All Mac Browser Showdown★
These days, the folks at Apple say that Safari is the best out there. The folks at Mozilla however, are pretty sure Firefox is simply the best. Of course on the mac we have the option of two mozilla browsers, both free and open source.Camino was developed a while back to better match the slick and polished GUI of Mac OS X, but overall both have the same basic functionality even if Camino is updated much less frequently and lacks a more polished plugin and add-on feature.
And of course Firefox, which enjoys a more regular update cycle and better polished extras.
So its fairly safe to say that the choice can be reduced to just Safari and Firefox, and if you swing the Firefox way, whether or not you use Camino is down to personal preference.
Safari VS Firefox.
Lets start with Safari. Bundled right with OS X, but thankfully not integrated entirely into the OS (such as Internet Explorer being not much more than an add on to Windows Explorer, and integral part of the functioning OS).
Safari looks like its been designed from the ground up to visually please and match its slick OS X environment. The browser defaults to apple.com/startpage and load-time is only one or two seconds at the very most (normally less than a second).
Safari supports tabs, RSS, and has a handy little option to do ‘Private Browsing’. When activated this ensures Safari doesn’t record or remember any temporary data concerning your session, very useful if you’re at a friend’s house and want to access sensitive data such as your gmail accounts on their mac.
And now, to introduce Firefox. Firefox was one of the first really, really good free browsers. For a windows buff I wouldn’t recommend anything else, but unfortunately thats where it falls a little short on the mac. Its clearly a windows port, and is almost uncomfortable running in OS X.
Firefox supports tabs, RSS and has an unlimited number of extra handy options available via plug in downloads.
The Comparison.
RSS
Both browsers do a nifty RSS, although I have to say Safari’s RSS reader is much more visually impacting, and has a few more advanced features like searching feeds and limiting their size.
Safari:
Firefox:
Form Memory, remembered passwords and commonly searched terms.
This is an area where Safari miserably falls short of the competition. Firefox has a handy little memory feature that kicks in whenever you’ve logged in to a website. It’ll generally ask you if you want your user details saved, so that next time you go to the site you won’t even have to type them in again. Just because sometimes that might be a security issue, doesn’t mean a user shouldn’t have the option to implement it or not!
Firefox automatically logs me in to most sites:
Where as Safari really, just has no clue:
*Update: Safari does actually have functionality built in to remember usernames and passwords, its Preferences> Autofill. But as default, this turned off.
Spellchecker:
Safari doesn’t even have one, and Firefox clearly (and most usefully) does. Really big slip up there, having a spell checker in your browser is just bliss, Camino also has one built in.
Firefox spellchecker:
Camino spellchecker:
Cross-browser compatibility:
On installation, Firefox can automatically import your Safari preferences, bookmarks, passwords etc. Useful.
Also, dragging a link from safari to firefox is easy, allowing users to freely swap in and out of browser windows:
Web CompatibilityOne interesting thing ( and annoying ) is that Safari doesn’t support most online WYSIWYG editors. For instance, to post on blogger I really have to use Firefox.
The winner:
I rarely ever do this but I’m afraid to say that I can declare no clear winner. Yes, I am guilty of writing a lengthy review to determine the better browser and have arrived to an inconclusive dead end.
During everyday browsing, you’ll find my dock looking a little like this:
Its easy enough to switch in and out of browsers, and having both apps running is often very useful. Sometimes I have safari on Private Browsing farming information off the net I don’t want records kept of, while I browse freely with Firefox.Happing Mac’ing!
Labels: Reviews
★ 0 Comments. | By Skippy, Wednesday, February 21, 2007 7:06 PM | Links to this post
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