Best browser to use other than safari?

[ItHurtsWhenIP]

Of course the one real killer blow for Safari, apart from those previously mentioned is the way it deals with tabs. The way it opens tabs from your previous session every time it's restarted drives me to distraction. Why is there no option to switch this behaviour off?

Finally is it necessary to have such huge tabs? Apple need to scrap the whole thing and start again with a blank sheet of paper.

That's the third option in Preferences..

Safari opens with: A new window

I have mine set up with that and new windows open with empty page and every time I open Safari it's blank..never loads up the previous tabs.

Also..you know the tabs get smaller as you open more of them, right? I know Chrome uses the same sizes, but then you have to scroll through them if there's too many..I like Safari's way better, to be honest.

 

[Lankyman]

That's the third option in Preferences..

Safari opens with: A new window

I have mine set up with that and new windows open with empty page and every time I open Safari it's blank..never loads up the previous tabs.

Also..you know the tabs get smaller as you open more of them, right? I know Chrome uses the same sizes, but then you have to scroll through them if there's too many..I like Safari's way better, to be honest.

Ah! thanks for that, I have been looking for a close tabs on exit or something similar. Why they chose to call it windows instead of tabs just to confuse the issue is a puzzle.

Yes I know the tabs diminish in size the more you open but I just think the initial size is simply overkill. There is still the issue of slowness though. Compared to Chrome or Firefox or even dare I say IE, Safari on my iMac is so much slower than all the others. I have loads of RAM and it's a mid-2011 machine with a decent Internet connection so it has to be Safari that's this issue.

 

[HenryDJP]

Ah! thanks for that, I have been looking for a close tabs on exit or something similar. Why they chose to call it windows instead of tabs just to confuse the issue is a puzzle.

Yes I know the tabs diminish in size the more you open but I just think the initial size is simply overkill. There is still the issue of slowness though. Compared to Chrome or Firefox or even dare I say IE, Safari on my iMac is so much slower than all the others. I have loads of RAM and it's a mid-2011 machine with a decent Internet connection so it has to be Safari that's this issue.

Not to put you down here but you have to use some amount of your own technical knowledge to figure things out. Read between the lines a bit. I've never been confused about the term "Close windows". A Tab is window within the browser, simple as that.

In terms of ram, how much are calling "Loads or Ram"? I have 16GB and I generally open many tabs during the day and never experience slowness in Safari. What I do experience slowness in is Firefox with multiple open tabs. I watch my ram meter and it eats it up. There's definitely a big ram leak in Firefox. Safari used to leak ram a lot but this latest version has been very ram efficient.

 

[Lankyman]

Not to put you down here but you have to use some amount of your own technical knowledge to figure things out. Read between the lines a bit. I've never been confused about the term "Close windows". A Tab is window within the browser, simple as that.

In terms of ram, how much are calling "Loads or Ram"? I have 16GB and I generally open many tabs during the day and never experience slowness in Safari. What I do experience slowness in is Firefox with multiple open tabs. I watch my ram meter and it eats it up. There's definitely a big ram leak in Firefox. Safari used to leak ram a lot but this latest version has been very ram efficient.

Nothing to do with technical knowledge more a case of terminology. Other browsers refer to tabs as just that, not windows. I have Safari on two Windows machines and two Apple machines and on all four Safari is significantly slower to load and slower to open tabs, (note the word tabs ) than either Firefox or Chrome. Chrome being by far the fastest of them all.

 

[HenryDJP]

Nothing to do with technical knowledge more a case of terminology. Other browsers refer to tabs as just that, not windows. I have Safari on two Windows machines and two Apple machines and on all four Safari is significantly slower to load and slower to open tabs, (note the word tabs ) than either Firefox or Chrome. Chrome being by far the fastest of them all.

Understandable if you find speed to be most important to you. Speed of a browser is not my #1 need. Safari is DNA'd for the Mac OS. All the gestures, iCloud "tabs " and other necessary functionality are tied better with the Mac than other browsers. I'm not a Chrome fan whatsoever. Firefox is good enough as a backup to Safari but eats too much ram.

We can agree to disagree on what words should only be used to describe a feature however that's not a Safari vs. other browsers thing, the term "Close all Windows" is in the Mac System Preferences, not the Safari Preferences. That's because it can also affect Preview and other programs that you can open multiple windows with. In fact, Safari uses the words Tabs or Windows in the Preferences.

 

[Lankyman]

Understandable if you find speed to be most important to you. Speed of a browser is not my #1 need. Safari is DNA'd for the Mac OS. All the gestures, iCloud "tabs " and other necessary functionality are tied better with the Mac than other browsers. I'm not a Chrome fan whatsoever. Firefox is good enough as a backup to Safari but eats too much ram.

Horses for courses I suppose. I quickly gave up on the iMac mouse as it devours batteries and is not particularly ergonomic. I found the Logitech Laser to be a much better solution both for batteries and ergonomics. As I'm also not keen on the trackpad then gestures are not something I'm either able to access or have little interest in. In fact I've always found that the mouse is one product Apple have never really got to grips with.

iCloud again is something I don't bother with apart from iTunes. I much prefer having full control of my data and not have it reside on a server in some far off land.

There is absolutely nothing that I use my Mac for that is Safari dependant. As I've said previously Apple should tear up the spec sheet look at Chrome to see how a browser should work and start again with a clean canvas. I've even ditched it on my iPad in favour of Chrome. I was hoping for a complete revamp with Mavericks but I don't believe that is likely.

 

[HenryDJP]

Horses for courses I suppose. I quickly gave up on the iMac mouse as it devours batteries and is not particularly ergonomic. I found the Logitech Laser to be a much better solution both for batteries and ergonomics. As I'm also not keen on the trackpad then gestures are not something I'm either able to access or have little interest in. In fact I've always found that the mouse is one product Apple have never really got to grips with.

iCloud again is something I don't bother with apart from iTunes. I much prefer having full control of my data and not have it reside on a server in some far off land.

There is absolutely nothing that I use my Mac for that is Safari dependant. As I've said previously Apple should tear up the spec sheet look at Chrome to see how a browser should work and start again with a clean canvas. I've even ditched it on my iPad in favour of Chrome. I was hoping for a complete revamp with Mavericks but I don't believe that is likely.

Sounds like you're an overall better candidate for Windows 8 full time. You should really ditch the entire Mac experience, it's not for you.

 

[w0lf]

Sounds like you're an overall better candidate for Windows 8 full time. You should really ditch the entire Mac experience, it's not for you.

How so. He doesn't use touch gestures and doesn't use iCloud so he should get Windows 8 lol. Only problem with that is that windows 8 is more touch/gesture based than OSX and also has integrated Skydrive...

It's true Safari is king of trackpad gestures on OSX. No other browser even comes close to the smoothness of gesture animations as Safari but that's about it. In fact in most other aspects it lags behind.

For example things Chrome has that Safari does not:
Cross Platform (OSX, iOS, Win, Linux, Android vs just OSX, iOS)
Built-in Flash (One less thing to bother with updating)
Automatic updates (Small delta updates, unobtrusive)
Synced history
Synced extensions
Synced passwords
Cloud printing
More frequent updates and security fixes
More expansive plugin selections
Browser skins
Ability to run native apps
Smaller UI footprint (Chromes Tab bar is thinner than Safaris)
User profiles
Better developer tools
Page translations
Sandboxed tabs
Private browsing simultaneously with normal browsing
Automatic login for all Google Web services (Youtube, Gmail, etc..)
Filesystem browser

Plus Chrome has had "Cloud" tabs for around 2 years now so that's nothing to tout about.

 

[Lankyman]

Sounds like you're an overall better candidate for Windows 8 full time. You should really ditch the entire Mac experience, it's not for you.

What a very bizarre petulant response, you come across as an Apple evangelist, i.e. either embrace the entire Apple experience or leave. You give the brand a bad press with such comments.

My view is a browser should be lean, clean and uncluttered. Safari Mavericks appears, note I say appears as I haven't auditioned it yet, to be somewhat bloated, simply my view, which is just as valid as anyone else's.

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How so. He doesn't use touch gestures and doesn't use iCloud so he should get Windows 8 lol. Only problem with that is that windows 8 is more touch/gesture based than OSX and also has integrated Skydrive...

It's true Safari is king of trackpad gestures on OSX. No other browser even comes close to the smoothness of gesture animations as Safari but that's about it. In fact in most other aspects it lags behind.

For example things Chrome has that Safari does not:
Cross Platform (OSX, iOS, Win, Linux, Android vs just OSX, iOS)
Built-in Flash (One less thing to bother with updating)
Automatic updates (Small delta updates, unobtrusive)
Synced history
Synced extensions
Synced passwords
Cloud printing
More frequent updates and security fixes
More expansive plugin selections
Browser skins
Ability to run native apps
Smaller UI footprint (Chromes Tab bar is thinner than Safaris)
User profiles
Better developer tools
Page translations
Sandboxed tabs
Private browsing simultaneously with normal browsing
Automatic login for all Google Web services (Youtube, Gmail, etc..)
Filesystem browser

Plus Chrome has had "Cloud" tabs for around 2 years now so that's nothing to tout about.

Thanks for the support, obviously HenryDJP has received a blow to the head with an Apple stick.

 

[Goldfinger]

I'd love to use Safari (because of integration) but I can only use Firefox for one simple reason: It's the only browser that properly color manages on high gamut monitors. All other browsers oversaturate everything.
Also everytime I use Safari it seems as if it's much slower than FF. Maybe that's a caching thing.

 

[BR3W]

My view is a browser should be lean, clean and uncluttered. Safari Mavericks appears, note I say appears as I haven't auditioned it yet, to be somewhat bloated, simply my view, which is just as valid as anyone else's.

Safari 7 is leaner than ever. I use Chrome as a backup because I refuse to install Flash on my macbook. When you were posting about Safari slowing down with open tabs did you happen to notice how much Flash they had on them? My roommate switched to a Macbook after seeing me use one for so long but he was really unhappy with the performance because he uses a lot of Flash sites. I helped him setup clicktoplugin with Chrome as a backup and he's a lot happier.

 

[Lankyman]

Safari 7 is leaner than ever. I use Chrome as a backup because I refuse to install Flash on my macbook. When you were posting about Safari slowing down with open tabs did you happen to notice how much Flash they had on them? My roommate switched to a Macbook after seeing me use one for so long but he was really unhappy with the performance because he uses a lot of Flash sites. I helped him setup clicktoplugin with Chrome as a backup and he's a lot happier.

So for Safari to compete with Chrome one has to use sites with little Flash content? It's not a case of Safari slowing down with open tabs, it is so much slower to load, be it on my iMac which has the i5 with 16gigs of RAM or my quad Windows Laptop.

Both Chrome and Safari use BBC News as their Homepage, so a pretty fair comparison.

I have seen and read a preview of S7 on a Mac World review but wasn't won over by the screenshots. It did say it was faster, though in all honesty it needs to be.

 

[vanc]

For Chrome, Google throws big resources at it. You know they have ChromeBook running on ChromeOS which has the Chrome browser as the sole user interface.

The SPDY protocol is one big contribution from Google to speed up web site loading. Right now, Twitter, Facebook and all Google web sites support this protocol. It consistently improves page loading.

Internet is Google's money tree. They have all the reasons to make Chrome better.

 

[HenryDJP]

What a very bizarre petulant response, you come across as an Apple evangelist, i.e. either embrace the entire Apple experience or leave. You give the brand a bad press with such comments.

My view is a browser should be lean, clean and uncluttered. Safari Mavericks appears, note I say appears as I haven't auditioned it yet, to be somewhat bloated, simply my view, which is just as valid as anyone else's.

Get real and get over yourself, seriously. . I am far from being an "Apple Evangelist" and I don't appreciate your childish response. You had an abundance of dislike for what Apple has rolled out over the years. The mouse, the trackpad, the gestures, iCloud, how they have System Preferences setup, you don't like their browser, etc....

I have my own issues with Apple and the Mac but you sounded like Windows might be a better solution for you. I was being honest about it. If you can't figure that out then that's your problem but your kneejerk reaction was unnecessary.

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How so. He doesn't use touch gestures and doesn't use iCloud so he should get Windows 8 lol. Only problem with that is that windows 8 is more touch/gesture based than OSX and also has integrated Skydrive...

It's true Safari is king of trackpad gestures on OSX. No other browser even comes close to the smoothness of gesture animations as Safari but that's about it. In fact in most other aspects it lags behind.

Plus Chrome has had "Cloud" tabs for around 2 years now so that's nothing to tout about.

Oh, does Chrome's Cloud Tabs currently work with the iPhone?

 

[Lankyman]

Get real and get over yourself, seriously. . I am far from being an "Apple Evangelist" and I don't appreciate your childish response. You had an abundance of dislike for what Apple has rolled out over the years. The mouse, the trackpad, the gestures, iCloud, how they have System Preferences setup, you don't like their browser, etc....

I have my own issues with Apple and the Mac but you sounded like Windows might be a better solution for you. I was being honest about it. If you can't figure that out then that's your problem but your kneejerk reaction was unnecessary.

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Oh, does Chrome's Cloud Tabs currently work with the iPhone?

Well Mr get over yourself, not that it is any of your business, the fact is I had a bad accident a number of years ago which has left me with only partial use of my dominant hand. Therefore I need a mouse with good ergonomics which I'm sure most would agree isn't something one could say about MM, nor am I able to make use of trackpad or gestures due to the disability.

Therefore most of your argument for me not liking the Apple ecosystem falls apart right there. I don't like any cloud based service as I prefer to rely on my own offsite NAS among other things for storing and streaming data.

As for Safari v Chrome, I think you will find generally that Chrome is a far more popular browser than Safari.

 

[rocknblogger]

Oh, does Chrome's Cloud Tabs currently work with the iPhone?

Yes, on any OS that Chrome is available on.

 

[iThinksimple]

except Internet Explorer , luckily the Internet Explorer has been rid out from Mac,
btw i'am using Google chrome for daily browsing,
i don't know why, i just feel comfortable with it,

 

[Michaelgtrusa]

Opera 16 is out.

 

[GermanyChris]

Opera 16 is out.

which is better than all the browsers being discussed

 

[starikarp]

Now one is the best but I use:
Opera 12.16 (OSX and FreeBSD)
Firefox (OSX and FreeBSD)

and I start to use Sleipnir for OSX and it looks very good.

 

[HenryDJP]

Yes, on any OS that Chrome is available on.

Yep, but that also means I have to use Chrome for iOS. No thanks.

 

[HenryDJP]

Well Mr get over yourself, not that it is any of your business, the fact is I had a bad accident a number of years ago which has left me with only partial use of my dominant hand. Therefore I need a mouse with good ergonomics which I'm sure most would agree isn't something one could say about MM, nor am I able to make use of trackpad or gestures due to the disability.

Therefore most of your argument for me not liking the Apple ecosystem falls apart right there. I don't like any cloud based service as I prefer to rely on my own offsite NAS among other things for storing and streaming data.

As for Safari v Chrome, I think you will find generally that Chrome is a far more popular browser than Safari.

Nope, I don't think so, my argument doesn't fall apart anywhere. You never explained your reasons in the first place. Guess I have to have ESP.

I don't use browsers based on popularity. Seems a bit teenage to me. I use what works for me and at the end of the day the gestures and extra features of Safari, coupled with Safari being DNA'd for Mac OS vs. 3rd party browsers is why I need it and use it...not because it's "popular".

 

[Lankyman]

Nope, I don't think so, my argument doesn't fall apart anywhere. You never explained your reasons in the first place. Guess I have to have ESP.

I don't use browsers based on popularity. Seems a bit teenage to me. I use what works for me and at the end of the day the gestures and extra features of Safari, coupled with Safari being DNA'd for Mac OS vs. 3rd party browsers is why I need it and use it...not because it's "popular".

I shouldn't need to explain myself to anyone, least of all you. To decide someone should not be using a Mac simply because I haven't embraced every feature is just plain offensive. What about my iPad, Apple TV, new Time Capsule etc. would you have me get rid of those too?

However, I get you aren't big enough to apologise.

 

[HenryDJP]

I shouldn't need to explain myself to anyone, least of all you. To decide someone should not be using a Mac simply because I haven't embraced every feature is just plain offensive. What about my iPad, Apple TV, new Time Capsule etc. would you have me get rid of those too?

However, I get you aren't big enough to apologise.

Your tone is very offensive. You ended up explaining yourself anyway and I never asked you to. That's on you. I gave you an honest recommendation with no agenda based on the limited information in your post. It had nothing to do with you not "embracing" every feature on the Mac, it was your rant of what you don't care for on the Mac. It was extensive. Nice way to sugar coat. You got heated over it with a kneejerk reaction which was unnecessary. I don't owe you an apology for anything. Get over it.

 

[Lankyman]

Yep, but that also means I have to use Chrome for iOS. No thanks.

Yep that's what choice is all about, Chrome for me on my iPad.

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Your tone is very offensive. You ended up explaining yourself anyway and I never asked you to. That's on you. I gave you an honest recommendation with no agenda based on the limited information in your post. It had nothing to do with you not "embracing" every feature on the Mac, it was your rant of what you don't care for on the Mac. It was extensive. Nice way to sugar coat. You got heated over it with a kneejerk reaction which was unnecessary. I don't owe you an apology for anything. Get over it.

Talk about the teapot calling the kettle black. Well I'll let others make up their own minds, an argument doesn't improve for keep repeating it. I do wonder what colour the sky is in your particular world though?