15/02/06
Browser Polygamy Movement
My favourite quote in a long, long time, comes from Mike D:
“Jon Hicks could be considered the King of the Browser Polygamy movement, hopping from application to application with the recklessness of a late 70s porn star. Jon likes multiple browsers, and he’s not ashamed to admit it.”
I don’t just shack with any of them though. I rarely go and see Shiira, especially since she started that page transition effect nonsense (although I was impressed by the way she exposed all her tabs to me at the same time – neat trick). I used to go crawling back to Firefox whenever I needed some Dom Inspecting, but not since Safari showed me her new Web Inspector.
Maybe one day I’ll settle down with a nice browser, but until then I’ve got three/four/five of them…
Tags: browsers
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Gerrit van Aaken said 822 days ago:
Whouw, what about sexy OmniWeb? I think she used to be your favourite?
Jon Hicks said 822 days ago:
Thats just it – I use ‘em all! Well. Camino, Safari and Omniweb anyway. I’ll be using Omniweb more when they get 5.5 out with WebKit integration. At the moment, Feedlounge and Flickr don’t work in OW, which is a let down.
FatBusinessman said 822 days ago:
This adds a whole new meaning to “Pimp my Safariâ€â€¦
andyinabox said 822 days ago:
I bet you’ll never admit waking up with a pounding headache next to iCab . Don’t worry … we all make mistakes …
Kevin Finlayson said 822 days ago:
Sigh…just when the webkit’s new inspector and all my quicksilver applescript triggers made me think I could go the distance with Safari, Camino 1.0 comes along and rocks my world. But you know who’s really going to lose out? My poor firefox build.
Fabian De Rango said 822 days ago:
Each browser has there own advantages, likes, dislikes and practical uses. Some times you just can’t get around with one, so why love one, when you can have many.
Julian Schrader said 822 days ago:
@Mr. “Pimp my Safariâ€: I’d like to pimp my Safari with firefox-extensions – that’d be great…
karmatosed said 822 days ago:
Isn’t the defintion of a web designer, a browser whore? Of course you have your favourites, but with the kid in the sweetie shop dilema you soon develop your own browser harem.
Andrey said 821 days ago:
I use 3 browsers at the same time – Safari. Camino and Firefox. It’s a nice way for me to divide different tasks and I have a system in my head that assigns different activities to different browsers. So it’s like informational structure. Having 30 pages open at once and knowing where too look for the one in you need is great power :)
Alan Orozco said 821 days ago:
I’m not really a fan of browser polygamy.
When I started doing that I always got to the point of saying “Firefox id the best”.
But I’ve tried IE, the original Mozilla, Opera, and other not so known browsers.
Jay States said 821 days ago:
Yeah, I practice browser polygamy. Camino, Safari (Webkit nightlies) and Opera. I find that none is better than the other… they just do some things better in different areas.
With in bed with Camino the most!
Alexis Gallisa said 821 days ago:
Safari for general web browsing, Camino for when Safari can’t handle a page, and then Firefox for when I need the web developers toolbar. Maybe I’m spoiled but I always cringe at the pokiness of launching Firefox (G5 build ) compared to Safari and Camino on my Dual G5.
Loz Gray said 821 days ago:
I really don’t understand this. Whatever happened to browser monogamy?
The great browser god in the sky will judge you with fire and brimstone when Armagedon 2.0 happens (with added gradients behind the fire effects).
boere said 821 days ago:
Firefox is the dog’s as far as I’m concerned, imho opera is excellent but a little eccentric, netscape is the same thing as Firefox but has an image problem. IE… well it’s so 2001 isn’t it, I’m dreading IE7 having witnessed the css bugs of the beta2, in their words ‘we might have min-height, max-height property support in time for version 7’- err what else are they going to leave out.
In the world of mac, I’ve found browsers less forgiving but Camino/safari , I flip between the two when either one irks me.
Firefox on the PC is the people’s choice, therefore most excellently debugged and the best thing since bread came sliced
Daniel Andrews said 821 days ago:
Isn’t is amazing how much the Mac browsing world has changed in the past few years? There are so many amazing choices for OS X, and I can remember when we didn’t even really have one good choice about 3 years ago.
Alex Kadis said 821 days ago:
When I have to use Windows, I love Firefox, but when I get to use my Mac, I prefer a browser with an Aqua interface – which Camino (my current fave.) offers. I have had many a crashing issue with Safari, whether it’s from extensions or the app itself, I don’t really care – Safari just doesn’t work for me…
Camino has everything I need, except for it’s lack of a web developer toolbar – which I have no doubt will be sometime in it’s future (even if distant)
Continue to look for your browser Jon, I’m sure you’ll eventually find your perfect one.
Hill Billy said 821 days ago:
Just out of curiousity, what does Safari lack over the other Mac choices?
I agree with others, I would tend to think that all self respecting web designers should be using multiple browsers simple as a test to make sure what they design works well in all browsers.
Egor Kloos said 821 days ago:
Being King of the Browser Polygamy movement you should have, at the very least, an icon sitting on your pages. I think it’s very fitting title. :)
Nice Paul said 821 days ago:
Wow, Shiira’s page transition effect really is ridiculous. Even their demo video clip shows its imperfections. Seamless? I don’t think so.
Sarah said 820 days ago:
Hi John, new here, first time visitor… But I love it! Most of all, I love the design of the blog. Lots of great details, like the real time comment going on as I type below this! Making me a bit nervos abot typoes… :)
Systems Boy said 819 days ago:
I so want to be a browser slut, but how do you handle bookmarks? Keeping them synced between Firefox, Safari and Camino is a full time job. And I find it very inconvenient to use online bookmark systems (a la del.icio.us) for anything more than casual (or highly structured – another full time job) bookmarking. Is there a way to keep bookmarks synced between browsers? ‘Cause philosophically, I agree with everything said here, but I find myself having to pick and stick because of the bookmark issue.
And while we’re at it, any good way to sync bookmarks for 3 browsers across 3 machines? Uh… Just thought I’d ask…
This is my first comment here too. So hi. Nice blog.
Winston Grace said 819 days ago:
Yep, I keep switching back and forth too, although for some reason I haven’t gone back to Safari.
Would use Camino full time if it had a web developer or similar extension. I’m forced to use Firefox because that toolbar is just so handy when working on sites. Loved Shiira for a while. And flirted occaisonally with Opera.
@Systems Boy: A use a useful program Bookit that syncs all your bookmarks betweem browsers. Its not without its annoyances though.
Systems Boy said 818 days ago:
Thanks, Winston Grace. That actually helps a lot. And with the limited bookmark syncing I need to do, I think I can even use the free demo features and be happy. Of course it would be nice if there were an automatic way to do this, but I know that’s asking too much.
Okay then. Time to go put on the ol’ smoking jacket and hop in the sack with my three favorite ladies (they being Firefox, Camino and Safari, of course).
Fuzzy said 818 days ago:
I think it’s important to note that a good Bookmark manager is necessary for this whole “movement” to function properly. Luckily, URL Manager Pro seems to do a bangup job of giving me exactly what i want. Or at least, most of it.
Joel said 817 days ago:
I flock regularly now.
Patrick said 815 days ago:
Oh thank God. I thought I was alone having multiple browser icons in my Dock. Though not Opera. I have Camino as my default, Safari as a fallback browser and Firefox (with Colorzilla and the Web Dev Toolbar) as my development browser.
Brutal said 815 days ago:
I constantly browser-hop myself. I can’t really decide between Safari, Camino or Firefox. However, if Camino had tab thumbnails, a spell-checker, rss-detection and decent Adblock, it would be my #1 choice.
shorty114 said 815 days ago:
I was looking at the screenshot you linked to for page transitions, and I just can’t believe they would actually put something like that in there. They’re misusing CoreImage, uselessly.
jesse said 815 days ago:
There should be “one browser to rule them all”.
That browser should be MSie7.
It doesn’t look like a big peice of poo at all … no …
Chase said 815 days ago:
i use Safari mostly with Saft, i use camino for somethings but i freeze for extended periods time when a download is initiated with out using the contextual menu to start the download. So this really kills using camino as my main browser.
Jakob Heuser said 814 days ago:
Now if only Camino wouldn’t mix up my HTTP Auth passwords with my Website Login field passwords. For some reason, it gets really confused about the two types of auth (and that it may require a seperate entry in the keychain). It’s a frustrating problem that keeps me from changing that “default browser” in the Camino preferences dropdown.
Chris Fonnesbeck said 813 days ago:
Safari + Saft + Inquisitor is what I keep coming back to. Camino is speedy, but lacks in so many places: no RSS, ugly and uneven widgets, inconsistent printing, toolbars that look like Opera refugees. I keep it around, though, to access some of the AJAX sites that Safari cant keep up with.
joe in oklahoma said 813 days ago:
i use safari and camino…
it may work great on windoze but the hype is what makes it so popular i think.i will take either one over FF….i have tried 3 different versions of firefox but i haven’t been seduced…it doesn’t feel like the others, and has problems (something different each time) on my ibook.
john, have you tried the latest download of shiira? i tried it 6 months ago and ditched it after awhile, but decided this week to try it again…
seems much improved! may keep it around for awhile.
Kuswanto said 813 days ago:
I use Camino and Shiira, mostly Camino.
In my case, Shiira is much faster than Camino. Firefox way too slow, i don’t use it very much. Firefox is only for grabbing site with Scrapbook :)
BTW, your RSS link is pointing to the wrong address.
Current adress is : http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/about/rss/
The right address is http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/rss/
Jon Hicks said 813 days ago:
Kuswanto – you’re wrong I’m afraid. http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/about/rss/ is a list of all my RSS feeds, and the right address (for one of the feeds is http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/feeds/rss/. Please don’t use http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/rss/
drew said 810 days ago:
For those of you struggling with bookmark syncing, you could maybe use Scuttle which is like del.icio.us but is written in PHP and is open-source, so it can be run on your local machine. I’m sure it would work fine with MAMP .
You can download it at Sourceforge .
NB: I haven’t tried this yet, as I’m pretty happy using del.icio.us, but I might give it a go soon. YMMV as they say.
drew
Shane said 809 days ago:
I don’t swing both ways, currently being only a Windows user, so I’ve been unable to get down and dirty with Shiira.
I have a mainly monogamous with Firefox 1.5, but have recently had a brief affair with a much improved IE. She’s got a bit of a reputation, but I’m hoping for a better future for her.
I really need to get out more.
michael said 807 days ago:
So many browsers, so little time. I would love to go out with Shira more but she keeps freezing up on me. Don’t know how to warm her up.
Saft makes my whole system wonky. I never take Safari for a date with her clever but unstable sister, but on her own her Services integration are grand.
You’re right, OmniWeb needs to update her WebKit. She’s no longer the life of the party.
Opera’s nice but different. Can’t quite get used to her Scandinavian favorites accent.
Camino is fast and cute but no conversational heavyweight. Though she is a good everyday companion.
But when I want work done, I turn to the ever capable Firefox. She’s one clever lady that seems endlessly adaptible. And she has an outfitted skin for every occasion
Jon Hicks said 807 days ago:
Nice analogies!