I am trying to decide which other browser to use on my mac besides safari. Should I use Firefox, Camino, Opera or other? Also could someone explain the differences between firefox and camino and why one might be better then the other, I dont use firefox extensions so just letting people know ahead of time.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Which is the best alternate browser for Mac?
- Thread starter Baba Ganoush
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I don't like safari because it's crap. Steve is forcing that stupid browser down our throats just like microsoft did with IE. Plus safari security wise is the most unsafe browser. I use only firefox but opera is a very good browser too. I would say just install firefox 3 and opera and try them out see which one you like better.
I am one that loves Safari and hates Firefox (verdict still out on Firefox 3). Flock is a pretty cool browser as well.
I've been using Camino for about 2 years and just switched to FireFox when version 3 came out. Killer feature for me was Bookmark management. The speed was a real nice bonus as well.
Without being to technical (because I'm not that knowledgeable in this area) Camino is basically a more mac "optimized" browser that uses the same engine as FireFox. I don't use extensions either (well actually, i found a couple nice ones recently
, but they're not crucial and wouldn't keep me from switching browsers), the main reason why I preferred Camino over FireFox was FireFox's buttons/toolbars always seemed laggy/unresponsive. But in FF version 3 it actually feels like it's a native app so i'm happy.
Without being to technical (because I'm not that knowledgeable in this area) Camino is basically a more mac "optimized" browser that uses the same engine as FireFox. I don't use extensions either (well actually, i found a couple nice ones recently
, but they're not crucial and wouldn't keep me from switching browsers), the main reason why I preferred Camino over FireFox was FireFox's buttons/toolbars always seemed laggy/unresponsive. But in FF version 3 it actually feels like it's a native app so i'm happy.
Thanks everyone of the replies. The browser I have the most questions about would be Camino. Would it render all the websites the same as firefox? Also is it as secure as firefox since it isnt as popular and less people probably look at the code. Do fixes for firefox make their way to Camino? Lastly, is there any benefit to use Camino over firefox besides it being "made for mac" Thanks!
I used firefox on PC after i learned how much better it was than IE. I just got my mac and downloaded firefox with it...and i really cant tell much of a difference between safari and firefox on my mac. I just have them sitting next to each other on my dock and i use whichever i click on first. My Firefox wasnt working very well yesterday so i used safari which was working fine. I made all the links the same in the same order on both so it doesnt really matter wha i use, though i do like how firefox remembers my passwords better
For the most part, FireFox and Camino have been on par. But with the recent release of FF3, there's a "generation gap" almost, between the two so they are quite different at the moment.
I am not sure how much this address the generation gap, but if you download the latest Camino nightly build you get the same acid3 test score as the official FF3 release.
How often does Camino get updates? I know it's a smaller project then firefox so how quickly are updates applied to it?
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: 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)
ha! I do the exact same thing. Guess it makes me feel more at home on my pc...
Eddyisgreat said:
ha! I do the exact same thing. Guess it makes me feel more at home on my pc...
Been using Opera since initial release on Windows (back in those days when it's still paid software). Somehow just couldn't shift to other browsers.
The latest 9.5 brought a few.. let's say.. unwelcomed changes to usability like new default shortcuts (shortcut profile can be switched to pre-9.5 releases) and no more instant google search on the address bar without typing the letter "g" in front of your search text (it used to be able to perform a google search on any text that has 2 or more words in the address bar without the "g" prefix).
Aside from the occasional weird webpage rendering, the latest version (9.5) loads much quicker than previous releases. On the whole, useable, but still needs fine-tuning.
Onto Firefox.. great alternative, but somehow finds it slow. Only use it for compatibility reasons. Other than that, it'll be Safari considering it launches almost instantaneously (on a new mac that is)..
The latest 9.5 brought a few.. let's say.. unwelcomed changes to usability like new default shortcuts (shortcut profile can be switched to pre-9.5 releases) and no more instant google search on the address bar without typing the letter "g" in front of your search text (it used to be able to perform a google search on any text that has 2 or more words in the address bar without the "g" prefix).
Aside from the occasional weird webpage rendering, the latest version (9.5) loads much quicker than previous releases. On the whole, useable, but still needs fine-tuning.
Onto Firefox.. great alternative, but somehow finds it slow. Only use it for compatibility reasons. Other than that, it'll be Safari considering it launches almost instantaneously (on a new mac that is)..
I use Safari as my primary browser. But, I'll use FireFox as an alternative whenever I need to.
I've never gotten along with Opera very well, and in it's latest release, it is the ugliest browser I've ever used (and I used the very first ones at the dawn of the public Internet).
I've never gotten along with Opera very well, and in it's latest release, it is the ugliest browser I've ever used (and I used the very first ones at the dawn of the public Internet).
