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Is Firefox better than Safari?
- Thread starter Boesky
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Haha. +1
But seriuosly. It's up to you. In my experience, firefox is a little more of a CPU hog, which on my current computer is a big deal. If you like add ons and plugins, it might be for you.
There are countless threads about this on here though, do some research all you'll find the browser for you.
But seriuosly. It's up to you. In my experience, firefox is a little more of a CPU hog, which on my current computer is a big deal. If you like add ons and plugins, it might be for you.
There are countless threads about this on here though, do some research all you'll find the browser for you.
I really only prefer firefox because it is more customizable. I usually use the apple software, so if safari became more customizable I would be all for it.
I use both equally.
Each has it's advantages. I prefer Firefox for general use and it's addons, but Safari is very snappy (for me anyway) and with GlimmerBlocker and Click2Flash it offers the same great ad-free and Flash-free experience FF does with AdBlockPlus and FlashBlocker.
Each has it's advantages. I prefer Firefox for general use and it's addons, but Safari is very snappy (for me anyway) and with GlimmerBlocker and Click2Flash it offers the same great ad-free and Flash-free experience FF does with AdBlockPlus and FlashBlocker.
I have been happy with Safari, but occasionally even HC Apple fans comment things like "I never realised that anybody used Safari. Safari sucks." and the like.
I just like how Safari looks and makes websites look. FF might me faster, that is true but it's not as polished. And frankly, if you are not into eye candies, you might not be so excited about OS X in general either.
I just like how Safari looks and makes websites look. FF might me faster, that is true but it's not as polished. And frankly, if you are not into eye candies, you might not be so excited about OS X in general either.
Is Coke better than Pepsi? Is McDonald's better than Burger King? Is Windows better than OS X? Or is it basically just all the same in a slightly different packaging and a slightly different taste?
I prefer Coke, McDonald's, OS X and Firefox. But I make my income in a Windows and Linux world. It doesn't hurt me to drink Pepsi and eat some fast food from Burger King.
But I haven't been using Safari anymore since they've released version 4. I think they ruined the browser in more ways than I want to describe here and it rendered so many websites wrong that I've lost count. Safari 4 was the reason why I switched to Firefox, and I'm quite happy with Firefox -- on any platform.
I personally prefer Safari but it's definitely a personal choice and I can see why others might prefer Firefox.
I can tell you what I prefer, but not what is better.
Prior to swapping in a faster HD and more ram, I preferred using Safari because it booted up faster, handled a lot of tabs at once better (for me), and was less of a resource hog (for me). If I left Safari on for extended periods of time however (especially if one of those tabs had video on it...), it would bog down my entire system. The one thing that I really like that Safari has over Firefox (natively, and at least to my knowledge) is top sites. I've taken a great liking to top sites, and now only using bookmarks for archiving references.
That being said, I always kept Firefox around because it handled certain sites better (particularly banking, for me) and every now and then, I would get sick of being bombarded with these intrusive ads (which are the #1 cause of app crashes on my mac by far). I'm aware of glimmerblocker and all that jazz, and even it installed, but it doesn't block a lot of stuff (for me) without making adjustments, which are easier (for me) to do in Firefox with Adblocker.
This changed with my faster HD and more ram though, now the performance differences between the two browsers are virtually negligible to me, but I still primarily use Safari because of top sites alone. If Firefox ever included a native top site-esqe feature in their app, I would probably switch to it full-time.
Prior to swapping in a faster HD and more ram, I preferred using Safari because it booted up faster, handled a lot of tabs at once better (for me), and was less of a resource hog (for me). If I left Safari on for extended periods of time however (especially if one of those tabs had video on it...), it would bog down my entire system. The one thing that I really like that Safari has over Firefox (natively, and at least to my knowledge) is top sites. I've taken a great liking to top sites, and now only using bookmarks for archiving references.
That being said, I always kept Firefox around because it handled certain sites better (particularly banking, for me) and every now and then, I would get sick of being bombarded with these intrusive ads (which are the #1 cause of app crashes on my mac by far). I'm aware of glimmerblocker and all that jazz, and even it installed, but it doesn't block a lot of stuff (for me) without making adjustments, which are easier (for me) to do in Firefox with Adblocker.
This changed with my faster HD and more ram though, now the performance differences between the two browsers are virtually negligible to me, but I still primarily use Safari because of top sites alone. If Firefox ever included a native top site-esqe feature in their app, I would probably switch to it full-time.
While Firefox offers a lot of addons, safari has slightly better performance.
Although i use none of them. I recommend Opera or Chrome. They use a lot less power, while rendering websites faster.
Personally i mainly use chrome with mailaddon. On other computers (university etc.) i use opera, since they offer sync of bookmarks.
Although i use none of them. I recommend Opera or Chrome. They use a lot less power, while rendering websites faster.
Personally i mainly use chrome with mailaddon. On other computers (university etc.) i use opera, since they offer sync of bookmarks.
On every Mac I've had, Safari loads considerably faster and seems to have better performance overall, while Firefox tends to render things more PC-comparable (not a big issue like it used to be, though my Chase credit card login still refuses to work with Safari).
Not that I'm being pro-FF or anything, but Safari does the same exact thing to me, at least prior to my ram upgrade.
Firefox is too slow both to load itself and the pages for me, and the private browsing mode is just ludicrously designed.
Both have their good and bad sides.
Firefox:
+ Addons for customizing it to exactly your liking
+ Good name completion and bookmarks/history search from the address bar
- Long cold startup time
- Font rendering not as good as Safari (slightly blurrier text)
Safari:
+ Fast startup
+ Font rendering
+ Searching for words on a webpage
+ Top sites (slight minus for editing - adding things to it manually is a bit of a pain and very unintuitive)
- Popup window handling (no option for opening new windows for just the links that you clicked on and rest shown in tabs)
- Lack of proper addon support
- Address bar name completion sucks
- Doesn't retain tab history on program restart
I wouldn't use either browser in their default setting. I need to shoehorn a lot of addons on both to get them to work like I want. Then they're pretty close to each other, with Safari offering slightly better performance but on the other hand it does some things worse than Firefox so I tend to use FF more. I hope Safari 5 will bring tons of new features to make it better.
Chrome on the Mac is still too buggy and lacks a lot of the features you find on the Windows version. No smooth scrolling either. Plus it looks ugly on the Mac (then again so does Firefox's default theme).
Firefox:
+ Addons for customizing it to exactly your liking
+ Good name completion and bookmarks/history search from the address bar
- Long cold startup time
- Font rendering not as good as Safari (slightly blurrier text)
Safari:
+ Fast startup
+ Font rendering
+ Searching for words on a webpage
+ Top sites (slight minus for editing - adding things to it manually is a bit of a pain and very unintuitive)
- Popup window handling (no option for opening new windows for just the links that you clicked on and rest shown in tabs)
- Lack of proper addon support
- Address bar name completion sucks
- Doesn't retain tab history on program restart
I wouldn't use either browser in their default setting. I need to shoehorn a lot of addons on both to get them to work like I want. Then they're pretty close to each other, with Safari offering slightly better performance but on the other hand it does some things worse than Firefox so I tend to use FF more. I hope Safari 5 will bring tons of new features to make it better.
Chrome on the Mac is still too buggy and lacks a lot of the features you find on the Windows version. No smooth scrolling either. Plus it looks ugly on the Mac (then again so does Firefox's default theme).
See, I would rate this the exact opposite - Firefox drives me CRAZY how that the address doesn't auto-complete IN the address box. I have to go down to select the one I want, whereas Safari auto completes it and as soon as I get what I want, I just hit return and go. Just my opinion...
well personally Ive been using firefox for about 2 weeks now and all i get now is not responding with firefox so im going to try safari in hopes that its good..