Safari and Google Chrome

[mileslong]

I have wanted to like Safari like I do all Apple products but found myself only using Firefox because of the web developer extensions like firebug and X-Ray to name a few. I then started using Chrome because of the sheer speed. Safari doesn't do anything better than these other two. Its faster than Firefox but slower than Chrome, and it doesn't have the great extensions Firefox has.

I hope Safari 5 brings much needed changes...

 

[calb]

Chrome is nippy and features are developing at a solid rate... but certain UI elements are just not Mac-like enough (i.e. bookmarks, extension icons). I look forward to a possible Safari 5 announcement at WWDC. At the moment it feels slow (compared to Chrome) and likes to hang on me.

 

[LouieSamman]

Chrome is nippy and features are developing at a solid rate... but certain UI elements are just not Mac-like enough (i.e. bookmarks, extension icons). I look forward to a possible Safari 5 announcement at WWDC. At the moment it feels slow (compared to Chrome) and likes to hang on me.

Safari UI might change for the good and look better which is what I'm looking forward to.

I believe Safari 5 will be faster than google chrome once released. With a different engine (webkit2) I have a feeling we will see great speed improvement, much less beach balls to none, and snappy/fast YouTube loading.

Also html5 is going to be implemented in the browser also.

 

[lefooey]

Here's another hopeful wish for a Safari5/Webkit2 announcement at WWDC. Chrome has a lot of hype and some decent speed under the hood, but it really breaks the UI a lot, IMHO. It also doesn't thread very well on my Early 2009 Macbook. It's not 64-bit and it tend to run everything on a single core. In laptops, this means quicker battery drain.

Safari (plus SIMBL, Safari Adblocker, Safari Cookies and SafariStand) give me everything I had for privacy and functionality in Firefox. Chrome has some "mostly there" plug-ins.

When I'm doing website development, Firefox plus Firebug is the hands-down winner. It's also the worst battery hog of all.

Safari for my daily use.

 

[ZebraineZ]

I also love chrome it's incredibly fast for a non-apple app, it already opens on the first bounce, and not many apps do that...not even many apple apps.

Safari is still incredibly fast, but is more stable than chrome so I use it more because chrome manages to freeze a lot, which isn't very good.

I think Webkit vs Chrome would be a much better comparison as both are always in a 'beta' form but like a person before said, you could see the true speed by using webkit which is still fastttttt.

 

[jon08]

I've been using Safari for a while, but I'm almost ready to switch to Chrome. First of all, Safari truly is a resource hog - when I have lots of tabs open at the same time for a while, it will take up to 700 (!!) MB of RAM, while Chrome will only take up about 350-400 MB with the same amount of open tabs.

Second, there is rarely any beachballing in Chrome when I open several tabs at the same time or when pages load. Page loading is just smoother than in Safari, because the latter tends to beachball/freeze for a sec or two. And the fact that Chrome treats each tab separately is also quite great.

Third, Chrome's "Awesome bar" is just so much easier to utilize in searching for both the websites you've visited before or other websites that you perhaps know a part of the name of, but not the entire address - the bar will help you find it easily because it's basically a Google search at the same time. Safari is crap when it comes to this.

Moreover, I like how you can hide Chrome's "Status bar" and still get your status displayed in the "pop-up" type of Status bar that Chrome provides. In Safari it's either have the status bar, or not have it at all.

To the OP: why don't you get Glims for Safari? One of the numerous customizations it offers is the option to open links in new tabs as opposed to new windows, which you find annoying.


What I still don't like about Chrome is:

- can't remove the bloated "Other bookmarks" folder in the Bookmarks bar, which is just ridiculous - people have been demanding it for quite some time, yet Google still haven't done jack about it!!

- the gap between Bookmarks bar favicons is a bit too wide, I wish it could be possible to cram it a bit closer so to gain some extra space

- no tab customization

- how to bring back websites that you might have lost by accidentally closing the browser?

- no "Stop" button?

- no bookmark separators

 

[MikhailT]

Safari UI might change for the good and look better which is what I'm looking forward to.

I believe Safari 5 will be faster than google chrome once released. With a different engine (webkit2) I have a feeling we will see great speed improvement, much less beach balls to none, and snappy/fast YouTube loading.

Also html5 is going to be implemented in the browser also.

I hope everybody understands that webkit2 isn't a rendering or js engine. It's a new API for split processes, it has nothing to do with rendering or js.

 

[Jayomat]

What I still don't like about Chrome is:

1) no tab customization

2) how to bring back websites that you might have lost by accidentally closing the browser?

3) no "Stop" button?

4) no bookmark separators

1) add-ons

2) add-ons

3) The "play" button in the multifuncitonal" bar becomes the "stop button" while a page is loading...

4) just type in the bookmark you want to use and you'll get it... where is the need in visually seperating your bookmarks? If you KNOW your bookmarks, you just don't need a seperator...

 

[jon08]

1) add-ons

2) add-ons

3) The "play" button in the multifuncitonal" bar becomes the "stop button" while a page is loading...

4) just type in the bookmark you want to use and you'll get it... where is the need in visually seperating your bookmarks? If you KNOW your bookmarks, you just don't need a seperator...

Isn't it that the more add-ons you have, the more it will slow down Chrome/overall browsing speed? Or is it only the Adblock extension that will have such "adverse" effect?

3) Oh, didn't notice the play button turned into the stop button while loading pages... Would be nice if it could be moved to the left tho, next to the "reload" button and other buttons.

4) With 150+ bookmarks it is kind of hard to have all your bookmarks memorized, that's why I'd prefer to have bookmarks separators, since I group them into different categories.....

 

[ZizousamA]

Chrome is a resource hog killing my cpu with all these chrome helpers. Its cpu consumption is on a league of its own.

 

[bjones521]

Chrome is a resource hog killing my cpu with all these chrome helpers. Its cpu consumption is on a league of its own.

I am having the same problem. Is anyone else?? Chrome by far is faster but is uses soo much memory!!

 

[MikhailT]

I am having the same problem. Is anyone else?? Chrome by far is faster but is uses soo much memory!!

That's the nature of the process sandboxing for the tabs/plugins, it will use more memory compared to other browsers that don't have the sandboxing. If Safari were to include the sandboxing for all tabs/plugins, it'll use up more memory as well. FF 3.6.4 will include something for the plugins and might increase memory usage as well but that's just for the plugins.

Remember Chrome is still in beta development, I download the hourly build daily and they change a lot of code every day and the feel of the browser does change as well daily. So the memory usage can change as well, it just requires Google to freeze a trunk and start optimizing it instead of adding new code all the time.

 

[bjones521]

That's the nature of the process sandboxing for the tabs/plugins, it will use more memory compared to other browsers that don't have the sandboxing. If Safari were to include the sandboxing for all tabs/plugins, it'll use up more memory as well. FF 3.6.4 will include something for the plugins and might increase memory usage as well but that's just for the plugins.

Remember Chrome is still in beta development, I download the hourly build daily and they change a lot of code every day and the feel of the browser does change as well daily. So the memory usage can change as well, it just requires Google to freeze a trunk and start optimizing it instead of adding new code all the time.

Oh Ok so what is your everyday browser then? Unfortunately I may go back to safari. I really like the tab browsing of chrome but it makes my macbook pro sound like a lawn mower!

 

[macrem]

When using Linux, I use Chrome. On my Mac, Safari. They are my favorite browsers. Safari is an awesome browser. Very slick. It's fast, the UI is great, & it works with everything I do. I don't bother installing another browser on my Mac anymore.

 

[MikhailT]

Oh Ok so what is your everyday browser then? Unfortunately I may go back to safari. I really like the tab browsing of chrome but it makes my macbook pro sound like a lawn mower!

My fans don't kick in because of Chromium, I still use it 24x7, even tho it uses up to 1GB of ram when I have multiple tabs, I don't notice any system performance degrading. It's fine for me.