The Hickensian

6.05.04

a little browser quandary

which one to choose...

For me, choosing a default browser on my PC was very, very easy. Should I use IE with its basic features and crappy standards support? Opera with its flashing ad banners, and messy interface? Hmmm, it’ll be Firefox then.

However, for the last year, I’ve been unable to stick to one browser on OS X as my default for long. I don’t have this problem in any other area – default text editor: skEdit, default DTP app: InDesign CS. No other Mac user I know seems to have this problem – they just use Safari all the way. I flick between browsers as much as 5 times a day, and I’m starting to really bore myself with it. Switching is inevitable, as no one browser will be able to do absolutely everything you want it to, but I would really like to decide on main browser. I’d like to get a life please.

At the moment its more or less a 2 horse race between Saftari* and Omniweb 5, but there is still the occasional dalliance with Camino and Firefox. I’ve been really wowed by the latest Omniweb 5 betas, if you tried an earlier version and gave it up for being too crashy, try it again. At least the latest Opera 7 Mac beta is an ugly duckling, and iCab still doesn’t ‘do’ CSS, so that helps to narrow the choice a bit.

This post was intended to be a bit of personal browser-therapy – admit to my obsessive problem, hoping that you don’t start avoiding me in the street, and invite you to let me know your thoughts. Does anyone else have this problem? Do you have a definite favourite? Let me know. If I can get almost 200 comments for doing a little icon, hopefully you’re all dying to let me know your opinion!

*Apologies if you find my pet name for Safari with saft annoying. I’m not going to stop though.

Comments | RSS

No.1

Josh S said 1886 days ago:

I use Firefox almost exclusively unless I am testing something. I'm not even too fond of Safari compared to Firefox (I even like the way Firefox looks better). I haven't tried OmniWeb 5 yet but on your recommendation I might give it a run. Omni makes good products, but I don't like paying for a browser when a fantastic one (Firefox) is free.

No.2

Shaun Inman said 1886 days ago:

I rarely stray from Safari. Why? One primary reason and a couple of minor design-snob things.

The big selling point for me is inline spell-checking. Right/control-click in a text area and select "Spelling > Check Spelling As You Type." No more embarrassing uncorrectable spelling mistakes when posting on Hicks Design. ;D

Minor annoyances with the next best thing on OS X , Firefox, are the ugly form widgets and the visually misplaced "Close Tab" button. But for debugging JavaScript and CSS, I'll concede that Firefox is tops.

No.3

Max said 1886 days ago:

Nearly exactly the same problem here. Safari for surfing and php testing, Camino for System Administration, FireFox for HTML/CSS/JavaScript debuging and OmniWeb as "it would be so cool if it would be a little bit faster" browser. But allmost every time I have at least three browsers running.

No.4

Isaac said 1886 days ago:

I've been having the same problem - I love the nativeness of safari, and the fact spell checking is there (being a horrendous speller). But I like many things about Firefox as well. I've switched back and forth about 3 times so far since January, when I got my Mac.

Maybe its time to give Omniweb 5 a try.

No.5

Josh said 1886 days ago:

You have vocalised exactly my conundrum! I'm always a sucker for 'new, improved' browsers so have never been able to settle for long...

Currently using Saftari most (I'm cool with that name), closely followed by Firefox (brilliant) and increasingly tempted by a much improved Camino (try a nightly build, it's virtually 0.8 and looks great by default although I prefer your icon sets!)

My compromise until recently was to use a metallized (thanks btw) Camino and kid myself I was getting the best of all worlds...

Though I should never admit this in public I think I rather enjoy playing them off against each other... (I've got too many bookmarks anyway and am effectively using different browsers for different categories of my life)

Enough. Thanks for a great site.

No.6

jake said 1886 days ago:

Hi, my name is Jake, and I am a browser switcher.

Pretty much I seem to be using Omniweb 5 a heck of a lot. But I tried Saft and Saftari gets rid of the worst things about Safari, the loss of tabs on a crash or restart. But I still can't get past the lack of scrolling with tabs. I hate going up and hitting the arrow to get that list of tabs that went off the "page." Outside of that I like Safari, so I still use it somewhat regularly, especially after an update is released.

Fierfox is also in my "Alternate Browsers" folder, as is IE, but I mostly use those two for testing purposes. Firefox does occasionally come out to play, but I use it all day at work, and since I don't share bookmarks or anything between the two locations, I just use it when the mood strikes me, or again, when an update is relaesed.

It's nice to know there's others out here with the same problem. ;)

No.7

Josh Bryant said 1886 days ago:

Hmm, I have been a user of Saftari since 10.2 (I don't mind the name either).

There are just so many things that just make sense with Safari. it basically comes down to the same reason I switched to Macintosh in the first place. I'll be using Safari for something, and all the sudden I notice a feature, or they way that it handled something, and the little voice inside my head will say, "wow, that makes sense, why isn't every browser like that?"

I would really give omniweb a try, but their whole tab implementation is ludicrous for 12" screen users. I have a 12" powerbook, and already I have to keep the browser full-screen to view many sites. I do not have room on the side for a drawer. Ugh, and don't even get me started on drawers... I suppose if I had a wide-screen display I might give it a test drive again.

No.8

Michael Bester said 1886 days ago:

I know your pain, Jon. With the exception of Omniweb, I have tried just about every browser out there for OS X in the past year, and have not been able to stick with one as a default for more than a few months.

My current browser of choice is Safari. I love the speed and how well it is integrated into the OS. The one thing I miss the most though is the "Find as you type" of Mozilla and Firefox. When I actually upgrade to Panther and can use the latest version of Saftari, that should no longer be an issue.

Every so often I come across a site that doesn't like Safari. At that point, I'll refer to Firefox.

No.9

Jon Hicks said 1886 days ago:

I've collected 3 Joshes so far! Any more? :o)

Its great to hear others with the same dilemma

Shaun - Same reasons against Firefox as me. I'm becoming a bit of a cocoa nazi, but these things matter to me.

Josh (comment #5) - Have you seen the preview build with the new tabs? See the Mozillazine thread here - nice stuff, just makes the job harder.

Josh (comment #7) - I know what you mean. It works great on a widescreen powerbook, but not so great on normal proportion monitors. However, you've got to try all the things you can do with the tabs - its a dream!

Max - is OW a lot slower for you? On my mac it runs at about the same as Safari.

Jake - Good to hear you're using Omniweb 5.

To all those who haven't tried it yet - do so! My points against it are that I find the interface a little cluttered and not very pretty. These sorts of things can be sort-of fixed with a theme. Here's a screenshot of the one I'm working on.

No.10

Philip said 1886 days ago:

I wish I had your problem. Why, you ask?

Well that would mean I was a Mac owner! Your screenshot had me yearning for a new machine of the Apple variety. I've used PC's exclusively, but always admired the whole Mac aesthetic. I totally understand why Mac owners love their machines, something that is quite alien to a PC owner.

Anyway I digress, back to the discussion...

No.11

Tomas said 1886 days ago:

Prior to the latest version of Firefox, I had that problem. I liked everything about Firefox, or Firebird as it was called then, but it was too slow for me.

I start and shut down browsers instinctively, sometimes I'll shut down a browser only to start it up again seconds later. Due to that weird but uncontrollable behaviour, I need a web browser to start up fast. IE starts up fast, Firebird did not. Not fast enough, at least.

Now, however, Firefox does start up fast enough, and it does everything I want it to do, and then some more. That is if you count all the extra functionality available via extensions, which I do. So Firefox it is. On both PC, and on Mac (because Safari feels less than fully featured).

No.12

Massimo Fiorentino said 1886 days ago:

Hello, my name is Massimo and I am a Safari-holic.

I've actually never had any problems switching back & forth. I have used Safari since day Zero and I am still in love with it (ahem, so to speak - talk about having a life). And I don't even use Saft. Furthermore, I've been in the www-biz for the past nine years and I cannot think of any better browser.

But on the other hand - I've yet to try alternatives. I almost do not dare, not unless there are a lot of reasons and features that are compelling enough to leave my beloved Safari...

No.13

Scott Johnson said 1886 days ago:

My Mac, a secondary computer in the house, has been turned off for a few months. I stole its LCD panels for a bit of in-car Xbox-ing for a road trip in January, and I haven't quite gotten it back up yet. But before that, I had upgraded to Panther and all of the joy that brought. And like you, I found myself switching browsers. My primary computer is a PC, and it runs Firefox on all sites that aren't crazy enough to be IE-only. But on the Mac, I couldn't decide between Firefox and Safari. Safari was definitely faster for me, but Firefox was more comfortable since I use it on the PC.

So, if you're primarily a Mac user, I'd say stick with Safari. Sure, it's a bit conformist, but it's a great browser.

No.14

Greg K Nicholson said 1886 days ago:

"Should I use IE with its basic features and crappy standards support? Opera with its flashing ad banners, and messy interface? Hmmm, it’ll be Firefox then."

Sums it up exactly!

No.15

Brad Smith said 1886 days ago:

I, too, have been switching back and forth between OmniWeb 5 and Safari (though I have not tried Saftari) with the occasional dabbling in Firefox. I like just about everything about OmniWeb better than Safari. I love the tab implementation, the shortcuts, etc. The thing that keeps me going back to Safari at the moment is that OmniGroup made the (IMO stupid) decision to keep 5.0 with the original version of WebCore (v85 - the one that shipped with Safari 1.0) and delaying the latest WebCore update to a later 5.0.x or 5.x release. This is seriously hurting the speed of rendering on some sites, and there are some obnoxious CSS bugs for those of us who do web site design for a living.

For now it's an OmniWeb and Safari mix for me. But once OmniWeb has the latest WebCore, it will be the only browser in my dock.

No.16

Grant said 1886 days ago:

Safari was my default browser. I loved the look & feel of it much more than any other browser, especially the form widgets.

When Firefox came out I decided to give it a try and forced myself to use it as my default. I've never turned back. The OS X pinstripe theme rocks! It's faster than Safari as far as page rendering. Safari has it beat in startup time, but I hardly shutdown my browser. I usually just close the window. I just wish it had Safari's built-in spell checking, and nicer form widgets.

No.17

Nathan said 1886 days ago:

Safari is bliss. Impossible to live without tabs and spell checking. I also really enjoy its bookmarking system, however, I've been toying around with OmniWeb and noticed that you can assign "notes" and "keywords" to your bookmarks. This could be pretty handy.

I'm also partial to Cocoa apps. I wish iTunes was cocoa.

No.18

Al Abut said 1886 days ago:

Came across an interesting post by Scoble that made me think about how much less (or maybe how differently?) I've been using my browser lately. Just being addicted to my newsreader and having it pop open Safari by default has allowed me to concentrate on the reading (read: procrastinate on real work, er, catch up on industry trends) instead of being wrapped up in how I actually get around the web in my browser.

No.19

Chris Pederick said 1886 days ago:

For me the decision is easy as I use both a PC and a Mac.

Firefox is the only option that works identically on both platforms. Plus it has the ability to customize it through extensions such as my very own Web Developer extension - sorry about the shameless plug! 8o)

No.20

Jonas Nilsson said 1886 days ago:

I'm with you on this.

Being a recent switcher i find myself in the exact position you're describing here. Why can't just FireFox on mac be as good and simple as it is on windows? And it seems to me that people who have been using mac for a long time are using nothing but safari for two reasons:

1. Happiness of being rid of IE (which i completely understand)
and
2. It's made by Apple. Don't question it's greatness.

Because it's not all that fantastic. Sure, it's very good, but as you say - it's not the perfect browser (yet?).

Well.. after all, i guess there is no such thing as the perfect browser.. yet. We will have to continue switching back and forth, or just get used to safari.

(Saft seems good though, must give it a try.)

Regards,
Jonas, Sweden.

No.21

Jonas Nilsson said 1886 days ago:

(don't get me wrong.. i am not saying safari or apple is bad. Just not as perfect as my friends that have been using mac forever think)

No.22

nik taylor said 1886 days ago:

I am using a beta of Camino 0.8 which does not seem wildly different to the latest builds of 0.7, except for some XP like icons. I switch between Camino and Safari often and my biggest complaint is passwords. Camino uses Keychain but Safari uses its own system. It is a shame that all Mac browsers can't use that same system. That is unless somebody knows different.
One day I will upgrade to 10.3 and sample the delights of the new improved Safari but until then I shall continue switching between the two.

No.23

steve said 1886 days ago:

I use Mozilla 1.6 and have to support what Chris says about his own Web Developer free plug in.

I added this about a month ago and have to say it's ace for anyone desigining web sites. One click for various validations or view a page without images or CSS and lots more.

For that reason Mozilla will be my primary browser for a while now.

No.24

Michael Heilemann said 1886 days ago:

I'm currently on Safari. Reasons being:

1) Spell-checker. I LOVE the system-wide spell-checker.

2) .Mac integration.

3) Low clutter. The refresh/stop button integration is great.

I would however use Firefox if it wasn't for, in particular, two things:

1) Annoying hidden window shows up in Exposé! ARGH! How hard can it be to fix this already?!

2) Non-native widgets. Seriously... What?!

Other than that I love it. It feels much faster than Safari, and it's crossplatform, which is extremely nice.

I've used Omniweb a little, but it felt a bit slow, and also the interface looks out of place. The icons being somewhat ugly... Looking forward to your interface-enhancement btw.

Camino... Well it just feels... Off. The tabs are kinda crappy and rather non-OS X. Though it's almost like Firefox without the hidden window and non-native widgets, it still feels off.

The spell-checker will keep me on Safari - despite its speed problems - for a good while yet.

No.25

Jon Hicks said 1886 days ago:

Nik - I think Camino is going to switch over and use Safari's keychain in the future.

Steve - you don't have to evangelise Chris's extension, its one of the reasons I use Firefox at all! Maybe once 1.0 comes out with its extra 'aquafication' it will change my mind...

No.26

Sembazuru said 1885 days ago:

I use OmniWeb 5 and Safari (in that order). Firefox is good for a few sites, but I've had some problems with it.

No.27

Peter Zignego said 1885 days ago:

Being a PC user (*tears*) without enough money to buy himself a Mac, I do with the best I can. And that would be Firefox.

Opera...I dunno, I just don't like how it feels.

Internet explorer: Certainly not, it's only opened for testing. Ever.

Those other non-mainstream browsers: Just the problem, they're not mainstream enough to warrant my using them, and can't really compete with something like firefox. A very nice browser in a small, neat little package.

No.28

Foofy said 1885 days ago:

I use the latest Opera 7.5 beta for Windows, and I'm not sure how similar it is to the Mac one but it's more deep and customizable than people see at first glance. I find new features in it everyday, and since I've discovered it's built-in news stuff I really can't get enough of it. There isn't much about it that you can't customize or enhance. I've even changed the CSS sheet for all my incoming email messages! It's fun if you take the time to look for all it's hidden beauty, and after you find a specific feature you can't live without it's easier to forgive its flaws. Oh, and the blinking ads are text ads in the Windows version, but you can take them away for about 30 USD. That's like what I pay every two months to connect to the internet.

:)

That said I use other browsers all day long for testing, and keep Firebird pinned to my Start menu simply because I love looking at the beautiful icon. I'm a big Hicks fan, though this be my first post here. :)

No.29

Max Wheeler said 1885 days ago:

I use Firefox pretty much exclusively. That said I'm using Windows XP and my choice is little more limited than yours, Jon.

Shaun: I'll agree it's definitely uglier than Safari (especially on Windows) but I'm not sure the 'Close Tab' button is misplaced.

I've accidently closed tabs fairly often in Safari when just trying to select them (though that may say more about me than Safari). In Firefox I can close tab after tab after tab without having to move between them, and as long as they're in order. Plus, if you want to close a tab without moving all the way to the right of screen, you can just scroll-click on the tab.

If you have a scroll-wheel mouse that is.

No.30

Jon Hicks said 1885 days ago:

You see, you PC users just don't know how bad it is to have so much choice for the Mac. Opera on the Mac looks like a dogs dinner, in fact it has a special 'Mac' theme which looks even less mac-like than the main windows theme (which is pretty identical to the windows version). If I had to choose between paying $30 for Opera or Ominweb, it'd Omniweb without question.

Opera does have a great feature set, but it feels like what it is - a mac port of a PC app. Omniweb has been developed specifically for OS X, and integration with the OS.

No.31

Max Wheeler said 1885 days ago:

That's it, keep rubbing it in, Jon :)

No.32

Cedric said 1885 days ago:

Same as mineral water: it is not sane to stick with the same brand...
However, I like to have my bookmarks organise the same way in every browser. I use Safari for browsing and bookmark, and I regularly export these bookmarks in various compatible formats using Safari Bookmark Exporter.

No.33

J.D. said 1885 days ago:

For me it's mainly Safari and Camino. The newest nightlies of Camino are much improved over the 0.7 release. Both browsers have aspects I like, but after a couple months on one I tend to tire of missing features and switch to the other for a couple months until I tire of it. I have a feeling for many of us, it will be an endless cycle of browser switching until one browser rises above the others.

No.34

Patricia said 1885 days ago:

I was a browser switcher, until I tried Firefox. I fell in love with it's clean interface and speed.

No.35

Jinketsu said 1885 days ago:

Camino is my default and favorite browser, but I still use different browsers (Firefox, Safari, OmniWeb) when I'm in the mood.

I guess I'm one of the few who like to switch between browsers all the time.

No.36

Neil said 1885 days ago:

The biggest problem for me is that no single browser right now has the perfect mix of features, aesthetics, and speed. For pure features Firefox or Omniweb win, though each one has its pluses (Firefox = fast, great rendering, extensible / Omniweb = beautiful UI, OS integration, awesome bookmark syncing), and minuses (Firefox = not integrated, Omniweb = slow).

Safari is a good middle group between the two browsers as long as Saft is installed, and the Debug menu is activated, and I often switch back to Safari after fiddling with Firefox or Omniweb for a spell... but Omniweb and Firefox's feature list (and the fact that Firefox has some very, very useful extensions [cf. Chris's post]) often lure me back.

Camino is getting nicer and nicer, and the most recent build with the new tab appearance and the fix for iframes / Cocoa page rendering is really nice, but considering that there's no way to extend Camino, it's quickly sinking on my list of browsers. If there was some way to integrate Firefox / Mozilla extensions into Camino, however... wow.

If Firefox would integrate more deeply with Mac OS X (aqua form widgets, keychain support, some kind of bookmark syncing) I'd probably switch to it permanently. For now, I'm playing with Omniweb 5 and hoping that Omnigroup a) speeds it up a lot, and b) upgrades OW5's webkit to the latest version.

No.37

Jeff Croft said 1885 days ago:

Jon-

I'm mainly a Safari users, but sometimes used Firefox for debugging CSS. On your suggestion, I downloaded OmniWeb 5b6. I felt it was slower than Safari, to begin with. Secondly, it's uses the Apple WebCore engine, right? If so, it seems to be an older version than Safari uses (maybe the one from Jaguar?) I noticed a number of the old Safari bugs that have since been fixed in OmniWeb...

There are things about the OmniWeb interface I like, but I think I'll stick with Safari -- and I'm about to go try out Saft now. :)

No.38

Jon Hicks said 1884 days ago:

Neil, you're really echoing all my thoughts there, except for one thing on OmniWeb. If find it slow to 'bring it to the front', but after that its speed is OK. Its actually the interface that I'm not so keen on. It doesn't have the slickness of Safari, but as I said before, maybe that kind of thing can be improved with customization?

The Firefox developers do intend to aquafy it more right near the 1.0 release, I think form widgets are on the list, along with hooking up the right doc icons in the download manager. I'm not too sure about Keychain access support though.

Jeff - thats right, its currently using the 1.0 version of webkit. There's a good explanation why on Daring Fireball.

I'm not sure how soon after the release of Omniweb 5 they are going to bring in the latest webkit, but their intention is to release 5.1 with the latest version.

No.39

Arman said 1884 days ago:

I prefer Firefox on Windows. It has a very clean, and excellent CSS support. It even feels more sturdy than IE.

No.40

Paul D said 1884 days ago:

I'm buying a Mac this summer, but in the meantime, I'm running Firefox on my Mandrake Linux machine. At work, where I'm forced to use Windows 2K, I've also got Firefox. Nothing for Linux or Windows comes close when it comes to features, stability, and performance, except maybe Opera. But I've run into too many Opera bugs to use it on most machines.

It'll be a tough decision when my Mac arrives. It sounds like Safari is a better browser, but I don't know if I can make do without great Firefox extensions like Adblock.

No.41

Sean Devine said 1884 days ago:

It's therapeutic to read that other people struggle with the same issues. I switch between Safari (my preference), Firefox (more consistent behavior with my company's exchange via web email situation) and OmniWeb 5 (for development and overall cleverness). While I like a lot about Firefox, it could never become my primary browser because of its lack of Cocoa features. It has taught me how much I've become used to the common Cocoa features in the apps that I work in.

I bet that'll I'll switch to OmniWeb 5 once it hits 5.1. Even if it costs a few bucks.

No.42

Neil said 1884 days ago:

Hey, Jon -

The slowness I see in Omniweb is in page loading and rendering. The b6.1 version is much, much improved in this area, and seems to be maintaining its speed (earlier versions would start fairly fast, but quickly slow down). Compared to Safari or the Gecko browsers, however, it's still noticeably lagging.

The fastest browser, actually, seems to be Camino on my system, but as I said, it's a bit too bare-bones for me at the moment.

Looking forward to the Aqua-fication of Firefox... and the release of OW 5.1. I'm already a licensed user of OW5, but I'll probably still jump between the two anyway.

No.43

Jon Hicks said 1884 days ago:

Paul D - you need to get PithHelmet. Its a free plug-in for Safari that does an excellent job of adblocking.

Neil - I've found that it helps if you delete the cache file when OW slows down after use.

~/Library/Caches/com.omnigroup.OmniWeb5

Deleting history and setting bookmark checking to 'never' seems to help too. I agree the most recent Camino builds with the new tabs are speedier than anything, but 'bare-bones' sums it up

No.44

Lea de Groot said 1884 days ago:

I use Safari exclusively, for browsing and development - until I am ready to *scream* because I cannot force it to update a changed css or image file. Then I fire up FireFox. :)

No.45

Jon Hicks said 1884 days ago:

Lea - Have you tried using Safari Enhancer to deactivate the cache? Works great for me...

No.46

Frederic Hemberger said 1884 days ago:

hmm. i stick to firebird on my mac at work and on my pc at home. it makes things quite simple... everything is exactly there where you expect it (besides minor shift of menu items, eg. 'options') to be.
internet explorer terribly sucks (on both platforms), i used opera for some time, but i became more used to the fox.

and i like the cute icon smiling at me on my desktop/dock... ;)

No.47

Lea de Groot said 1883 days ago:

Thanks, Jon
I've downloaded Safari Enhancer and will have a play with it - hadn't found that one :)

No.48

Sime said 1883 days ago:

I was also browser switcher until Mozilla Firefox 0.8. Now, Firefox is my main and only choice.

Just use it! :)

No.49

Jon Hicks said 1883 days ago:

Just use it! :)

Yeah, I keep telling myself things like that! Firefox is actually very close to my perfect browser. I love the way it works, particularly the sidebar. For web development its hard to beat. The combination of Chris's WD extensions, the DOM inspector and the excellent Javascript console makes it a very hot contender. There's no denying that the OS X pinstripe theme is excellent (I wouldn't be using it at all if it wasn't for that), but there are 4 main bugbears I have with Firefox on Mac:

No single window mode. I open a lot of links from apps like NetNewsWire, and having each one open in a new window goes against the point of having tabs in the first place.

Not cocoa. I can sort of put up with the lack of native form widgets, but things like the favorites bar drop downs really hit home that this isn't a cocoa app. I also use the services menu a lot, and I'd prefer it if it used the OS Keychain access, rather than its own 'password manager'. Safari, Omniweb and Camino feel much more at home.

No spell checking in form fields - I use this a lot in Safari and Omniweb

Extensions: 2 of the problems mentioned here would be no problem, if extensions worked on the Mac version. Some do, and thats great, but the majority of extensions I've found, either don't work or break Firefox, sending UI elements all over the place.

Now - I've heard of some mentioning that its a bit odd that I created the logo for a browser that I don't use. Let me just clarify: I do use Firefox. Its my default on my PC, and I use it on my mac -just not all the time. Yet!

No.50

Veerle Pieters said 1883 days ago:

I learned quit a lot reading these comments here. I'm kind of struggling with the same dilemma, it's becoming hard to decide which is my main browser. I would say Safari, but I don't really like the metal look.

Now, thanks to the tip here about Safari Enhancer this is solved, it's not perfect but better. I tend to use FireFox more often just because I like the interface, buttons etc. but I hate the ugly form widgets.

Still doubting between those 2, certainly since I've seen the nice theme you're designing Jon, waaow!

No.51

Jon Hicks said 1883 days ago:

Veerle: Have you tried Omniweb 5 yet? I don't find the interface icons the best, and as you will have seen, there's a definite influence of Stephen Horlanders icons for the Firefox default theme in my OW theme.

Omnigroup are planning to release a themes plug-in that will allow different icon themes, so I'm working on one that will work with it. If I get it finished in time, I'll be sending it in for possible inclusion with the plug-in, but if notm it'll be available from this site in its half-finished form. (There are just SO many icons in OW!)

OW 5 is worth a try though. You can do everything with those tabs - reorder, alt-drag to duplicate one, shift-select a bunch and throw them onto another window, you name it! You can also search the content of pages you've visited, blah, blah, blah....

No.52

hangon said 1883 days ago:

BBedit + CSSEdit is to me the perfect couple for HTML/XML/XHTML/CSS coding

No.53

Jon Hicks said 1883 days ago:

Hang on, hangon. We're talking browsers here!

No.54

Fil said 1883 days ago:

I use Firefox :-) and I like it VERY much..

No.55

Veerle Pieters said 1882 days ago:

Jon: OK, sounds like I should try Omniweb, sounds like another cool browser, and even cooler if this themes plug-in comes out. I've heard/read a lot about it but never tried it, guess I should... I hope it will not make my choice even more difficult in the end :-))

No.56

hangon said 1880 days ago:

[quote]I don’t have this problem in any other area - default text editor: skEdit[/quote]

i was just commenting this...

:D

No.57

Seth said 1880 days ago:

I am a pc and mac user as well. I use Firefox primarily as well, only because I had a bad taste in my mouth from testing some sites in early versions of Safari. Though I'm seeing a lot of cross-platform inconsistencies with Firefox on Windows vs OSX. Anyone else seeing differences in how sites are rendered witht he same browser across platforms? I'll definitely have to give Saftari a go, I along with I think, the first Josh, have a 12" powerbook so Omniweb's larger interface will have to be past up this time around.

Jon, thanks for such a wonderfully designed, informative and inspiring site.

No.58

Michel Christensen said 1880 days ago:

Having the exact same problem with my browsers (and because I also develop for the web, I have a lot) I know exactly how you feel. I switch between Safari and Firefox on a daily basis, and now (Thanks to you) I'll give Omniweb 5 another testspin. I tried the first beta they released, and it was very crashy, at the time (being a beta, this was expected).

So if I'm lucky I'll skip both Safari and Firefox, and move on to Omniweb. If I'm just a little lucky, I don't like Omniweb at all, and if I'm plain unlucky (as usual), I just find myself switching between both Safari, Firefox and Omniweb.. wooh!

No.59

Jon Hicks said 1880 days ago:

Michel, in terms of stability Beta 6 is miles ahead of Beta 1. The first 2 betas were just unusable, and in my view, not ready for public beta consumption. Thats history now though...

All the best - it won't be an easy choice...

No.60

hangon said 1880 days ago:

the choice of omnigroup to work with a old version of webcore instead of webkit is explained technically by the necessity to implement certain functions....

But that means that the omniweb engine is older than the safari one.... really older...

does it worth it? hum hum....

and all these graphical feedback with omniweb make it slow...not everybody is working on a BiG5... no??

No.61

Jon Hicks said 1880 days ago:

It is older, but:
- Safari 1.0 was still a good rendering engine. There were some bugs (such as when background images are used in the body, repeating vertically), but it wasn't terrible by any means.
- 5.1 will use the most up to date version. This is due out 'not long after 5.0'. They even say that they've been able to make it work in Jaguar (although Jaguar users don't get all the features that the Panther users will, at least they can still use it.)

I don't know dates, but I guess that 5.0 will be out in June, and then 5.1 a couple of months after that?

No.62

Michel Christensen said 1879 days ago:

I gave Omniweb a testspin earlier, and I reckon it's considerable slower, than Safari and Firefox, leaving me back with just those two.

No.63

Jon Hicks said 1879 days ago:

Sure - there's a trade off for getting all those powerful features. It does work swifter on my G5 than my G4 powerbook. In fact its fairly indistinguishable from Saftari...

No.64

Michel Christensen said 1879 days ago:

Having only an eMac G4 @ 800MHz, I feel compelled to stick with Safari and Firefox. Although I'll keep Omniweb in mind, when I'll upgrade.

No.65

Max said 1879 days ago:

Jon: is OW a lot slower for you? On my mac it runs at about the same as Safari.

I've tried it again now for some days so sorry for the late answer. In most cases OmniWeb is as fast as Safari. But not all the time. Safari is starting up much faster the OmniWeb on my 667MHz PowerBook. Flash movies seem to be faster in Safari too. Also when switch from some other app to the Browser OmniWeb sometimes is really slow - I have to wait some seconds until OW responds. Safari still feels snappier to me - maybee it's because of some of OmniWebs interface goodies like the sometimes slow behavior of the Preview picure in the tabs drawer.

No.66

neil5280 said 1878 days ago:

I'm a firefox user through and through. My bet is that if there is something you think Firefox lacks, you can find a plugin to do it, or write one yourself and give back to the community. My friends have great plugins for mouse gestures, window closing warnings, and more. Best of luck finding one that fits you, no matter what it is. Love the icon by the way.

Regards,

neil5280

No.67

Jon Hicks said 1878 days ago:

Neil5280 - Is there a plugin that suddenly makes it Cocoa? :o(

No.68

hangon said 1878 days ago:

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/camino/nightly/latest-0.8/

amazingly fast...particularly when launching multiple tabs at ones...

this is the major problem with safari (to me)... when launching 10 tabs or more the efficiency to DL the page (not to render it) is very poor....
i have a T1 line and i wish safari to take all the bandwidth, but it only takes 100ko/s...

i do not have this behavior with camino...it takes all the disponible bandwidth to DL the sources of the requested pages.

No.69

Jon Hicks said 1877 days ago:

Thats certainly one of Camino's plus points, in fact, the unofficial build with the new tabs is even faster on my Mac - and those tabs a just lovely. I can't wait until the code to allow them to be re-orderable lands.

There are just a few day to day things that I need from Camino, namely:

Autofill (coming after 0.8)

Global history in the menu bar

Spell checking in forms

Ability to reload all tabs

Max - Yeah, I get pretty much the same result. They're about the same, but OW is slightly slower at 'coming to the front'. Once its there, its about the same. I'm prepared to put up with a little less snappyness to gain OW's features. The Bookmark syncing is incredibly fast though - much faster than iSyncing Safari's bookmarks.

No.70

Ulf Schubert said 1867 days ago:

When I got my new Mac I started with Safari. I like the style of the buttons and the material of the surface. After some days I got problems when using some shopping sites and a eLearning platform. Some Things (javascript, ssl, ...) are not implemented very well in Safari.

The Solution was to switch to Firefox. This is now my favourite Mac Internet Browser. On my Windows PC I use Internet Explorer because of its share of the market. I think its over 90% at the moment and I can be sure that the webpage I created can be used by most of my clients.