said:
chill out dude.
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How many times in history has that line worked for you? I am talking with regards of having someone actually "chill out".

he/she is just looking for a recommendation on which browser might be the best one out there. jeez...take a freakin' chill pill.
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My gripe isn't with the poster, I am sure the intentions are valid. However extremely open ended questions like this just lead to long, and open debate with little or no answers.

With the actual question that was posted taken into effect, there is no 100% correct answer.

However

The somewhat topic related banter within this thread does have some highly valuable browser information, so I guess open ended questions can be good sometimes :) .

Next time I shall make sure I have my pot-o-coffee before posting. I tend to sound crabbier then I actually am in those situations :) .
 
I like FireFox the best. There's FireFox extensions I can't live without...I'm VERY picky about my tab behavior. New tab commands have to focus the tab, it must be blank, and it must open immediately to the right of the tab I'm on. Middle clicking on a link must open a new tab in the background to the right of the tab I'm currently on. Middle clicking on a tab must close that tab and change focus to the previously focused tab. And on. And on. Yes, it's anal retentive, but...I'm a web developer, and almost my entire day is spent in a web browser.

As far as speed and "mac-like" looks, FireFox is plenty fast on my Core 2 Duo and once I installed UNO it looks just as integrated as any other app.
 
840quadra said:
How many times in history has that line worked for you? I am talking with regards of having someone actually "chill out".
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It sounds like you've chilled....:p
 
Steve Jobless said:
is it just me or is firefox just faster in terms of downloading?
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Gecko is a quick rendering engine. From my admittedly unscientific testing, though, Camino is faster than Firefox. Both running Gecko. Camino seems to like it more.
 
Steve Jobless said:
is it just me or is firefox just faster in terms of downloading?
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It may seem that way because FireFox starts downloading the file the instant you click the link, and continues downloading while you're selecting where to save the file. It's the only browser I've run across that does that, and it may make it seem like the downloads are a lot faster -- which in a way, I guess they are since it's using that time wisely.
 
mdickson said:
Safari has tabbed browsing.
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safari's tabbed browsing is rigid and difficult to use, I really don't understand why they didn't improve it.
 
Safari is my main workhorse browser with Debug enabled. However, i use Firefox occasionally for those weird site that only FF can render well. Safari is still the most stable, fast and well integrated browser for the Mac. All others try to jam pack features in, which, don't integrate with the OS well which often makes them "unstable".

Safari could use a lot of work though, such as better UI, improving resource usage and some more features, of which, i guess we'll see some in Leopard. Firefox is just better on a Windows machine as thats their primary target market. Its Mac implementation needs work, i find it to be slow at times....really slow (takes a good 5 secs to launch). I also hate that it has no in-built RSS reader and some tweaks for the windows version wont work on a mac version.

Bottom line no browser is perfect but for me Safari still takes the crown. Firefox a respectable heir
 
OPERA ALL THE WAY - well most of the way.

I have been using Opera since version 6 & it is a very good Browser. It does come unstuck with some site compatibility but it seems that some sites only code for IE, Firefox anyway which is always a problem. When necessary i jump to those but Opera is definitely quicker than Safari for example. Instability is an issue but this browser has to be one of the most customisable Browser's out there it Rocks.
I read an article on Browser speeds (running on window's - it seems slightly slower on the Mac). I wish I had the link right now but it showed tests that some person did on all major browsers & he was totally suprised to find that Opera was 2x faster than other browsers in most situations. this is defintely what I have found. It rocks. Short cuts keys are excellent such as back & forward and various others. Zooming is a breeze (that's right - hold control (command on Mac) and scroll wheel to hearts content!) or just use number keys to get it to zoom to a % that you want. - works fab for reading pages with small text. - As far as I know this does not work in other browsers.

It just plain rocks. The caching (or something) rocks hard. it is so quick that when you press back there is no reload that occurs like on othe Browsers. You can skip through all sessions so fast page by page back and forward that you would think you were off-line - oh and you can view pages offline too if you don't go to new links - ( I think that's in the options somewhere - I hope that's true)

If you like your email inside your browser, the emailig system is also excellent.

Last but not least the Undo command works as an instant reload of pages that you have closed - instant history recall.

It's a winner!
PS. I have no vested interest in the software - perhaps I should buy shares!

Opera all the way.
 
Personally I've never had any issues with Safari that have made me go anywhere else.
 
I can never make up my mind which browser I like the most but I'll cut to the chase immediately with this line:

I keep coming back to Safari

As much as I like Camino I find it's lack of support for Dictionary and inability to handover RSS feeds to NetNewsWire annoying. The browser itself is generally good to use and Inquisitor's support for it makes surfing much faster.

I despise Firefox with a passion because it's not a real Mac application. No support for Dictionary, Keychain Services and Network Preferences makes this browser an absolute no-no. I note that Mozilla FINALLY has a patch that will allow it to pickup your network settings so this should get to Firefox sometime and that will be one less gripe. I know a lot of people really like the extensions but I believe that the truely useful ones should be built-in and have never found one that I thought was worth installing.

Despite it suffering from the same problems as Firefox I really like Flock. The lack of support for Dictionary, Keychain Services and Network Preferences makes this a no-no again for me but it has got a much nicer UI and I love the features like Blogging, Photobar, Snippets, Search and Favourites.

Shiira 2 is showing promise but is too rough at the moment. I'll certainly be waiting for the full release of version 2 but I'm staying away from the beta currently.

Opera suffers from the same problem as Firefox by not being a real Mac application and not supporting core OS services.

OmniWeb is one that I haven't tried but I really should give it a try.

Ultimately, however, I tend to change my browsers about as often as I change my socks. Given this I'm trying to write an application that will keep my bookmarks in-sync across all my browsers to save some of the troubles of moving around.
 
miles01110 said:
Any chance that app will be available to others?? :) Bookmarks are always the biggest headache when switching browsers...
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Absolutely, but herein lies the caveat - I suck at programming. This application is the reason why I am trying to learn Objective-C/Cocoa programming but I'm not very good and it will probably cause your Mac to disappear in the implosion that one of my memory leaks generates. Anyway, don't hold your breath but if it works then I'll definitely publish it and continue expanding it into something useful (I have ideas...).

I did consider submitting it to the My Dream App competition but decided that I wanted to do it myself for the challenge rather than cop-out and get a pro to make it.
 
miles01110 said:
Any chance that app will be available to others?? :) Bookmarks are always the biggest headache when switching browsers...
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there are several online bookmars systems which is nice to use
1. protopage, which always popup a warning msg if you use safari
2. yahoo toolbar has a online bookmars, you need firefox to use it
3. google.com/ig online bookmarks

this is my protopage bookmarks:
 
I used to use Camino, but after a while I started finding little things that annoyed me; It would only let me save one password for each site, when I have 2 gmail accounts, and my girlfriend quite often uses my computer. Another is that it's default download folder is always the same as Safari, and when you change it, it changes Safari's default.

As soon as I got my iMac, I stuck to Safari.

On a PC, Opera is definitely the way forward.
 
wasimyaqoob said:
Whats the best Internet Browser for Mac?

Firefox, IE, Safari?

I find Safari is quicker than Firefox.
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Firefox optimized for Mac is cool. Faster than Safari and more expandable.
 
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