I have had Macs since 1991, and my 10.5.3 equipped 2GB RAM MacBook suffers a Safari crash several times a day - and it uses up masses of processor cycles as evidenced by Activity Monitor. Firefox 3.0 also crashes a few times a day. From a usability angle, Safari wins hands down.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dreyfus2
No offense, but something must be wrong with your installation... I did not have a single Safari crash for at least three years and it is running at least 14 hours a day. Still, a re-open last session option would be great - it can be added using the Stand plug-in though and works pretty well.
Gotta' love FF using the free and very robust Ad Block Plus along with the theme GrApple Delicious (graphite) 1.0 for FF 3.0. This theme actually looks better than ever with its subtle shading - fits right into OS X's current look.
Its much more reliable than Safari and if it does crash it automatically re-opens all the pages you'd had open - a feature Safari could do with if they cant make it more solid.
How do you know it's more reliable than Safari? It just came out today? Give it some time and people will be all over the forums saying it crashes their machines. I will give it a try but I hope it has a nicer looking interface, older versions of firefox were UGLY and clunky! Safari has always run great for me so.
Its much more reliable than Safari and if it does crash it automatically re-opens all the pages you'd had open - a feature Safari could do with if they cant make it more solid.
If its so reliable why would it need this feature? This feature tells us that there are probably reliability issues.
No offense, but something must be wrong with your installation... I did not have a single Safari crash for at least three years and it is running at least 14 hours a day. Still, a re-open last session option would be great - it can be added using the Stand plug-in though and works pretty well.
I've found that it is much less stable if you run it through a proxy server (e.g. from behind a corporate firewall.) Some pages (especially those with Flash, it seems) make Safari unstable, resulting in hangs and crashes when using a proxy (especially with a large proxy auto-config script), even though the same computer has no problem on those pages when I'm at home, and not using any proxies.
WRT automatically re-opening sessions, hopefully it will ask you if you want to do this. If a bad page is causing a crash, you probably don't want to auto-reopen that page.
My early impressions are that it's slightly faster than Safari and, thus far, at least as stable. I'm going to give it an extended switchover and see how things go. Really excellent thus far.
Yes, Firefox 3 crashes three times as fast as the previous version! And then the automatic Crash Report crashes too! Won't launch successfully at all, hooray!
There are more hits than misses, but the misses (and Safari's Web inspector and "save as web archive" features) will keep me with Safari.
Form rendition and speed are greatly improved, the interface is more Mac-like, at least somewhat. It is less cluttered than before, but it still draws more attention to itself and away from the Web pages than Safari.
Would be nice if you could drag tabs to a new window, I use this a lot in Safari. The location bar is ugly and clunky - the drop-down list is not easy to read, the differing dimensions of the back/forward buttons is odd and not intuitive at all (why does the forward button have a drop-down button, but both buttons display a pop-up menu when holding the mouse over them - such a design would have never left Apple). I strongly dislike the "Most Visited" and "Smart Bookmarks" menus that are created automatically - I do not want others to mess up my interface with things I do not want. The bookmark button within the location bar is counter-intuitive. Showing the favicons on the tabs is a good idea though. The Preferences pane is a lot better than before. Well, a mixed bag, really.
Very nice review, so much of software comes down to user interface for me, and firefox has always fallen short in that catagory, doesn't sound like it has gotten any better. But on the other hand it's good to know that after an hour of use it can be declared more reliable and it's so comforting to know that when my super reliable program that never crashes will have an open all pages feature for all those times it crashes, thus saving me hours of surfing every week. Does it not have a history menu??
SunSpider JavaScript benchmark scores (smaller is better):
Safari 3.1 - 3136 ms
Firefox 3 - 3005 ms
-BUT-
nightly WebKit - 1864 ms
This version of WebKit, featuring the SquirrelFish interpreter, will soon get rolled into Safari. Note that the WebKit team says this is a very early implementation, and there's still a lot of performance gain to be arrived at through optimization. The Gecko crew will have their work cut out for them.
On the subjective front, I find the Firefox 3 UI really unpleasant. The Prefs UI is from a parallel (and crummier) universe. The new address bar is feature-rich, but also cluttered and hard to read. Font rendering is still lousy. Safari's error console is much better. Extensions and skins aren't worth it.
Its def. faster but I still like the simplicity of Safari. The download system and bookmarks are the best on Safari. I mean for me. I like Firefox for having all the add-ons and themes but it makes your computer looking like a circus.
I have had Macs since 1991, and my 10.5.3 equipped 2GB RAM MacBook suffers a Safari crash several times a day - and it uses up masses of processor cycles as evidenced by Activity Monitor. Firefox 3.0 also crashes a few times a day. From a usability angle, Safari wins hands down.
That's not safari's fault, that's a problem with your machine. I have been using safari heavily for years over many versions and looking at my crash log, I see seven crashes in 2006, five in 2007, and only one so far this year. I can live with that.
And really, firefox crashing a few times a DAY is supposed do be a good thing???? I can't imagine anyone living with that kind of constant misery. Just troubleshoot your machine already, any web browser should be very very stable. Assuming your machine is OK, maybe it's an unstable browser plugin.
If you find a page that consistently crashes any browser, you really should report that page to the browser team so they can fix whatever the problem is.
now if i can just get PDFs to view in FireFox and not download and launch Preview or Acrobat. Wish PDF Browser Plugin from schubert-it.com would have been updated to run on Intel.
now if i can just get PDFs to view in FireFox and not download and launch Preview or Acrobat. Wish PDF Browser Plugin from schubert-it.com would have been updated to run on Intel.
Firefox is noticibly faster. It has been my browser because I like the command-1, command-2 keys taking me to a specific tab. I could never get use to the Safari hold a bunch of keys down to switch tabs.
Comments
No offense, but something must be wrong with your installation... I did not have a single Safari crash for at least three years and it is running at least 14 hours a day. Still, a re-open last session option would be great - it can be added using the Stand plug-in though and works pretty well.
Soooo much faster than previous FF versions.
Gotta' love FF using the free and very robust Ad Block Plus along with the theme GrApple Delicious (graphite) 1.0 for FF 3.0. This theme actually looks better than ever with its subtle shading - fits right into OS X's current look.
Good job FF folks!
Its much more reliable than Safari and if it does crash it automatically re-opens all the pages you'd had open - a feature Safari could do with if they cant make it more solid.
How do you know it's more reliable than Safari? It just came out today? Give it some time and people will be all over the forums saying it crashes their machines. I will give it a try but I hope it has a nicer looking interface, older versions of firefox were UGLY and clunky! Safari has always run great for me so.
Its much more reliable than Safari and if it does crash it automatically re-opens all the pages you'd had open - a feature Safari could do with if they cant make it more solid.
If its so reliable why would it need this feature? This feature tells us that there are probably reliability issues.
No offense, but something must be wrong with your installation... I did not have a single Safari crash for at least three years and it is running at least 14 hours a day. Still, a re-open last session option would be great - it can be added using the Stand plug-in though and works pretty well.
I've found that it is much less stable if you run it through a proxy server (e.g. from behind a corporate firewall.) Some pages (especially those with Flash, it seems) make Safari unstable, resulting in hangs and crashes when using a proxy (especially with a large proxy auto-config script), even though the same computer has no problem on those pages when I'm at home, and not using any proxies.
WRT automatically re-opening sessions, hopefully it will ask you if you want to do this. If a bad page is causing a crash, you probably don't want to auto-reopen that page.
If its so reliable why would it need this feature? This feature tells us that there are probably reliability issues.
It also works for if you quit out of the program, not just crash out of it.
I'll stick with Safari.
There are more hits than misses, but the misses (and Safari's Web inspector and "save as web archive" features) will keep me with Safari.
Form rendition and speed are greatly improved, the interface is more Mac-like, at least somewhat. It is less cluttered than before, but it still draws more attention to itself and away from the Web pages than Safari.
Would be nice if you could drag tabs to a new window, I use this a lot in Safari. The location bar is ugly and clunky - the drop-down list is not easy to read, the differing dimensions of the back/forward buttons is odd and not intuitive at all (why does the forward button have a drop-down button, but both buttons display a pop-up menu when holding the mouse over them - such a design would have never left Apple). I strongly dislike the "Most Visited" and "Smart Bookmarks" menus that are created automatically - I do not want others to mess up my interface with things I do not want. The bookmark button within the location bar is counter-intuitive. Showing the favicons on the tabs is a good idea though. The Preferences pane is a lot better than before. Well, a mixed bag, really.
Very nice review, so much of software comes down to user interface for me, and firefox has always fallen short in that catagory, doesn't sound like it has gotten any better. But on the other hand it's good to know that after an hour of use it can be declared more reliable and it's so comforting to know that when my super reliable program that never crashes will have an open all pages feature for all those times it crashes, thus saving me hours of surfing every week. Does it not have a history menu??
SunSpider JavaScript benchmark scores (smaller is better):
Safari 3.1 - 3136 ms
Firefox 3 - 3005 ms
-BUT-
nightly WebKit - 1864 ms
This version of WebKit, featuring the SquirrelFish interpreter, will soon get rolled into Safari. Note that the WebKit team says this is a very early implementation, and there's still a lot of performance gain to be arrived at through optimization. The Gecko crew will have their work cut out for them.
On the subjective front, I find the Firefox 3 UI really unpleasant. The Prefs UI is from a parallel (and crummier) universe. The new address bar is feature-rich, but also cluttered and hard to read. Font rendering is still lousy. Safari's error console is much better. Extensions and skins aren't worth it.
i would take a look at this, which gives you some tweaking tips: http://lifehacker.com/396312/power-u...e-to-firefox-3
That's my opinion.
Anything but Internet ExplOder.
Does safari have a zoom tool? That would be a nice feature, I'll check out firefox just for that feature alone.
Yes your whole computer (if you're on a mac) has a zoom feature not just Safari. Hold Command Key and scroll up or down. )
I have had Macs since 1991, and my 10.5.3 equipped 2GB RAM MacBook suffers a Safari crash several times a day - and it uses up masses of processor cycles as evidenced by Activity Monitor. Firefox 3.0 also crashes a few times a day. From a usability angle, Safari wins hands down.
That's not safari's fault, that's a problem with your machine. I have been using safari heavily for years over many versions and looking at my crash log, I see seven crashes in 2006, five in 2007, and only one so far this year. I can live with that.
And really, firefox crashing a few times a DAY is supposed do be a good thing???? I can't imagine anyone living with that kind of constant misery. Just troubleshoot your machine already, any web browser should be very very stable. Assuming your machine is OK, maybe it's an unstable browser plugin.
If you find a page that consistently crashes any browser, you really should report that page to the browser team so they can fix whatever the problem is.
now if i can just get PDFs to view in FireFox and not download and launch Preview or Acrobat. Wish PDF Browser Plugin from schubert-it.com would have been updated to run on Intel.
ya...that aggravates the crap out of me.
Yes your whole computer (if you're on a mac) has a zoom feature not just Safari. Hold Command Key and scroll up or down. )
No way, I never knew that worked on Safari. Thanks