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Which browser do you use?

post #1 of 44
7/31/06 at 1:54pm
Thread Starter 
I'm sick of switching back and forth on browsers, and need to get talked into using just one. Which one do you guys use and why do you use it over the others?
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post #2 of 44
7/31/06 at 2:13pm
I've tried them all, and I prefer Safari.

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post #3 of 44
7/31/06 at 2:14pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Ireland
I've tried them all, and I prefer Safari.

Why though?
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post #4 of 44
7/31/06 at 2:21pm
I use Safari too. I don't really have a reason other than it's what came with my MacBook and it's an Apple program. I wanted to try all the Apple programs before I downloaded a replacement. Safari has served my purposes well enough. I ditched iChat, however, for Adium. That's just my two cents.
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post #5 of 44
7/31/06 at 2:43pm
Using multiple browsers just seems to be a fact of life. I use Safari and Firefox.
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post #6 of 44
7/31/06 at 2:51pm
Just firefox for me. Why?

1. Cross platform, as I have to use windows at work.
2. Great bookmarks synching across computers with google browser synch extension
3. All the other great extensions: adblock, sage, you name it, there is an extension for it.
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post #7 of 44
7/31/06 at 4:43pm
Safari.
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post #8 of 44
7/31/06 at 4:51pm
My fiancee switched to Camino and I switched to Firefox 2. Safari is just too slow, and I can't believe it's been years and they still haven't added HISTORY and a DOWNLOAD manager. I mean real ones. Not fake ones. IE 5 has better ones. That makes me want to cry. On the inside at least. Safari has really languished. They should open source the thing. I mean why not!? Plus Firefox has lots and lots of cool shit to add to it. I like the Weather, AdBlock, and FasterFox extensions. I just wish it didn't feel so PC-like but I guess that's the unfortunate side of being cross-platform. I want to like Safari. I want to keep using it. But I can't. It just sucks. Try adding 40 hell even 20 or 30 bookmarks to the Bookmarks menu and click it. I hate it when I accidentally click that menu. And without Saft, I can't imagine how annoying it would be to use Safari. Ugh, and Metal too! Ew!
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post #9 of 44
7/31/06 at 6:28pm
Quote:
Originally posted by Aquatic
My fiancee switched to Camino and I switched to Firefox 2. Safari is just too slow.

I have Firefox installed, I opened both Safari and Firefox, I tested various websites while using exposé to see both progress bars in both browsers at the same time etc. I also made a point of loading the firefox URL's first, then Safari. Overall Safari won the speed tests actually, and I tested about 30 sites. That and Safari launches about 3X Firefox. Also things like, being able to drag a URL straight into the Bookmarks bar to add as bookmark. I prefer Safari hands down over Firefox.

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post #10 of 44
7/31/06 at 6:38pm
I use Safari on the mac, Firefox on Windows and Linux. Safari runs very fast on the mac -- the actual stats have Safari well outpacing Camino and Firefox. It also has (in my opinion) the nicest way to manage bookmarks, although Firefox is pretty similar.

Now that Safari can view PDFs inline, there's really no reason for me to use anything else on the mac. I view A LOT of pdfs. . . literally hundreds of pages of technical documentation every day. The mac is so good at viewing PDFs, and I just wish that all my engineering apps would run on Mac. Some run on Linux (Allegro, Xilinx ISE), but I've never tried X11. My mac at home is a PPC, so I'm not that confident it would work.
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post #11 of 44
7/31/06 at 6:48pm
i prefer firefox, but i like safari mostly it syncs with .mac, now for my wife she says safari is slow with ebay, and firefox is better but not as fast as my old dell. someone said that ebay uses a lot of java and it's slower on my .9 ibook g4

my 4 year old likes firefox because everything from pbskids, noggin works well. the thing about firefox you have to load the plugins.

really anything but MS

the neat thing about firefox you can change the look, get gmail notifiers, change themes and add different engines.

you can get a program that turns safari bookmarks to firefox and vice versa i quess you can look to versiontracker

i've had most trouble with ebay for the above reasons, firefox works better than safari (on a .9ibook g4)
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post #12 of 44
7/31/06 at 9:31pm
OmniWeb 5.5 beta2 - fastest browser I've used, love the site specific preferences.
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post #13 of 44
7/31/06 at 9:46pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally posted by Splinemodel


Now that Safari can view PDFs inline, there's really no reason for me to use anything else on the mac. I view A LOT of pdfs. . . literally hundreds of pages of technical documentation every day. The mac is so good at viewing PDFs, and I just wish that all my engineering apps would run on Mac. Some run on Linux (Allegro, Xilinx ISE), but I've never tried X11. My mac at home is a PPC, so I'm not that confident it would work.

Hundreds of tech docs? You engineers are nuts. We have some here at the energy commission that do the same thing. Never really talked to them though. What kind of specs do you look at? I find that stuff interesting, the problem is I'm totally clueless when it comes to that kind of stuff.
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post #14 of 44
8/1/06 at 11:06am
Quote:
Originally posted by Guybrush Threepwood
Hundreds of tech docs? You engineers are nuts. We have some here at the energy commission that do the same thing. Never really talked to them though. What kind of specs do you look at? I find that stuff interesting, the problem is I'm totally clueless when it comes to that kind of stuff.

Hundreds of pages. . .

Sometimes, it's a spec. Recently I've familiarized myself with the I2C and USB specs. USB is 650 pages long and incredibly confusing. It's no wonder why it took a while to catch on. Most of the time, though, I'm looking at device datasheets. If you poke around ti.com, for example, you should be able to pull up some datasheets for various products. There are a lot of electronics parts out there made by a lot of different companies, and they all are accompanied by a handful of PDF documents each.

Currently I'm trying to determine how best to interface a TI TL16C754B with an Atmel AT91SAM9621.
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post #15 of 44
8/1/06 at 11:21am
Quote:
Originally posted by Aquatic
I can't believe it's been years and they still haven't added HISTORY and a DOWNLOAD manager. I mean real ones. Not fake ones.

What the heck does that mean?
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post #16 of 44
8/1/06 at 1:30pm
Firefox, because it has the TIDY extension.

Otherwise, I'd use Camino.
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post #17 of 44
8/1/06 at 3:29pm
used them all and ended up pretty much only on Camino. Seems to do everything pretty well and for some unknown reason i like it over safari. I tried to switch back to safari out of boredom, but i couldn't last more than 2 hours, so i'm back to camino.
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post #18 of 44
8/1/06 at 3:30pm
Omniweb here as well, Omniweb 5.5 that is. Quite often, when sites don't work, all you have to do is switch the user agent to, say, firefox or windows IE6, and it all works fine. OW 5.5 allows you to change and store that preference per site. You can do this in Safari as well, btw, either manually when you have the 'debug' menu enabled, or automatically when you have Safaristand installed.
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post #19 of 44
8/1/06 at 4:33pm
I use Safari, because it does what I want and it fits with the rest of the OS. It also renders pages more accurately than Firefox. Recently, a friend and I outlined a new site and some features didn't work in Safari but did in Firefox, because of a few sloppy bits we didn't fully envision.

Quote:
Originally posted by Splinemodel
The mac is so good at viewing PDFs, and I just wish that all my engineering apps would run on Mac. Some run on Linux (Allegro, Xilinx ISE), but I've never tried X11. My mac at home is a PPC, so I'm not that confident it would work.

Darwin Ports shows that Allegro is available for the Mac. I've used Darwin Ports to install all the programs that my uni course needs (CLISP, swi-prolog) plus use it to keep my latex installation up to date.
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post #20 of 44
8/1/06 at 6:02pm
Quote:
Originally posted by danielctull
I use Safari, because it does what I want and it fits with the rest of the OS. It also renders pages more accurately than Firefox. Recently, a friend and I outlined a new site and some features didn't work in Safari but did in Firefox, because of a few sloppy bits we didn't fully envision.



Darwin Ports shows that Allegro is available for the Mac. I've used Darwin Ports to install all the programs that my uni course needs (CLISP, swi-prolog) plus use it to keep my latex installation up to date.

Thanks for the link. . . It's a good one. I use a lot of GNU and posix apps, so this is a good find.

But the Allegro I'm talking about is somewhat different.
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post #21 of 44
8/1/06 at 6:28pm
I jump back and forth between Safari and Firefox... Safari because it looks nicest and "feels" good. It's certainly not the fastest by any means and I miss Adblock and other wonderful Firefox extensions, but it's still my default browser.

Firefox because I'm a multi-platform guy spending equal time on OS X, Windows, and Linux. Secondly would be the extensions. My default Firefox install usually has 10+ extensions installed adding great functionality with seemingly minimal performance impact.

I tried OmniWeb over the weekend and it sure was fast. Too bad it doesn't work with Gmail (huh? this is 2006, not 1999. Javascript should just work. Period) and had some rendering/UI issues with my other regular sites. I'd be inclined to spend the money on OmniWeb if it worked at least as well as Safari but added performance and a few more features.
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post #22 of 44
8/1/06 at 8:46pm
Safari here.

Simpler, cleaner, effective.
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post #23 of 44
8/1/06 at 11:05pm
firefox. safari just kept crashing on me. plus firefox has A LOT of useful extensions.

Noah
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post #24 of 44
8/2/06 at 12:47am
Quote:
Originally posted by Splinemodel
Thanks for the link. . . It's a good one. I use a lot of GNU and posix apps, so this is a good find.

But the Allegro I'm talking about is somewhat different.

No probs, I did think the description was a little off for the stuff you mentioned (engineering etc). Worth a shot though.
Daniel Tull
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post #25 of 44
8/2/06 at 4:04am
It looks like most of you have/use fast machines. 867 MHz G4 here and the most viable solutions are (in order of preference) Camino and Safari. Camino is just lightweight and you can turn animations off. It also feels noticeably faster than Safari on older machines.

I try occasionally the other browsers too, mostly when I check for their updated versions, just for a spin. But on an old G4, browsers like Firefox and Omniweb seem rather bloated and slow (though Firefox is speedy in rendering, but this benefit gets lost in how it generally feels).

Now to support further my theory about browsers on older machines, I ran (don't laugh ) both Camino and Firefox on an old black Powerbook G3. Needless to say that Camino won hands down. Firefox is downright painful on this machine.
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post #26 of 44
8/2/06 at 4:12am
Quote:
Originally posted by macanoid
Omniweb here as well, Omniweb 5.5 that is. Quite often, when sites don't work, all you have to do is switch the user agent to, say, firefox or windows IE6, and it all works fine.

Don't be so sure about that. Perhaps it works 99% of time (random number), but I know at least one case where even the agent change cannot trick the server. It worked in an older Omniweb version but not in the 5 family.

Oh, by the way Omniweb is my favorite for the look and feel, just I have not yet an enough powerful machine to run it comfortably.
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post #27 of 44
8/2/06 at 4:40am
Quote:
Originally posted by PB
Don't be so sure about that. Perhaps it works 99% of time (random number), but I know at least one case where even the agent change cannot trick the server. It worked in an older Omniweb version but not in the 5 family.

That's why I wrote: 'Quite often'
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post #28 of 44
8/2/06 at 4:49am
Quote:
Originally posted by macanoid
That's why I wrote: 'Quite often'

Apologies, I missed that.
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post #29 of 44
8/2/06 at 9:30pm
I use Safari as my primary browser because of the .Mac syncing, keychain integration and the native interface widgets. I'd get more behind FireFox if at the very least when I hit shift-down it the URL field it would select the rest of the URL after the insertion point like just like the text handling in my precious BBEdit and other apps. I've tried most of the other browsers but I think I'll stick with Safari.
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post #30 of 44
8/8/06 at 4:25pm
Theres still a ton of sites and videos that dont load on macs anyway so that sucks
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post #31 of 44
8/9/06 at 1:43am
FYI, CamiTools ( http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/28750 ) addon let's you change your browser agent indentifier or whatever that's called within Camino, so you can tell it to say it is IE or Firefox or whatever you want
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post #32 of 44
8/9/06 at 5:29am
Safari all the way on several machines.

 

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Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

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post #33 of 44
8/9/06 at 7:54am
I use Safari. I also laugh at people (see: Aquatic) who think Firefox is faster because Safari, benchmarked, is actually 10 times faster on the most part, and both suffer from the same overcaching problem. (Also of interest: both were started and largely written by David Hyatt. Safari benefitted from all the mistakes of Firefox).

When Shiira 2.0 comes out, though, it may take Safari's place: http://mark.alittlenoise.com/blog/?p=22
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post #34 of 44
8/9/06 at 7:58am
I use Safari, Firefox, and Camino. Safari is generally good but sometimes it crashes on sites when the other two will not. It also does not work on some sites.

For example, Safari does not work with Zillow.com but the other two do. Always have a back up browser on hand.
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post #35 of 44
8/9/06 at 9:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregmightdothat

(Also of interest: both were started and largely written by David Hyatt. Safari benefitted from all the mistakes of Firefox).
http://mark.alittlenoise.com/blog/?p=22

Firefox was started and largely written by Blake Ross, and Safari, or its main portion, KHTML, was started and totally written by the KDE developers.
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post #36 of 44
8/9/06 at 10:13am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gene Clean

Firefox was started and largely written by Blake Ross, and Safari, or its main portion, KHTML, was started and totally written by the KDE developers.

Quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Firefox

Quote:
The Mozilla Firefox project was created by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project. Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004.

Whee.

Also, WebKit is only loosely based in KHTML, thus why they complain periodically on Slashdot about how far it's "branched off." At this point, Webkit implements a lot of the hacks Hyatt implemented in Firefox. It has its roots in KHTML, but it's been completely ripped apart and revitalized.
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post #37 of 44
8/9/06 at 12:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregmightdothat


Whee.

For some reason you failed to mention Blake Ross. Whee?

Quote:
Also, WebKit is only loosely based in KHTML,

Wrong.

Quote:
thus why they complain periodically on Slashdot about how far it's "branched off."

Official KDE blogs and mailing lists are on dot.kde.org so Slashdot doesn't count.


Quote:
At this point, Webkit implements a lot of the hacks Hyatt implemented in Firefox. It has its roots in KHTML, but it's been completely ripped apart and revitalized.

It's so completely ripped apart that KDE guys are able to easily (with proper documentation) implement the changes in their version of KHTML. WebKit has brought some new things, but "loosely based" is not what I would call it.
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post #38 of 44
8/9/06 at 3:51pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gene Clean

For some reason you failed to mention Blake Ross. Whee?



Wrong.



Official KDE blogs and mailing lists are on dot.kde.org so Slashdot doesn't count.




It's so completely ripped apart that KDE guys are able to easily (with proper documentation) implement the changes in their version of KHTML. WebKit has brought some new things, but "loosely based" is not what I would call it.

I think you should look at the WebKit source code...it's nothing like KHTML now. Really...look at the source code.
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post #39 of 44
8/9/06 at 4:03pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by gregmightdothat

Also, WebKit is only loosely based in KHTML, thus why they complain periodically on Slashdot about how far it's "branched off."

I'm not sure if you're deliberately confusing WebKit and WebCore, but in any case, WebCore and KHTML are actually very similar.
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post #40 of 44
8/14/06 at 6:35pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Guybrush Threepwood

I'm sick of switching back and forth on browsers, and need to get talked into using just one. Which one do you guys use and why do you use it over the others?

those of you that use FF, do you use mousegestures? i'm coming over from PC to macbook and i'm wondering how i'm going to do mousegestures with only one button. i have FF with gestures on my wife's ibook and they didn't work very well using only the "left" click. i'd try to drag a link (super drag and go) and it would do the mouse gesture. i tried to scroll a scroll bar inside a webpage (not the generic one on the right side) and it did a gesture.

which really begs the bigger question: why aren't the macbooks and macbook pros equipped with a trackpad like the mighty mouse, in that it senses "left" and "right" clicks?
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