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Firefox 3

I prefer:

  • Safari 3.1.1

    Votes: 39 34.5%

  • Firefox 3

    Votes: 65 57.5%

  • other.. (Opera?)

    Votes: 8 7.1%
  • Total voters
    113
teknikal90

teknikal90

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 28, 2008
3,434
2,196
Vancouver, BC
to be released real soon, jun 17..
anyone tried the rc3?
how does it pit against safari 3.1.1?
in terms of speed, compatibility (some websites mess up BAD on safari, texts arent where theyre supposed to be, layouts get messed up..), and most importantly, memory EFFICIENCY?

i read somewhere, cant remember where, that safari uses alot of memory...

opinions? safari 3.1.1 vs. Firefox3.
 
btw, i open pdf files alot for uni lectures,
how does firefox 3 handle pdfs?i like how safari has an integrated viewer.

id download it myself, but i have 6gb limit per month on my crappy 3g connection, and im about to run out..
 
Firefox is nice insofar as some webpages work with Firefox but not Safari, so I always keep it in my dock, but I use Safari for most of my browsing.
 
teknikal90 said:
btw, i open pdf files alot for uni lectures,
how does firefox 3 handle pdfs?i like how safari has an integrated viewer.

id download it myself, but i have 6gb limit per month on my crappy 3g connection, and im about to run out..
Click to expand...

There's a useful add-on for Firefox that allows a lot of flexibility in handling pdf's - it's called PDF Download. You can choose to open it, save it, or convert it to html. It's handy if you're looking at a lot of pdfs and don't want your desktop cluttered with files you're not going to need.
 
j26 said:
There's a useful add-on for Firefox that allows a lot of flexibility in handling pdf's - it's called PDF Download. You can choose to open it, save it, or convert it to html. It's handy if you're looking at a lot of pdfs and don't want your desktop cluttered with files you're not going to need.
Click to expand...

does it take long to open a pdf file?
when i open pdfs on safari it seems like theres native support, just opens it like any otehr website...
opening a pdf through ie on a windows machine however, back in the day was super painful....adobe reader would first launch...then itd load and then itd open, and would only do so slowly...
 
teknikal90 said:
does it take long to open a pdf file?
when i open pdfs on safari it seems like theres native support, just opens it like any otehr website...
opening a pdf through ie on a windows machine however, back in the day was super painful....adobe reader would first launch...then itd load and then itd open, and would only do so slowly...
Click to expand...

It opens in preview, so it opens the same as any pdf file you have on your computer (plus download time)
 
teknikal90 said:
i meant within the browser itself?
Click to expand...

Preview actually renders PDFs way faster than Safari does, and scrolls through them much more efficiently. Whenever I open a PDF in Safari, I always tell it to open in Preview anyway.
 
I used Safari on my Mac over Firefox2 as it was clearly faster and more responsive. Since installing the Firefox3 betas, I have entirely stopped using Safari. Firefox3 is not only faster, but has the plugin system I was missing. Its new default theme fits right in with the current Mac brushed metal look and looks as good as Safari, if not better, IMO. Safari would have to come up with some major new tricks to get me to switch back again any time soon, I think.

I do appreciate that Safari is apparently multi-threaded and Firefox3 is not, it seems. But the huge speed increase of Firefox3 makes this unnoticeable in everyday use so far whereas there was a big difference between Safari and Firefox2 in that Safari wiped the page with it. But this is no longer the case.

Overall, I think the extension/theme system flexibility is what makes Firefox superior when the speed issue is very close. I missed my favorite extensions when I was using Safari, but it was worth it when Firefox was crawling on this machine when it was still dual 553MHz. Safari was much more usable. Now they're similar feeling and with 1.8GHz 7448 G4, even Firefox2 is acceptable, although vastly inferior to Firefox3.
 
compatibility: firefox probably is better, but you may or may not feel it.
memory efficiency: firefox 3 should be better than safari 3 especially with long time use (>1-2hrs), safari team seems don't regard this a priority?.
Speed: i call it roughly the same, individual's might have different local situation and experiences, you should try out for yourself.

All above might not be deciding factors, IMHO

its more about firefox's extensions+security+out of box functionality
vs
Safari's system integration.

Depends on which one out weight the other one.
 
Personally i prefer Camino but sometimes i use safari too...

Another cool browser is Shiira.It has a really nice graphic environment!!!!:rolleyes:
 
Well, of the two I prefer Safari, so that's what I chose. Omniweb is what I mostly use on my own systems, though
 
Well I use Safari 4 Developer, and it runs awesomely quick. I have little problem with adverts and extensions since I only visit sites I know, and Safari tends to handle what I need with ease.

Firefox 3 is a awesome browser and some of the skins for it out already make it look natively awesome on a Mac, that coupled with it's extensions for anything you need basically makes for a truly superb piece of software.

I think it comes down to what you need, Safari wins for me.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

webkit in Safari UI all the way for me
 
teknikal90 said:
can anyone tell me which will is more system-efficient?less memory usage?
ff3 or safari 3.1
Click to expand...

fx3. u can google firefox memory, or check my sig for the detail.

PS. I mentioned this in previous post already, guess you didn't believe me or didn't see it
 
I'm back with Firefox and have been using the version 3 RCs and nightly builds for a good 4 months now.

Safari is quick but still has problems on some websites (Gmail, my bank, etc) so it's a no-go.

Firefox 3 is much better than 2, I like the location bar and all manner of extensions.
 
I have been using FF for a few years now. I am looking forward to the new release on "Download Day."
 
I haven't tried Safari 4 yet but I definitely prefer FireFox 3.0 over Safari 3. FireFox 3 seems to load pages faster for me and FireFox has better compatibility with web sites. Something that annoyed the heck out of me for a while was this popup to some fortune teller website that was originating from MySpace. It would popup constantly every 10 seconds. Safari's popup blocker did absolutely nothing to stop it. I never got the popup using FireFox.

The one thing I do dislike about both FireFox 3.0 and Safari 3 is that neither are compatible with the eBay listing creation box! I have to close everything in FF 3 and open FF 2 just to create a new listing. The white text editing box is there on the page but the text editing tools to select fonts and font colors and switch between basic and html editing never loads.
 
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