Best browser for Mac

[DerChef]

Very simple firefox no workey with ONSPEED and I have no possibility of broadband at home

and its horrific compared with webkit based browsers on a dial up connection

I have Camino installed but very rarely use it.

Firefox is OK in the PC/Windows environment a bit of a mess in OSX

 

[McNewbie]

Well, pithhelmet is to the best of my knowledge the only for-pay adblocker out there. You can get SafariBlock which is free, Safari-AdBlock (Leopard and Safari 3 only i think), and there are a couple others as well that are free.

Inquisitor should work with Safari 2, but don't quote me on that, as for being able to move the tabs.... there may be a plugin that allows for that as well. Since you are on Tiger, you may want to check out TabExpose.... looks pretty nifty (fails to install under Leopard)

Thanks I was actually told that Saft was also paid for and a few of the others that have been recommended, I think there are a few that are free but I've been told that the add ons worth using are all pretty much paid for once Are you using Safari with Leopard? Think I'll download Safari 3 again and give it another go...when I downloaded last week it just crashed on me like I said I'm really dying to make Safari my default browser but I found that it was missing some basic features ie unable to re-arrange tabs, yes I understand this has been fixed with Safari 3.0 but then I've got to get the damn thing working

With the search thing I didn't mean using another search engine as I too just use Google but some browser well Opera anyway allows you to save say MacRumors Search Forum archives as a search engine so when you want to search this forum for a particular thread you can make the search via the search bar or the address bar by simply putting the letter you have allocated ie.MR for MacRumors for example followed by "safari" and it'll give me a list of all the threads that are entitled or have "safari" in their title. I love this feature Also do you know if there's a search feature with Safari where you can just type it on the address bar ie. FF you can just type a word in the addy bar and it'll do a google search of that word?

 

[sunfast]

Safari 3 for me - It's right there and I've never had any reason to use anything else.

 

[TheStu]

Thanks I was actually told that Saft was also paid for and a few of the others that have been recommended, I think there are a few that are free but I've been told that the add ons worth using are all pretty much paid for once Are you using Safari with Leopard? Think I'll download Safari 3 again and give it another go...when I downloaded last week it just crashed on me like I said I'm really dying to make Safari my default browser but I found that it was missing some basic features ie unable to re-arrange tabs, yes I understand this has been fixed with Safari 3.0 but then I've got to get the damn thing working

With the search thing I didn't mean using another search engine as I too just use Google but some browser well Opera anyway allows you to save say MacRumors Search Forum archives as a search engine so when you want to search this forum for a particular thread you can make the search via the search bar or the address bar by simply putting the letter you have allocated ie.MR for MacRumors for example followed by "safari" and it'll give me a list of all the threads that are entitled or have "safari" in their title. I love this feature Also do you know if there's a search feature with Safari where you can just type it on the address bar ie. FF you can just type a word in the addy bar and it'll do a google search of that word?

Yes, i am using Safari 3 on Leopard (no other Safari options) and quite like it.

Inquisitor lets you plug in your own search things into it, so if you can figure out the URL for the MacRumors search, you could plug that in as well. I like that with Inquisitor, I can define key commands for specific search engines, which is ironic because the day before I got inquisitor, i was talking with my friend about how awesome it would be if in firefox if you could type say 'i Tom Hanks' and it would do an imdb search. But if you were to type 'w ebola' it would do a wikipedia search. With Inquisitor I can do something similar, type out 'Charlize Theron' and then hit Command+I to do an IMDB search (user defined key commands BTW). You can also have Inquisitor search your web history which is also kind of handy.

As for using the address bar to do your searching, no, you will have to do like I do Command+T (new tab), Tab (jumps to the search bar) and start typing. So it is one more key press to get to it... admittedly, given a long enough time line you will actually lose time doing that, but honestly, i don't really notice it.

I haven't had any serious crashing issues on Safari 3... last time it did I think i had 40+ tabs open (Wikipedia link jumping) but the restore session saved me from going insane. However, the situation may be different on Tiger.

 

[dirtyhand]

Safari for browsing
Firefox for web designing / programming

 

[McNewbie]

As for using the address bar to do your searching, no, you will have to do like I do Command+T (new tab), Tab (jumps to the search bar) and start typing. So it is one more key press to get to it... admittedly, given a long enough time line you will actually lose time doing that, but honestly, i don't really notice it.

Thanks! That certainly sounds like something I'm looking for

 

[~Shard~]

Looking forward to using Safari 3 when I get my new Mac w/ Leopard and am also looking forward to the next release of Firefox as well.

 

[hierobryan]

I'm using Firefox on my old XP laptop...it's WAY faster than Safari and Firefox on my new Macbook. There's no lag when using my mouse's scroll wheel or the browser's scroll bar...it reacts instantly. I wonder why there's lag on my Mac That's my biggest problem when browsing the web with my Mac.

 

[Dreamer2go]

I don't like the tab for safari

is there a way, like firefox, to press the CMD key and 1-9 for the tab browsers? Everytime I do that in Safari, it brings me to an Apple page -__-

that is why I don't like safari as for now.
so firefox for me

 

[martyrk]

To be honest, I switch back and forth almost daily. All the things that I want in Safari are available via plugins. I also love how it integrates with OS X and syncs wonderfully to all my machines through .mac, as well as my iphone. Unfortunately, things like safe seem to slow Safari down. If Apple would just fix tabs and enable URL shortcuts, I'd never look back.

I switch back and forth too, but not probably as much, I switch due to movie playback, some websites do not work with safari so I use firefox, only when needed. For example this site does not work on safari

http://www.hdweeds.com/?page_id=47

But firefox works with it

 

[lofight]

I switch back and forth too, but not probably as much, I switch due to movie playback, some websites do not work with safari so I use firefox, only when needed. For example this site does not work on safari

http://www.hdweeds.com/?page_id=47

But firefox works with it

That site does work on my safari, you only have to wait a while

 

[terriyaki]

Safari for me and OmniWeb comes in at a close second. I'm surprised it's not on your poll. It's a great browser.

 

[Agathon]

I use Safari, but I would like to use Omniweb, which I've paid for, but which doesn't do RSS very well.

And that's the catch. Only Apple (with one important exception) seems to have worked out to integrate RSS feeds into the browser with any sort of success. All my most clicked on bookmarks are RSS feeds, and I've tried using external feed readers, but I don't see why I should have to have two applications to do the job that one application should be able to do.

The only other application that comes close is NetNewswire, since you can use it as a browser as well, except it doesn't have any bookmarks or other browser features.

Why can't somebody write a browser that is like NetNewsWire, but with all the other browser features? By that I mean one that looks like iTunes and has all your feeds in the source pane on the left, which you can open in a tab with one click, like in NetNewsWire.

It can't be that hard.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

All my most clicked on bookmarks are RSS feeds

Try Google Reader... doesn't matter what (relatively modern) browser you're using...

 

[Agathon]

Try Google Reader... doesn't matter what (relatively modern) browser you're using...

I did, but I don't like the UI. I'm one of these people who prefers the interface to be part of the browser.

 

[heatmiser]

Firefox, baby. I'm using the FF3 beta, Minefield. Got loads of new improvements over FF2.

 

[MacuserRX7]

As of Leopard: Safari.

Pre-Leopard: Firefox.

Actually, I use firefox on my ibook g4 running leopard 10.5.8 and it works fine and runs faster than safari which I only used for an hour before putting firefox on the machine.

-Dan

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Actually, I use firefox on my ibook g4 running leopard 10.5.8 and it works fine and runs faster than safari which I only used for an hour before putting firefox on the machine.

-Dan

It's always a good idea to check the date on the posts in a thread before posting.

 

[retty]

Chrome! In my experience, slightly faster than Safari and lots of excellent features.. only downside is horrible history and bookmark management.

Firefox is the slowest by far... if you use it consistently you think it's fine until you then open a couple of pages in Chrome or Safari and realise just who dire it is.

Firefox's update system is also horribly slow*– Chrome is perfect with background updates –*wen technology moves so quickly it makes sense to have an always up to date browser

 

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Chrome! In my experience, slightly faster than Safari and lots of excellent features.

This is not true.

only downside is horrible history and bookmark management.

There are many, many more downsides. For example Google makes its money from advertising. All Chrome is for is to deliver ads to you through any means necessary. Chrome gets to know you and you get ads targeted to you in your browsing, your searches, your email, your documents, etc.

Firefox is the slowest by far... if you use it consistently you think it's fine until you then open a couple of pages in Chrome or Safari and realise just who dire it is.

This is also not true. What you're experiencing as speed is just the way Chrome and Safari present their loading bars, and that they do not put a delay on page redraw like other browsers (to save cpu time and not present a page before its loaded enough).

Firefox's update system is also horribly slow*– Chrome is perfect with background updates –*wen technology moves so quickly it makes sense to have an always up to date browser

You can always change your update preferences...

I prefer Firefox as of today. My preference of browser switches between Firefox, Opera, and on rare occasion Camino. I currently use Firefox, because of neat new addons like AwesomeBar HD and LessChrome HD. Less Chrome completely hides your toolbar and bookmarks bar and only leaves your tabs visible, the toolbars reappear when you need them. AwesomeBar HD allows you to make specific search queries right from the toolbar, type "ref *tab* Firefox Browser" and it opens a wikipedia page about FireFox or try "mov *tab* Cowboys and Aliens" and it opens the rottentomatoes page for Cowboys and Aliens.

Opera is my other go-to browser. When I'm on a slow network nothing beats Opera Turbo (even Safari and Chrome). It compresses web pages server-side making them smaller downloads speeding everything up. It is extremely customizable. I love having my tabs on the bottom of the window and a highly customizable web tool bar on the left hand side! Opera and Firefox both have incredible tab management systems, Opera's is sleek and easy Firefox's is highly expandable. Safari has next to no tab management and Chrome basically only has tab pinning.

With each major update Firefox and Opera get noticeably better, which is amazing considering they are both always at the forefront of browser innovations. Chrome, on the other hand, has looked the same and had nearly the same feature set since its early betas.

 

[RamGuy]

Neither of you are right, you can't simply claim one web-browser to be superior to another it's far more complex and complicated than that.

I for one was all in on Mozilla Firefox up until v3.x and from there Mozilla has really gone downhill in my book. Mozilla have completely forgotten what Firefox was all about, it was a lightweight and blazing fast web-browser with barley anything other than the core web-browser functionality. If you wanted features you get them through add-ons. But from v3.x and onwards they've started to integrate and include tons of features you would normally get through add-ons earlier making the entire browser slower, requiring more resources and most importantly less stable. I noticed a drastic increase in browser crashed after Firefox 3.x was released and sadly 4.x didn't make it better. Now I'm trying out 5.0 but it doesn't seem like Mozilla have figured things out with this version either.


That's just my honest opinion about the current state and development of Firefox, it has become more like the Mozilla Navigator or whatever it was called which was Mozilla main web-browser up until Firefox 2.0 or something was released. Which for me is NOT a good thing.


When it comes to Opera I have never liked it much, it just don't appeal to me for some reason. It's indeed fast but the layout, design and overall feel of it makes me go back to other browser before I know it.


I for one really love Google Chrome, because it's minimalistic, stable and darn fast. And you got the whole each tab is it's own workspace, so if one tab crashes it doesn't mean your entire browsing session is going down the drain. Not to mention I love the Google integration, you got the Goolge Search Instant which I enjoy a lot, you got the syncing of settings, extensions etc.. with your Google account making life that much easier if you ask me.

There is one downside with Chrome for OS X though and that's related to whenever you watch a stream, video or anything your MacBook Pro is forced into using the dedicated graphics card and it will keep using the dedicated card until you completely shutdown Chrome entirely. I really hate this as my MacBook Pro 17" 2011 model is more than capable showing anything I would possibly ever want to watch in a web-browser even when using the integrated Intel Graphics card so why make the battery drain 10x faster without any obvious reason? If this goes for Firefox and other browser besides Safari I can't say.


The one reason I don't use Safari on my MacBook Pro is mainly because of the lack of extensions / add-ons and the fact that the URL-bar and search-bar isn't integrated with each other like in Google Chrome. It just feels awkward using Safari after getting used to such a feature.