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The Superiority of Firefox

J

justind.clark

macrumors member
Original poster
I know this really boils down to preference but after trying Safari, Camino, OmniWeb, iCab, Shiira, Sunrise and others; I have concluded that Firefox 3 is the best and here is why.

There are a lot of browsers with cool features but I haven't found one that I can't get for Firefox using plugins. Sometimes there are features that i don't have any use for in other browsers but in Firefox i just add the functionality that i need and leave the rest via add-ons. Firefox has true StumbleUpon for free. You can make it look virtually identical to the other browsers if that is important to you. I have made Firefox run just as fast if not faster than Safari by enabling pipelining.

I know that Mozilla makes Camino for mac but it is too limited in terms of features and extendability. And i have never been able to get it to run as fast as Firefox on my mac.
 
justind.clark said:
I know this really boils down to preference but after trying Safari, Camino, OmniWeb, iCab, Shiira, Sunrise and others; I have concluded that Firefox 3 is the best and here is why.

There are a lot of browsers with cool features but I haven't found one that I can't get for Firefox using plugins. Sometimes there are features that i don't have any use for in other browsers but in Firefox i just add the functionality that i need and leave the rest via add-ons. Firefox has true StumbleUpon for free. You can make it look virtually identical to the other browsers if that is important to you. I have made Firefox run just as fast if not faster than Safari by enabling pipelining.
Click to expand...

I love my firefox that looks exactly like safari! 😀 It is nice on my eyes.
 
Yeah, I do miss StumbleUpon's toolbar not being available for Safari, but it still works by going to their site and making use of the frame at the top.
 
For me Firefox just seems to be more stable and it never needs any updates to it's "snappiness" factor.
 
benlangdon: you can read an excellent explanation of pipelining in firefox 3 here

MarkMS: Yes i have used opera, i forgot to put it in my list. Opera is decent but I have had problems with it rendering simple pages such as Google. Also it doesn't have anything that i can't get in Firefox.
 
justind.clark said:
benlangdon: you can read an excellent explanation of pipelining in firefox 3 here

MarkMS: Yes i have used opera, i forgot to put it in my list. Opera is decent but I have had problems with it rendering simple pages such as Google. Also it doesn't have anything that i can't get in Firefox.
Click to expand...

nice thank you i just did it.
ya i was going to google it but im a little busy

but thank you, i never knew blogs were useful for something 😱

edit
o ya im trying inquisitor, at first i was pissed that it searched in yahoo, then in the setting it said google.
so im giving it a try, already kinda liking it

anyone else have any good addons.
i got a couple but will post later
 
I got a new iMac yesterday and would like to download Firefox. Is there any reason not to? After all the problems I had with my PC's over the years, I sure don't want to mess up this new Mac. Do Mac users prefer Firefox or Safari more? Anybody know? and why? (too many questions....I know)

When I have the Apple store transfer my programs/files, can they transfer my bookmarks I had in Firefox?
 
mrmember said:
I got a new iMac yesterday and would like to download Firefox. Is there any reason not to? After all the problems I had with my PC's over the years, I sure don't want to mess up this new Mac. Do Mac users prefer Firefox or Safari more? Anybody know? and why? (too many questions....I know)

When I have the Apple store transfer my programs/files, can they transfer my bookmarks I had in Firefox?
Click to expand...
You should buy an external hard drive and back up an installation.

I use both Safari and Firefox. Right now I'm on the former. Each has strengths and weaknesses.

You can transfer your bookmarks. It's a snap.
 
Firefox is great because it comes with very few features but you can add everything you could ever want. Safari comes with a handful of features but you can only add a few if you want. This means firefox does everything i want without useless features getting in my way. Firefox also has a addons that allows me to sync bookmarks between computers which is a life saver for anyone who dual-boots. I also like having one browser on every OS. I could boot into almost any OS available and have Firefox, Safari only works on windows and osx.
Safari might be a little faster but i really dont care. I'd rather have my addons and sacrifice 0.1 seconds per page.

Heres the addons that got me hooked:
Adblock - Works as advertised (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10)
Fliterset.g updater - Updates the adblock list so new ads dont show up (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136)
Download Statusbar - Downloads appear in a neat toolbar at the bottom of your window instead of a complete different window. You can watch every single download progress and even open it from the bar without ever switching from your main window (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26)
Video DownloadHelper - Lets you download videos from sites like youtube and such. Works on any embedded media like music too (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006)
 
Digital Skunk said:
They all take me to the same Internet I guess....

I never knew browsing would be such a big deal.
Click to expand...

I think the actually difference between Safari and FireFox now is pretty small, but something like Opera Mobile and Blazer(for Palm OS) is HUGE, its almost a different internet.
 
mrmember said:
I got a new iMac yesterday and would like to download Firefox. Is there any reason not to? After all the problems I had with my PC's over the years, I sure don't want to mess up this new Mac. Do Mac users prefer Firefox or Safari more? Anybody know? and why? (too many questions....I know)

When I have the Apple store transfer my programs/files, can they transfer my bookmarks I had in Firefox?
Click to expand...

It is really up to you. But don't worry about your mac as far as installing programs goes. They don't have issues with apps clogging them up like pcs do. Just install AppCleaner; when you delete an application, it removes all of the package and preference files so you are not left with a bunch of crap on your mac. Plus it's completely free unlike similar apps such as AppZapper and AppDelete.

There really isn't a dominant browser on the mac because there isn't one that is irrefutably better as there is in the pc world. But I prefer Firefox, for reasons why, see the original post.

The Apple store will transfer the bookmarks for you if you ask them to.
 
Since using OSX I have rarely used Firefox, except on occasion with a few Apple sites that embarrassingly haven't worked in Safari. Safari is well integrated with iTunes protocols and other things like this, although from what you're saying the bloat that drew me away from Firefox has gone!

I shall have to give it a go, I must admit I miss the Live Bookmarks and keyword searches, which I haven't been able to do quite the same in Safari.
 
NoSmokingBandit said:
Firefox is great because it comes with very few features but you can add everything you could ever want. Safari comes with a handful of features but you can only add a few if you want. This means firefox does everything i want without useless features getting in my way. Firefox also has a addons that allows me to sync bookmarks between computers which is a life saver for anyone who dual-boots. I also like having one browser on every OS. I could boot into almost any OS available and have Firefox, Safari only works on windows and osx.
Safari might be a little faster but i really dont care. I'd rather have my addons and sacrifice 0.1 seconds per page.

Heres the addons that got me hooked:
Adblock - Works as advertised (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10)
Fliterset.g updater - Updates the adblock list so new ads dont show up (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1136)
Download Statusbar - Downloads appear in a neat toolbar at the bottom of your window instead of a complete different window. You can watch every single download progress and even open it from the bar without ever switching from your main window (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26)
Video DownloadHelper - Lets you download videos from sites like youtube and such. Works on any embedded media like music too (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006)
Click to expand...

i have all those two except the last one
you should try also adblock plus element hiding helper

also have add to search bar 1.7
easy drag to go, which is amazing and i could never live without, if you like expose, you will like this even though its nothing like expose.

nightly tester tools, which is really nice even though i only use it for one thing, and thats taking out where it says firefox on top, it explains it on there

pdf download, self explanitory
Tree style tab, which i love and cannot live without
and under closed tabs button, which even though i can go through the history i would rather use this
 
Eh, Firefox isn't that bad.
It is actually my preferred browser.
Recently I've been going 35% Safari, 55% Firefox, and 10% Opera.

You're lucky Ziggy is in "time-out" you would get flamed by him putting FireFox down and talking about how much better Opera is.
He himself told me he wanted to so bad; I feel bad for him being in time out.
 
I do a lot of development for the web so I switch browsers constantly. I use Safari for all my personal stuff, but for development YSlow, Firebug, etc are just no match for Safari's options.
 
Thanks to the guys that answered my questions. My husband says he's got an external memory that should work well on my new computer, and with time machine I'll be able to back-up and protect my files regularly. About 3 weeks ago, my son tried to back-up my iTunes library and we lost them all.... I know iTunes will re-download the purchased ones at least once, but I'll have to reload all the CD's. Ouch. At least this time it'll be more fun on my new iMac. 🙂
 
mrmember said:
Thanks to the guys that answered my questions. My husband says he's got an external memory that should work well on my new computer, and with time machine I'll be able to back-up and protect my files regularly. About 3 weeks ago, my son tried to back-up my iTunes library and we lost them all.... I know iTunes will re-download the purchased ones at least once, but I'll have to reload all the CD's. Ouch. At least this time it'll be more fun on my new iMac. 🙂
Click to expand...

hey make sure you have the file type set as apple lossless encoder
its a much higher quality of file.
and my prefered file type besides flac

so this is how you do it.
open itunes
go to file > preferences > general
then click on import settings
then change import using.

much much better quality
 
I use Firefox for the following reasons:

Fire.fm
Adblock Plus
Chatzilla
DownloadThemAll!
Web Developer
WOT

I actually hate the browser and would much rather use Safari but those addons are just too useful for what I do.
 
Actually, the default look of Firefox 3 for Mac is very clean... even better than Safari in my opinion. No more cartoony colors, buttons etc.

Yeah, the add-ons, extensions, themes, etc... all make for some nice customizing of the browsing experience for power users. But when I switched back to Mac earlier this year I was having a hard time choosing between Safari and Firefox 2. After being a die-hard Firefox user on Windows, the compelling reasons to use it were not quite as clear on Mac, and Safari looked better... until FF 3.0. But, the thing that swung me overwhelmingly back to Firefox with version 3 was the page zoom feature. It's just so second nature to hit ⌘+ and ⌘- to size the web page proportionally, instead of just increasing text size. It's such a brilliant idea, especially with higher and higher resolution displays. I really miss this on all other browsers, it gets so addicting.

My main negative issue with FF 3 for Mac is it's tendency to crash while two-finger scrolling on web pages before they're fully loaded. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's definitely a stability issue, at least for version 3.0.1
 
pdxflint said:
Actually, the default look of Firefox 3 for Mac is very clean... even better than Safari in my opinion. No more cartoony colors, buttons etc.

Yeah, the add-ons, extensions, themes, etc... all make for some nice customizing of the browsing experience for power users. But when I switched back to Mac earlier this year I was having a hard time choosing between Safari and Firefox 2. After being a die-hard Firefox user on Windows, the compelling reasons to use it were not quite as clear on Mac, and Safari looked better... until FF 3.0. But, the thing that swung me overwhelmingly back to Firefox with version 3 was the page zoom feature. It's just so second nature to hit ⌘+ and ⌘- to size the web page proportionally, instead of just increasing text size. It's such a brilliant idea, especially with higher and higher resolution displays. I really miss this on all other browsers, it gets so addicting.

My main negative issue with FF 3 for Mac is it's tendency to crash while two-finger scrolling on web pages before they're fully loaded. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's definitely a stability issue, at least for version 3.0.1
Click to expand...

not totally sure what the zoom is but you know you can zoom in on anything in osx right ?
 
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