I will be downloading Lion tonight and am curious how Safari 5.1 is. I stopped using it years ago when I would become so frustrated with it's incompatibility with most websites. For instance, I would be buying something and checking out and on the final checkout page the Submit button or some other equally important button would be missing! This was after several minutes of entering all my info! I would try it immediately after on Firefox and it would work perfectly! Another thing I hated about Safari is the plain and ugly bookmark toolbar that has no colorful favicons (icons) and no Add-On to create a muti-row bookmark bar. How annoying is that? You just have one row of ugly gray words as your bookmarks. What a dry ***** of a browser! That is why I love Firefox. It is lightning fast, never has missing buttons or info and has all my awesome bookmarks with icons at the top. I want everything to be 100% Mac but Safari just fails miserably so I just can't use it. So my question is.... has anything changed?!
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Is the new safari still an inferior browser?
- Thread starter ralston6000
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I've used Firefox since I got my Mac but for the time being I'm using Safari since it supports all of Lion's new features.
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I still find Safari to use noticeably fewer resources than Chrome (which is normally my browser of choice)...between that, the expanded gestures available in Safari and how much cooler my i5 MBP runs in Safari, I'm using it over Chrome until Chrome works some of these things out in Lion...
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The only issue I've had with Safari over the last year or so (since I switched to it from Firefox) is intermittent crashes - maybe 1 a week (of intensive use) - not the end of the world, but still a nuisance. Most of the time, it's due to Adobe Flash Player or even added extensions - but it still crashes...
I have had Lion up and running since it was launched pretty much, and it's noticeably quicker, slicker and hasn't crashed yet...
I am lovin the full screen too...
Overall, very pleased...
I have had Lion up and running since it was launched pretty much, and it's noticeably quicker, slicker and hasn't crashed yet...
I am lovin the full screen too...
Overall, very pleased...
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Yep, I think it still lacks in features and it still can't render fonts properly. For me it is back to Firefox which has a proper bookmarking, addressbar and font rendering. The extensions are also heaps better in Firefox since they actually work. In Safari they mostly do not (one being the Comic Sans extension that should convert Comic Sans into Helvetica but never ever does). Other than that it has always been an ok browser for visiting websites just as every other browser is. It's in the details.
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Yaps, still prefer Chrome, but the new features added in Safari are really worth it.
Just had to run some scripts to navigate the tabs using numbers and use the omnisync to make it more chromish
Just had to run some scripts to navigate the tabs using numbers and use the omnisync to make it more chromish
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Chrome has a buggy extensions framework and it tends to lock up. So far those two things drive me nuts.
I love that Safari 5.1's tabs can lock up and not take the entire browser down. I know Chrome is supposed to have the same sandboxing but in reality it doesn't work (for me at least).
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In SL I gave Chrome a slight edge because it was faster and more stable, but Safari 5.1 in Lion on the other hand is vastly improved and retakes the lead IMO. It's speedy, the two finger swipes are a nice touch, and no problems with stability so far. Maybe it's true that Safari uses more memory but I don't spend all day staring at Activity Monitor and freaking out about how little free memory is left when Lion is running just fine without any slowdown or stuttering (and I only have 4GB RAM).
I've also never had any compatibility problems with websites on Safari.
I know it's just a matter of personal preference, but those ugly favicons are very un-Mac like and are exactly why I stopped using Firefox 4. I don't want these random icons cluttering up my toolbar.
I've also never had any compatibility problems with websites on Safari.
I know it's just a matter of personal preference, but those ugly favicons are very un-Mac like and are exactly why I stopped using Firefox 4. I don't want these random icons cluttering up my toolbar.
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It is very much an inferior browser. If for no other reason than the fact it will eat all of your available memory and then move on to the HD for dessert. Didn't take long for me to turn on 3 finger swipes and install Canary. Thanks but no thanks Apple.
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WOW, I didn't realize I was in the dark until you enlightened me.
I use Chrome on Windows, but under Lion Safari is much better IMO.
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If you're using Lion, Safari is the superior browser, at least for now. As Firefox and Chrome are updated to support swipe gestures that may change, but for now that feature is only supported by Safari--and it's a really nice feature.
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It is a nice feature. But not at the cost of every bit of RAM my computer has, and then huge chunks of my HD. It's a shoddy browser.
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Thanks for the comments everyone. I will try the new Safari but the plain jane look with no helpful extensions will probably be too much like roughing it for me. Would love to use Chrome but have found that it will not save passwords. Sometimes I go to one of my sites and there is nothing for my username and password. Sometimes just my username will be there and no password. Of course it asks me again if I want to save everything and I say yes again. I log out to test it and of course login info does not get entered for me when I refresh. It seems to be in the keychain but doesn't get used. Worthless. Another pet peeve is not being able to delete "other bookmarks" on the bookmark bar and only having room for a whopping 10 bookmarks. The worst is trying to click on History and instead of easily seeing your last websites visited (your history), you see "Most Visited and "Recently Closed". Is this someone's idea of a joke? Also I am not an expert on browsers but do the extensions available for Chrome really make this browser customizable like Firefox, (a perfect browser)? I don't think so. Is Chrome really what the tech savvy love to use?
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I started using Chrome when it first came out for Mac....and as its grown it has become increasingly unstable and slow. The latest version of safari is fast and rock solid! I am now back to Safari.
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I wish I had a choice...
But I can't live without pinned/app tabs used by both Firefox and Chorme.
I really wanted to use Safari, but browsing has become extremely annoying to me without those special tabs.
But I can't live without pinned/app tabs used by both Firefox and Chorme.
I really wanted to use Safari, but browsing has become extremely annoying to me without those special tabs.
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Safari definitely feels zippy but it locks up (after hours of use) for some reason.
Chrome is stable for me, but I'm waiting for Google to adopt Lion's native fullscreen feature for the fullscreen button and not Chrome's own equivalent of it. Null on the FS button on FF 5.
Chrome is stable for me, but I'm waiting for Google to adopt Lion's native fullscreen feature for the fullscreen button and not Chrome's own equivalent of it. Null on the FS button on FF 5.
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Having a dual monitor setup, the reason I am using chrome is because it has its own implementation of fullscreen. I can have chrome running fullscreen and still use my second monitor for other tasks.
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