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Saturday, June 10, 2006
I’m a die hard Firefox user. Having come back to the browser of the roots of my web surfing in the last year, I can’t imagine using IE on Windows or Safari on the Mac. Yet, I seem to be in the minority (on both platforms.) Why?
I’ve found a handful of sites that just don’t meet eye-to-eye with Safari that display wonderfully in Firefox. Other sites will simply flat out even try to render itself and simply give a bland text message that I should be using a “real” browser. Am I the only one going to such sites since it seems that Apple’s Konqueror open source guts browser is high in the Mac use list? I can’t be.
My question is why don’t Mac users use Firefox more? Heck, why not Camino? They’re both great browsers and do, IMHO, web browsing so much better. Sure, Safari has a couple of nice features, but when you look at the plethora of extensions Firefox has and they’re cross-platform compatible, why wouldn’t you go with the fox? What am I missing, Safari fans? What are you missing?
June 10th, 2006 at 8:44
Text looks awful on Firefox on the Mac.
June 10th, 2006 at 8:46
I guess when you’ve viewed sites on a PC for so many years, you don’t notice that problem on the Mac.
It looks fine to me.
June 10th, 2006 at 9:16
I second the other guy’s comment. After using Safari for a while, the other browsers’ rendering tends to look ugly to me. I played with Firefox for a while, and I use it for the occasional site that doesn’t like Safari–though they frequently turn out to be Internet Exploder-only (imagine the stupidity!)
June 10th, 2006 at 9:50
Mmm, well looking at my screen capture of this article shows zero difference in either browser. You guys have any links to share so I can see what you’re talking about?
My guess is the sites you’re having issue with do not specify a range of fonts to use in their CSS like this site does. We like to think CYA in the font department.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:00
I’m a dedicated Camino user. The only reason I don’t use Safari is because you can’t input non-Roman languages correctly. Firefox works just as well as Camino (or any other Mozilla browser) but I can’t stand Firefox’s non-standard Mac UI.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:00
Hey Sven,
I use Safari and Firefox together – and I find that my habit is that I load pages first in Safari, and if they don’t work right there, I use Firefox for that site. But why? The reasons may seem asinine, but here they are, being completely honest:
(1) Startup time. Safari loads faster.
(2) UI. I have to say I just like the way Safari looks on my screen.
(3) Address bar progress meter. Hey, I told you it would sound asinine, but I love that thing!
(4) RSS – I am not enough of an RSS enthusiast to want a separate RSS reader with advanced functionality. Safari makes it easy for me to read my RSS feeds without much effort or involvement.
That’s pretty much it – I guess some of it is sort of intangible, too – Safari looks more “macish” while firefox looks more like a Windows or a Linux app…
June 10th, 2006 at 10:19
Firefox, for all its strengths, has problmes which makes it less useful on a Macintosh than Safari. For example:
1. Java applets don’t run well. I use hushmail.com for e-mail, which loads a Java-based encryption engine. Safari initializes the engine in less than a minute. 9 minutes later, Firefox is still trying to load it. I gave up.
2. Safari can save entire web pages as a webarchive. Firefox can also do this. The difference? Safari’s webarchives are fully searchable by Mac OS X’s Spotlight. Firefox’s archives are not.
3. Safari’s bookmarks can be synchronized between different Macs.
4. Safari’s interface is just cleaner and more clearly easier to use than Firefox’s despite the similarities. Safari is more refined. When I use both, I keep going back to Safari. It’s a little like Mac OS X vs. Windows. I have both, but keep gravitating to Mac OS X.
June 10th, 2006 at 10:23
5. Savari’s implementation of tabs (for example) is clearer to use than Firefox’s.
Firefox has rough edges in the experience which makes it harder to use. Apple has been so aggressive in improving Safari, that the user experience has been wonderful (e.g. loading times, starting times, etc.)
June 10th, 2006 at 10:40
As to the UI, there’s always themes. iFox is pretty faithful in representing Safari’s UI and it may help that area.
I agree with the progress bar on Safari. That was the first thing that caught my attention at Macworld when I saw it for the first time. Just another Apple signature feature.
As for load speeds, Firefox 1.5.x loads way faster on my MBP than Safari. I’ve noticed on my wifes Mac mini (PowerPC), Firefox is a dog.
UPDATE: Better yet, try GrApple (Brushed). Very nice.
June 10th, 2006 at 11:08
For me it’s the interface. I really like the way Safari handles bookmarks, easy to edit. The tabs are much better in Safari than any other Mac browser I know. A simple thing like having the x which closes the tab just to the left and not at the far right of the window saves a lot of confusion and mouse movement. Firefox has the plugin structure which will eventually make its way to Safari but I don’t use the them in Firefox now so. I admire the geek-a-tude of Firefox and it comes in handy with that rare site that just wont place nice with Safari but for the above reasons Safari just make getting around easier which is what Mac is suppose to do.
June 10th, 2006 at 11:35
Firefox does not use the system for proxy settings, so when moving my laptop from the 3 different places I use it, I always have to manually change the proxy settings to get the thing to work.
Safari on the other hand just works – It just “knows” if Im at work, or home or at the bookstore, and I never have to even think about it.
Oh, and Safari is just a ton faster, and doesnt crash if I open too many tabs. Oh, and Safari handles many tabs more gracefully by turning the last column into a dropdown list if you open too many, firefox just keeps going off the screen.
Safari is just an all-round better product methinks.
June 10th, 2006 at 12:03
I have to add my voice to the “text” chorus. The main reason I use the internet is to read text. If a web browser can’t render text as well as Safari than it’s a non-starter. (Personally, I think web site designers that insist on Times-New Roman and Arial should be shot.)
I also like Safari’s compact user interface. Firefox’s and the other browser’s buttons look unnecessarily huge to me. It’s the web page I’m interested in, not some programmer’s cutesy reload button artwork.
That being said, Firefox is my back-up browser of choice when a web site refuses to work with Safari (a rare occurrence for me these days). All the rest hit the Trash Can a long time ago.
And above all, it’s a personal choice. “One man’s trash is a another man’s treasure.”
June 10th, 2006 at 12:23
Only Safari has Acid Search. Couldn’t live without it!
(do use Firefox for internet banking, my bank’s web site works better with Firefox than Safari)
June 10th, 2006 at 12:51
1. I haven’t had any trouble with the sites I visit.
2. I like being able to change text size with a mouse click rather than CMD+ CMD- (although that’s better than IE’s “have it our way” approach).
3. It’s fast. Important on a dial-up connection.
4. For some reason, things look better in Safari.
5. The absolute. most important reason: Only Safari lets you use the built-in dictionary to get definitions by just pointing the mouse at words. The best improvement, for me, in a browser in ages.
June 10th, 2006 at 13:57
I for one, use 5 different computers in the course of the day, and although to me, safari is a great browser, just being able to have the exact same interface, bookmarks and customization in the same browser on both Mac and Windoze platforms is a godsend to me. I’m a diehard Mac user (started with the 1984 128k(!) Mac, and haven’t looked back since) and I use FF virtually 100% of the time. One great extension that Firefox (for PC) has is the IE Tab, which allows me to view specific websites using the IE engine from within FF. As for the ‘text just looks better’ comment, I don’t readily see any difference at all. I would agree, that a few conventions on FF defy logic, however under the vast majority of my use, extensions help rectify those anomalies, and the argument that it doesnt have ‘that great mac UI’ disappears. IMHO. Just thought I’d say something in defense of FF…Long Live the Mac!
June 10th, 2006 at 14:00
I tried to theme Windows XP so that it can look like Mac OS X. It, however, still works like Windows XP. It can’t label files, for example. Connecting to the internet is still difficult. Just changing the theme does not change how it intrinsically works.
Themes in Firefox change how it looks. But they do not change how it operates – the user interface. In this arena, Firefox still has a way to go to catch up to Safari.
Firefox’s implementation of Java still is way behind Safari’s.
June 10th, 2006 at 14:12
Oh come on, we know why most people use Safari: it comes pre-installed on the computer. That’s why most Windows users are using Exploder. Average people don’t download alternative browsers even when they’re better.
For me Safari is a habit as much as anything. Its support for RSS is nice, I like having a close icon in each tab, it launches way faster on my Macs and on many sites the text looks better than with other browsers. Firefox is my backup when Safari has trouble although I often try changing the user agent in Safari first. I keep a third browser around to access my bank. That way if I accidentally visit a site that is trying to take advantage of a security hole to harvest data from my browser cache, cookies, etc. it’ll never see anything valuable.
June 10th, 2006 at 14:19
Sven, your site renders the same in Firefox and Safari.
To see a big difference in text rendering, load my default home page: Macsufer.com.
June 10th, 2006 at 14:22
Ah, that’s it. Not only do people not change their default browser, they don’t change the browser’s default font. I’ve got 4 browsers on my Mac, but even I hadn’t thought to simply change the font to make Firefox look better.
June 10th, 2006 at 14:40
I have been using Firefox for the last year but am about to switch back to Safari. Many of the reasons above apply to my decision but there are two which really stand out for me:
1. Safari is so much faster on the Mac Mini I am using at the moment. It is a real pleasure to use.
2. (and I don’t see any mention of this Firefox issue above). I like to work with many windows open (rather than tabs) and keep switching between them and moving them around (for trading on NASDAQ if you wonder why) and FireFox has this infuriating habit which seems to have started about a couple of months ago and seems to be getting worse. When I drag windows around and the refresh others the windows seem to keep shooting off around the screen with a life of their own. It is driving me nuts.
Mike
June 10th, 2006 at 17:32
I use Safari, Shiira, Camino, and DEVONagent. I really want to like Firefox, but haven’t been able to figure out how to use the services menu with DEVONthink Pro. The use of the services menu is a must for what I do. Hopefully Firefox will fix this. I’m sure that some of you know how to get the most from using Firefox. But, I don’t have the time, or inclination to figure it out.
I do have Firefox on my hard drive, and have tried out every new version for the last year our so. Plus, I think the folks who are developing Firefox are great. It just doesn’t meet my needs at this time.
June 10th, 2006 at 21:54
For me, it’s the parental controls that keep me with Safari. We have two kids with their own child accounts on our iMac and rely on Safari’s parental controls (okay, actually it’s Tiger’s support for Safari’s parental controls) to allow them access to only specific sites.
I also prefer the look of Safari to Firefox. It’s more “Mac-like” in its display of web site check boxes, scroll bars and buttons. Firefox is my preferred browser on Windows though.
June 11th, 2006 at 0:53
i mostly use safari because i trust more in apple applikations then others 3rd party applications and of course MS software.. silly me
June 11th, 2006 at 3:24
I have floated between Camino, Firefox, Omniweb and Safari; I also keep Opera and I.E. on my system. Lately I have stayed in Safari-wandered less on other roads-and my computer hating wife has done the same. Why…hmmm
1. SafariStand-gives me 80% of Omniweb’s additional features (that I used) but without sacrificing stability.
2. Safari goes months without crashing.
3. Acid Search.
4. If Safari doesn’t render it I can use something else while dis-ing the web designer for being sloppy or lazy; but it (almost) never happens. I just don’t find sites that Safari doesn’t handle well anymore. Web designers are getting smarter or Safari is improving?
5. Apples’ OS features work in Safari: Cocoa features work, searching web archives works, Dictionary works, Mail works, Address Book works, BonJour works, blahblahblah.
6. I can sync bookmarks without a hack.
The upshot: it does what “I” need and want better.
June 11th, 2006 at 6:44
I use Firefox as a backup when I Safari fails me. For me this is one banking site. What really annoys me about Firefox is the localization practice does not follow Mac practices. This means I need two copies of Firefox for two different languages. Instead, Safari gives me 15 languages initially, and adding another localization is a relatively painless process.
June 11th, 2006 at 7:10
I like Safari’s support for Emacs text editing (control-F, control-B, etc, etc). This is because Safari uses native widgets instead of Firefox’s cross-platform widgets. These keystrokes are embedded in my fingers and if they don’t work I get very cranky.
It seems odd that an open source product would not copy emacs-style text editing, since a healthy percentage of people who use FireFox probably edit in emacs, and emacs is truly an open source icon. But that’s what happened. Steve Jobs wound up being far more thoughtful to his customers than JWZ and team were to theirs. No matter what else you can say about Steve, he really goes the extra mile to make us happy.
I also echo Safari’s more attractive and more compact look.
However, when I get errors I can’t figure out, I try FireFox because it does have much better error reporting, even when Safari’s debug menu is considered.
D
June 11th, 2006 at 12:45
I use both. Safari is great for downloading, esp. Widgets and some sites do look better. FireFox seems to be more compatible with sites designed for IE, and I love the EXTENSIONS feature, I have a few that make it a truly wonderful browser. I hate the FireFox buttons though, they are square and boring like the ones in a PC browser. I use each about 50-50.
June 11th, 2006 at 12:49
I used Firefox for quite a while, but now use Safari the vast majority of the time. The main reason? Online education. eCollege doesn’t support Firefox (last time I checked), so I had to use the User Agent Switcher extension. I finally got sick of it, when I knew I had a browser that I didn’t have to tinker with to get it to work. Safari seems to use a lot less of my RAM as well, and it is definitely faster than Firefox.
I strongly prefer the Firefox method of handling RSS feeds over Safari. I’ve never gotten used to Safari’s style in that regard. I’d rather see the title of the article and decide if I want to read it than to have to pull the entire article just to see what it is. I would guess that if I could have used Firefox natively for school, I would have never switched back to Safari last year.
June 11th, 2006 at 15:12
For all the people who choose Safari over Firefox because of its better tab behavior, Camino’s tabs behave like Safari’s. If you’re pre-Tiger in your OS, Camino will be faster, too. Safari’s file-saving is cleaner, though.
June 11th, 2006 at 21:15
Why are people even trying to figure this out or trying to convince people. For me it is not one piece, but the whole widget (although the integration of the spellchecker for things like this posting is one of the big ones). I have noticed that I like the look of Safari over other browsers but this is not just the button look or the position of them it is things like the dual purpose stop reload, the progression bar url display combo. It is also about the controls on the pages looking more mac like. I like the close boxes on the tabs, the load speed and even the snap back button. If a site denies me I just use the debug menu to change my user agent.
I’d bet that with the plugins I could duplicate much of this or even all of this but why should I when safari already has it? Bottom line both are great browsers and there is room on my hard drive for both but safari is without a doubt my default.
June 12th, 2006 at 1:19
I use Opera, and only use Safari or FireFox when neccessary.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:12
Clarification on my earlier post: I think the only real difference in file-saving (HTML) is that Safari defaults to a more intelligent file name than Camino.
My biggest problem with Safari is that I seem to get the beachball a lot, especially when working with lots of tabs. Maybe that’s just me?
June 12th, 2006 at 8:20
Firefox supports almost none of the Mac OS X text-editing keyboard shortcuts. It even does NOTHING when you are in a single-line text field and hit the down-arrow. That is a Windows behavior that makes me nuts. If I’m in a text field that only has a single line, what could I possibly want to do when I press down-arrow? Nothing? No, I must want to go to the end of the line. That’s just the most annoying text-editing issue.
I do use Camino right now. I’m a registered OmniWeb customer, but its performance was starting to really give me trouble. If they update it for Intel-based Mac, I’ll probably go back. No other browser automatically saves your browsing state (open windows/tabs/etc) and no browser supports AppleScript as well (even Safari) – tabs do not exist in any browser’s AppleScript support except for OmniWeb. The ironic thing is that one of the biggest reasons you’d want access to all the tabs is to save the URLs you’re viewing, and the only browser that lets you do that doesn’t need it.
June 12th, 2006 at 9:06
If you get the beachball thats not normal. Reset Safari to clear everything out. Like others i prefer the UI and text quality of safari over Firefox. I will also ever understand why noone else implemnts text size controls in the toolbar like Safari does. I use it all the time. I use NetNewsWire for RSS and don’t understand why anyone would use a browser for RSS unless you don’t have alot of feeds. Maybe then. As muach as I am on the web I don’t remember any issues with any web sites with Safari in it’s most recent versions.