Below are my primary (though admittedly minor) gripes with Safari, and the reason I don't use the browser more often. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to something I can do to correct these issues.
1) When I click on a link that is designed to open the linked page in a new window, I like the browser to automatically (i.e., without hoding the command key) open that new page in a new tab, not a new window. Firefox allows this. Camino allows this. But Safari doesn't seem to. I've played around in the preferences and set the browser to "open links in a new tab," but Safari doesn't seem to respond to this. (I have the latest version of Safari, but older versions had the same problem.)
2) When in Gmail (the site I use most often), I like how Gmail sounds a small tone when a new chat message is received but the Gmail page is not in my active window. Safari doesn't seem to get this right. Sometimes it chimes... sometimes it doesn't. No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell.
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.
And this is exactly what more Mac users need to know before they get overly excited about the speed in Firefox 3. Yes it is far faster than Firefox 2 and slightly faster than Safari 3.1 BUT significantly slower than the nightly Webkit builds. In fact it's because of the nightly builds of Webkit, I won't switch to Firefox. Of course I have also added Saft, Inquisitor and the NightShift plugin which automatically downloads the latest webkit builds without any user interaction. And finally I've entered a simple command in Terminal which disables Webkit from popping up a new window notifying you of a new release which can get annoying after a while.
Besides Webkit being the fastest rendering engine (thanks to the new Squirrelfish), I just find that it has a smoother feel and a much better looking UI. I've been a big fan of Firefox for at least 2 years but Webkit now has me sprung!
Below are my primary (though admittedly minor) gripes with Safari, and the reason I don't use the browser more often. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to something I can do to correct these issues.
1) When I click on a link that is designed to open the linked page in a new window, I like the browser to automatically (i.e., without hoding the command key) open that new page in a new tab, not a new window. Firefox allows this. Camino allows this. But Safari doesn't seem to. I've played around in the preferences and set the browser to "open links in a new tab," but Safari doesn't seem to respond to this. (I have the latest version of Safari, but older versions had the same problem.)
2) When in Gmail (the site I use most often), I like how Gmail sounds a small tone when a new chat message is received but the Gmail page is not in my active window. Safari doesn't seem to get this right. Sometimes it chimes... sometimes it doesn't. No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell.
1) This is easily fixed in Safari 3.1 or later with the simple Terminal command:
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.
I'm trying to figure out how it's more cluttered than Safari. They both have the same number of buttons for me (though I did add the Print button to Safari's toolbar). Even still, it's one extra button at worse.
Quote:
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 don't have any issues reading the history. I actually prefer it to Safari since it gives the page name and favicon and not just the URL. I usually don't spend much time having to read it since typing a few letters usually brings the site I want to the top of the list.
I actually find the back button being larger very intuitive since that is the button that gets used the most often. Granted, I have Back mapped to the side thumb button of my mouse so it's mostly a non-issue.
There isn't a dropdown arrow on the Forward button. It's separate and apparently shows recent pages. Unfortunately, yes it's a bit odd that holding down either Back or Forward will show the same dropdown list of sites. Perhaps its a bug that will be fixed.
Quote:
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.
I think like most things you've mentioned, it comes down to personal choice. I believe you can just delete the auto-lists (I'm not willing to try because I think they could be useful). I think it's a nice idea to auto generate these lists. I also disagree that having in the bookmark button in the address bar is counter-intuitive; it's seem the perfect place for it and much more intuitive than the disconnected + button in Safari (I actually didn't know what that button was for until just a little while ago). It's also nice that it's not locked into Google searches.
I am very impressed with the new FF. I couldn't believe how fast it loaded pages at work. I like Safari as well (I admit that I go back and forth between them). I like that I can sync my bookmarks with Safari and in the past Safari is generally faster. However, there are some website that leaves Safari "hanging". I hate the color ball. So, I end up getting mad at Safari and switching back to Firefox. Then, I get mad a FF and go back to Safari. It's endless. Maybe this new version of FF will be a keeper.
Safari scrolling on a macbook is much smoother than Firefox. It seems the reason for this is because Safari translates a slow two finger slide on the trackpad into small incremental movements of scrolling. Firefox doesn't differentiate making for a more choppy scrolling experience.
What you are seeing, I think, is two finger acceleration in FF3. I like it a lot.
I love the Safari feature where the find in page highlights the found stuff well makes me want to say with Safari. That and FF3 loading an external app for PDF keeps me on Safari for now.
About the Web Inspector: usually when that topic comes up it's compared to Fire Bug... I don't do much web development though and never bothered with those tools, so you'd have to do the comparison yourself if you're interested, or someone on here might offer a rundown for you if they're so kind.
Actually I did not ask anything. I do Web development and I strongly prefer Safari's Web Inspector. They have quite some overlap in functionality, but for me Web Inspector is more responsive and I absolutely learned to depend on the graphical metrics view when debugging nested divs - it has saved me hours if not days of time. Both are great tools.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
I'm pretty sure there was a Save Webpage feature in the File menu, but I edited my file menu in Safari to where there's nothing in it (both the File and Edit menus were completely useless to me, every single option is done via a menu) so... well let me check Menu Edit... there is a "Save Page As" option.
Both browsers have that option - just Safari packages the entire page and all graphics, scripts, styles etc. in one archive file which can be directly saved to a server, NAS, etc. FF does save the HTML file plus one folder (with subfolders if needed) to achieve the same - so when doing research, you always have an additional step to save the data to a storage location - File - Save Page As... - manually create a disk image or archive - then copy it to the server. With Safari it is File - Save As... - select the network drive - done. Much better and only one file to deal with.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
The Location Bar is brilliant, I don't know what universe you're living in where it's ugly and clunky but just by typing you can search the page titles and tags from your Library (bookmarks and history) until an option appears, hence the reason it's been dubbed the AwesomeBar by some. Via the star icon on the far right you have one click bookmarking, although you can click the star again to edit the info.
I live in the universe, where creating a drop-down list that contains three different item types (icons, page titles and URLs), all having different heights and all having different vertical spacing makes for a fidgety and bad design that is not easy to use. It lacks clear geometry and misleads the eye. It may be a nice idea, but it is not well implemented. For the majority of users (in my case employees) a text entry field (the location bar) is an entry field - nobody looks for a button in it and the filled/hollow star symbol is not self-explanatory either, everybody will look for a create bookmark button in the toolbar or try to add one using toolbar customization - it is in none of these places where it belongs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
The differing dimensions... if I recall correctly it was a way of combining the Back and Forward button to give Firefox a signature appearance that told you immediately if you were in Firefox... this can be solved in 2 different ways... either use small icons (the back button will shrink to the same proportion as the forward button, according to lifehacker anyway), or just do what I did, remove it from the toolbar (the only thing in my toolbar is the location bar, I use search via Quicksilver). Also the drop down menu isn't only for the forward button, it's a recent items button from both your forward and back history.
Well, creating a "signature appearance" by making standard user interface elements puzzling the user, is a concept I won't comment on (this is a browser and should neither require a manual nor training, not a Photoshop plug-in, hell). The idea of mixing up the forward/back functions (which are dynamic - changing the item can effect the options presented in both lists) with a history function (which is linear) is more "adding to the confusion" by solving a problem nobody really had with function overload.
You are right - it gets slightly better when using small icons! Just, why don't they follow OS X conventions and have the "Use small icons" command in the toolbar context menu where it belongs. It also does not not toggle between toolbar modes when holding the command key and clicking the close toolbar button - these non-standard implementations can drive me nuts - this is more Windows than OS X.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
You can delete the smart folders in the Library.
That is fine. Since the great old days of Netscape 4 I am hyper-allergic to software that makes decisions on my behalf, installs icons/shortcuts all-over the place, etc. I have nothing against these functions, just FF 3 was able to read and continue my old bookmark bar settings. If these are present, it should not modify anything on my behalf. With a fresh installation (means the user has not yet invested time to customize his/her workspace) bringing up default configurations is of course fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
How is the bookmark button counter-intuitive?
1. It is not self-explanatory (cannot be identified as a button at all - just the opposite: it is flat and without a border and floats in a text entry field, it uses a symbol commonly used for rating functions throughout OS X, so no intuitive connect to bookmarking at all and the filled/hollow star symbolic does not convey any meaning). 2. The vast majority of business users does expect a bookmark button in the toolbar where it belongs - if they insist on having that thing in the location bar I can live with it, still the "customize toolbar" option should offer means to create a standard user experience - some of my employees use 30 and more software titles in their daily work - making it more complex is not required.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Slewis
Hope I answered everything.... seriously though, you seem to just be complaining that Firefox is different from Safari, hell it's different from Firefox 2 and had me confused at first, but the UI is really light years ahead of Firefox 2.
Nobody doubts that it is much better than FF2, I said so as well. Still, for me to be considered as a replacement for Safari in a business environment, it is still not following OS X conventions close enough while not offering any serious advantages over Safari.
It lacks inline PDF viewing, it does not integrate as well as Safari with Download Managers (Speed Download cannot be disabled/enabled without restarting FF, in Safari it is just a context-toggle that can be changed at any time), it does not directly support context-menu extensions (e.g. clipping functions of Circusponies Notebook and other research tools), the page saving function causes more work, the font rendition is still not on par with Safari and the worst (for me, anyhow): After all these years it still insists on drawing these ugly dotted borders around links when clicking them - as a Web developer this gives you a heart attack every single time (after spending hours and days designing an UI, this browser just messes aesthetics up for no reason).
There is one single thing I love about FF, but that was in FF2 already: Safari cannot print selections on Web pages - you always have to print entire pages. Apple deserves a serious kick for that.
I do use and will continue to use FF for testing my Web pages. For my own browsing it is not there yet, maybe with version 4.
What you are seeing, I think, is two finger acceleration in FF3. I like it a lot.
I love the Safari feature where the find in page highlights the found stuff well makes me want to say with Safari. That and FF3 loading an external app for PDF keeps me on Safari for now.
I noticed that after I posted. FF3 does accelerate fast with the track pad when running two fingers up and down the pad. But it doesn't scroll at the extremely slow range when dragging two fingers like Safari does.
Also a little frustrating not being able to use the trackpad to navigate ( 3 finger swipe left to right, and pinch to zoom in and out) . But I'm nit picking . I have to say FF3 is a blazing fast browser , and I'm happy with it so far.
EDIT: more nit picking. It would be nice if FF3 would give a better visual indicator of when pages are in the process of loading , so that I could tell if hit a bad node, incorrect url, etc.
FF3 still doesn't have the option to have favicon in the toolbar, like with FF on Windows and Linux. I like the idea of making a 3rd-party look the native app on an OS, but when you have cross platform plugins to support there should be some mode to the browser to look and act the same across platforms.
My issue is that I would like to use FoxMarks with Firefox across browsers to keep my bookmarks synced, but I don't like have the text written out in the Tab bar as it takes up too much space. I much prefer to have a single favicon with no text to indicate the site I have saved. I can't do this with Firefox on OS X so I don't use Firefox.
Quote:
Originally Posted by old-wiz
I tried to run FF3 on a 3 year old iBook running 10.3, but it doesn't even start. I suspect it is a universal binary, which won't run under 10.3.
It require 10.4 of higher. This is good because it probably means that Mozilla built in using frameworks that only came about in Tiger. BYW, what is your iBook spped, Tiger may make it perform faster than Panther if you were to upgrade.
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. )
That is definitely not the same thing. Firefox's zoom currently scales up the text smoothly, it's still tack-sharp. It does not scale the images smoothly, but it at least scales it up at the same rate the text is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
FF3 loads Apple.com faster than Safari 3
I've seen Apple.com work better on FF in the past as well. I think there was something wrong with the site at the time, it did get fixed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nevenmrgan
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.
FF3 does a few things in a backwards way, but I really don't see what's wrong with the preference UI.
The toolbar can be customized. What I like is that the little search box lets you directly search several different kinds of sites, where Safari is almost hard coded for Google, at least I see no way to change it, not as easy as two clicks. The internet is slow for me on occasion, and it saves a page load by making a direct query. The location bar seems to be pretty clear to me. Those that are colorblind might have trouble, maybe they don't need to show the URL.
Quote:
Originally Posted by internetworld7
And this is exactly what more Mac users need to know before they get overly excited about the speed in Firefox 3. Yes it is far faster than Firefox 2 and slightly faster than Safari 3.1 BUT significantly slower than the nightly Webkit builds. In fact it's because of the nightly builds of Webkit, I won't switch to Firefox.
I personally don't think there is needs to be a systemic kind of switch, but I've found more often than not that using one or the other is necessary due to an odd compatibility problem.
I'm trying to figure out how it's more cluttered than Safari. They both have the same number of buttons for me (though I did add the Print button to Safari's toolbar). Even still, it's one extra button at worse.
I was not referring to the number of buttons - this can be customized in both browsers. The Safari toolbar/bookmark bar/tab-section is flat looking and free of any colours - FF has the eye-catching enlarged back-button, icons on the tabs, one icon in front of the URL, the star in the location bar and another icon on the search field. In addition there is a stronger 3D effect (not extreme, but it is clearly more dimensional than in Safari). These things combined cause the section to draw more attention away from the page, especially when viewing text-heavy and mostly color-free sites like the one here. Safari's top section, even when viewing "pale" pages, stays in the background - it is never more prominent than the document being viewed. OS X' window layout philosophy is document centric, not window centric - FF adds more "optical weight" to the window. This is neither bad nor forbidden, but IMHO: If the browser is more important than the content being viewed - why waste the time surfing in the first place \
Quote:
Originally Posted by caliminius
I don't have any issues reading the history. I actually prefer it to Safari since it gives the page name and favicon and not just the URL. I usually don't spend much time having to read it since typing a few letters usually brings the site I want to the top of the list.
I agree, having the icons and titles is good. I was really just disliking the actual implementation/layout, not the idea itself. This could be more OS X like and show a cleaner geometry, otherwise it is fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caliminius
I actually find the back button being larger very intuitive since that is the button that gets used the most often. Granted, I have Back mapped to the side thumb button of my mouse so it's mostly a non-issue.
We have the Logitech MX Revolution with dedicated forward/back buttons for all workplaces, so almost nobody is using the browser buttons. My problem with it is not the practicality issue - it is a design issue. Neither is the back button performing a more important or even critical function than the other buttons not is there anything else special about it, so the interface should not mislead the user. I can give any user in our company Safari, Camino, OmniWeb, Opera and everybody will detect and identify the back button in them immediately. With the FF3 layout it will take less than five minutes for the first person to walk up and ask "what happens when I click on this, it is different, can we have a formal introduction" ... I hate it when software causes this.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caliminius
There isn't a dropdown arrow on the Forward button. It's separate and apparently shows recent pages. Unfortunately, yes it's a bit odd that holding down either Back or Forward will show the same dropdown list of sites. Perhaps its a bug that will be fixed.
Well, yes, it is not on the forward button, but attached to it and in the same button group. While nobody would expect a "history" button here at all, making it a drop-down button that is attached to nothing is clearly not brilliant. Putting something dealing with history next to the forward instead of the back button is clearly less than not brilliant... Seriously - this is nuts.
Quote:
Originally Posted by caliminius
I think like most things you've mentioned, it comes down to personal choice. I believe you can just delete the auto-lists (I'm not willing to try because I think they could be useful). I think it's a nice idea to auto generate these lists. I also disagree that having in the bookmark button in the address bar is counter-intuitive; it's seem the perfect place for it and much more intuitive than the disconnected + button in Safari (I actually didn't know what that button was for until just a little while ago). It's also nice that it's not locked into Google searches.
Hmm, some of it is personal choice/taste for sure. Some things are not logical from my point of view and some are simply too far from OS X standards. This does not make it a bad browser at all, and there are ample improvements over FF2, just, I still see a tendency to emphasize on gimmicks rather than OS X compliance and a desire to make the browser itself more important than what it displays. I would prefer it the other way around, but of course this is a subjective opinion.
My beef is that if they've got the room to say OSX they've got the room to say 10.4 or newer. I'm running 10.3.9 on a Pismo. The system requirements should be up front somewhere.
so, what does everyone think? is it running faster than safari? i think i might switch, safari gives me problems a lot recently.
you should try webkit nightly builds. or FF3 for that matter, I've been using that for ages, and the last betas and RCs were solid. in fact the last 2 RC are identical to the final version.
on my machine, FF3 and webkit runs head to head; I have not touched Safari for months.
Comments
PS: What are using to time the page loads?
A stopwatch, which is why I did 10 trials for each test and just showed the average times.
A stopwatch, which is why I did 10 trials for each test and just showed the average times.
Gotcha. I have always wondered if there was a simple app that would accurately monitor the time a page can load down by monitoring the browser engine.
1) When I click on a link that is designed to open the linked page in a new window, I like the browser to automatically (i.e., without hoding the command key) open that new page in a new tab, not a new window. Firefox allows this. Camino allows this. But Safari doesn't seem to. I've played around in the preferences and set the browser to "open links in a new tab," but Safari doesn't seem to respond to this. (I have the latest version of Safari, but older versions had the same problem.)
2) When in Gmail (the site I use most often), I like how Gmail sounds a small tone when a new chat message is received but the Gmail page is not in my active window. Safari doesn't seem to get this right. Sometimes it chimes... sometimes it doesn't. No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell.
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.
And this is exactly what more Mac users need to know before they get overly excited about the speed in Firefox 3. Yes it is far faster than Firefox 2 and slightly faster than Safari 3.1 BUT significantly slower than the nightly Webkit builds. In fact it's because of the nightly builds of Webkit, I won't switch to Firefox. Of course I have also added Saft, Inquisitor and the NightShift plugin which automatically downloads the latest webkit builds without any user interaction. And finally I've entered a simple command in Terminal which disables Webkit from popping up a new window notifying you of a new release which can get annoying after a while.
Besides Webkit being the fastest rendering engine (thanks to the new Squirrelfish), I just find that it has a smoother feel and a much better looking UI. I've been a big fan of Firefox for at least 2 years but Webkit now has me sprung!
Below are my primary (though admittedly minor) gripes with Safari, and the reason I don't use the browser more often. Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to something I can do to correct these issues.
1) When I click on a link that is designed to open the linked page in a new window, I like the browser to automatically (i.e., without hoding the command key) open that new page in a new tab, not a new window. Firefox allows this. Camino allows this. But Safari doesn't seem to. I've played around in the preferences and set the browser to "open links in a new tab," but Safari doesn't seem to respond to this. (I have the latest version of Safari, but older versions had the same problem.)
2) When in Gmail (the site I use most often), I like how Gmail sounds a small tone when a new chat message is received but the Gmail page is not in my active window. Safari doesn't seem to get this right. Sometimes it chimes... sometimes it doesn't. No rhyme or reason as far as I can tell.
1) This is easily fixed in Safari 3.1 or later with the simple Terminal command:You can also edit that com.apple.plist file. It's not a preferences button is Safari 4 yet, but I have faith that it will be coming.
2) This may be an issue with Google's server-side code not playing well with Safari's engine. Either way, I have no solution.
1) This is easily fixed in Safari 3.1 or later with the simple Terminal command:You can also edit that com.apple.plist file. It's not a preferences button is Safari 4 yet, but I have faith that it will be coming.
2) This may be an issue with Google's server-side code not playing well with Safari's engine. Either way, I have no solution.
Thank you!
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.
I'm trying to figure out how it's more cluttered than Safari. They both have the same number of buttons for me (though I did add the Print button to Safari's toolbar). Even still, it's one extra button at worse.
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 don't have any issues reading the history. I actually prefer it to Safari since it gives the page name and favicon and not just the URL. I usually don't spend much time having to read it since typing a few letters usually brings the site I want to the top of the list.
I actually find the back button being larger very intuitive since that is the button that gets used the most often. Granted, I have Back mapped to the side thumb button of my mouse so it's mostly a non-issue.
There isn't a dropdown arrow on the Forward button. It's separate and apparently shows recent pages. Unfortunately, yes it's a bit odd that holding down either Back or Forward will show the same dropdown list of sites. Perhaps its a bug that will be fixed.
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.
I think like most things you've mentioned, it comes down to personal choice. I believe you can just delete the auto-lists (I'm not willing to try because I think they could be useful). I think it's a nice idea to auto generate these lists. I also disagree that having in the bookmark button in the address bar is counter-intuitive; it's seem the perfect place for it and much more intuitive than the disconnected + button in Safari (I actually didn't know what that button was for until just a little while ago). It's also nice that it's not locked into Google searches.
Safari scrolling on a macbook is much smoother than Firefox. It seems the reason for this is because Safari translates a slow two finger slide on the trackpad into small incremental movements of scrolling. Firefox doesn't differentiate making for a more choppy scrolling experience.
What you are seeing, I think, is two finger acceleration in FF3. I like it a lot.
I love the Safari feature where the find in page highlights the found stuff well makes me want to say with Safari. That and FF3 loading an external app for PDF keeps me on Safari for now.
About the Web Inspector: usually when that topic comes up it's compared to Fire Bug... I don't do much web development though and never bothered with those tools, so you'd have to do the comparison yourself if you're interested, or someone on here might offer a rundown for you if they're so kind.
Actually I did not ask anything. I do Web development and I strongly prefer Safari's Web Inspector. They have quite some overlap in functionality, but for me Web Inspector is more responsive and I absolutely learned to depend on the graphical metrics view when debugging nested divs - it has saved me hours if not days of time. Both are great tools.
I'm pretty sure there was a Save Webpage feature in the File menu, but I edited my file menu in Safari to where there's nothing in it (both the File and Edit menus were completely useless to me, every single option is done via a menu) so... well let me check Menu Edit... there is a "Save Page As" option.
Both browsers have that option - just Safari packages the entire page and all graphics, scripts, styles etc. in one archive file which can be directly saved to a server, NAS, etc. FF does save the HTML file plus one folder (with subfolders if needed) to achieve the same - so when doing research, you always have an additional step to save the data to a storage location - File - Save Page As... - manually create a disk image or archive - then copy it to the server. With Safari it is File - Save As... - select the network drive - done. Much better and only one file to deal with.
The Location Bar is brilliant, I don't know what universe you're living in where it's ugly and clunky but just by typing you can search the page titles and tags from your Library (bookmarks and history) until an option appears, hence the reason it's been dubbed the AwesomeBar by some. Via the star icon on the far right you have one click bookmarking, although you can click the star again to edit the info.
I live in the universe, where creating a drop-down list that contains three different item types (icons, page titles and URLs), all having different heights and all having different vertical spacing makes for a fidgety and bad design that is not easy to use. It lacks clear geometry and misleads the eye. It may be a nice idea, but it is not well implemented. For the majority of users (in my case employees) a text entry field (the location bar) is an entry field - nobody looks for a button in it and the filled/hollow star symbol is not self-explanatory either, everybody will look for a create bookmark button in the toolbar or try to add one using toolbar customization - it is in none of these places where it belongs.
The differing dimensions... if I recall correctly it was a way of combining the Back and Forward button to give Firefox a signature appearance that told you immediately if you were in Firefox... this can be solved in 2 different ways... either use small icons (the back button will shrink to the same proportion as the forward button, according to lifehacker anyway), or just do what I did, remove it from the toolbar (the only thing in my toolbar is the location bar, I use search via Quicksilver). Also the drop down menu isn't only for the forward button, it's a recent items button from both your forward and back history.
Well, creating a "signature appearance" by making standard user interface elements puzzling the user, is a concept I won't comment on (this is a browser and should neither require a manual nor training, not a Photoshop plug-in, hell). The idea of mixing up the forward/back functions (which are dynamic - changing the item can effect the options presented in both lists) with a history function (which is linear) is more "adding to the confusion" by solving a problem nobody really had with function overload.
You are right - it gets slightly better when using small icons! Just, why don't they follow OS X conventions and have the "Use small icons" command in the toolbar context menu where it belongs. It also does not not toggle between toolbar modes when holding the command key and clicking the close toolbar button - these non-standard implementations can drive me nuts - this is more Windows than OS X.
You can delete the smart folders in the Library.
That is fine. Since the great old days of Netscape 4 I am hyper-allergic to software that makes decisions on my behalf, installs icons/shortcuts all-over the place, etc. I have nothing against these functions, just FF 3 was able to read and continue my old bookmark bar settings. If these are present, it should not modify anything on my behalf. With a fresh installation (means the user has not yet invested time to customize his/her workspace) bringing up default configurations is of course fine.
How is the bookmark button counter-intuitive?
1. It is not self-explanatory (cannot be identified as a button at all - just the opposite: it is flat and without a border and floats in a text entry field, it uses a symbol commonly used for rating functions throughout OS X, so no intuitive connect to bookmarking at all and the filled/hollow star symbolic does not convey any meaning). 2. The vast majority of business users does expect a bookmark button in the toolbar where it belongs - if they insist on having that thing in the location bar I can live with it, still the "customize toolbar" option should offer means to create a standard user experience - some of my employees use 30 and more software titles in their daily work - making it more complex is not required.
Hope I answered everything.... seriously though, you seem to just be complaining that Firefox is different from Safari, hell it's different from Firefox 2 and had me confused at first, but the UI is really light years ahead of Firefox 2.
Nobody doubts that it is much better than FF2, I said so as well. Still, for me to be considered as a replacement for Safari in a business environment, it is still not following OS X conventions close enough while not offering any serious advantages over Safari.
It lacks inline PDF viewing, it does not integrate as well as Safari with Download Managers (Speed Download cannot be disabled/enabled without restarting FF, in Safari it is just a context-toggle that can be changed at any time), it does not directly support context-menu extensions (e.g. clipping functions of Circusponies Notebook and other research tools), the page saving function causes more work, the font rendition is still not on par with Safari and the worst (for me, anyhow): After all these years it still insists on drawing these ugly dotted borders around links when clicking them - as a Web developer this gives you a heart attack every single time (after spending hours and days designing an UI, this browser just messes aesthetics up for no reason).
There is one single thing I love about FF, but that was in FF2 already: Safari cannot print selections on Web pages - you always have to print entire pages. Apple deserves a serious kick for that.
I do use and will continue to use FF for testing my Web pages. For my own browsing it is not there yet, maybe with version 4.
What you are seeing, I think, is two finger acceleration in FF3. I like it a lot.
I love the Safari feature where the find in page highlights the found stuff well makes me want to say with Safari. That and FF3 loading an external app for PDF keeps me on Safari for now.
I noticed that after I posted. FF3 does accelerate fast with the track pad when running two fingers up and down the pad. But it doesn't scroll at the extremely slow range when dragging two fingers like Safari does.
Also a little frustrating not being able to use the trackpad to navigate ( 3 finger swipe left to right, and pinch to zoom in and out) . But I'm nit picking . I have to say FF3 is a blazing fast browser , and I'm happy with it so far.
EDIT: more nit picking. It would be nice if FF3 would give a better visual indicator of when pages are in the process of loading , so that I could tell if hit a bad node, incorrect url, etc.
My issue is that I would like to use FoxMarks with Firefox across browsers to keep my bookmarks synced, but I don't like have the text written out in the Tab bar as it takes up too much space. I much prefer to have a single favicon with no text to indicate the site I have saved. I can't do this with Firefox on OS X so I don't use Firefox.
I tried to run FF3 on a 3 year old iBook running 10.3, but it doesn't even start. I suspect it is a universal binary, which won't run under 10.3.
It require 10.4 of higher. This is good because it probably means that Mozilla built in using frameworks that only came about in Tiger. BYW, what is your iBook spped, Tiger may make it perform faster than Panther if you were to upgrade.
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. )
That is definitely not the same thing. Firefox's zoom currently scales up the text smoothly, it's still tack-sharp. It does not scale the images smoothly, but it at least scales it up at the same rate the text is.
I've seen Apple.com work better on FF in the past as well. I think there was something wrong with the site at the time, it did get fixed.
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.
FF3 does a few things in a backwards way, but I really don't see what's wrong with the preference UI.
The toolbar can be customized. What I like is that the little search box lets you directly search several different kinds of sites, where Safari is almost hard coded for Google, at least I see no way to change it, not as easy as two clicks. The internet is slow for me on occasion, and it saves a page load by making a direct query. The location bar seems to be pretty clear to me. Those that are colorblind might have trouble, maybe they don't need to show the URL.
And this is exactly what more Mac users need to know before they get overly excited about the speed in Firefox 3. Yes it is far faster than Firefox 2 and slightly faster than Safari 3.1 BUT significantly slower than the nightly Webkit builds. In fact it's because of the nightly builds of Webkit, I won't switch to Firefox.
I personally don't think there is needs to be a systemic kind of switch, but I've found more often than not that using one or the other is necessary due to an odd compatibility problem.
I'm trying to figure out how it's more cluttered than Safari. They both have the same number of buttons for me (though I did add the Print button to Safari's toolbar). Even still, it's one extra button at worse.
I was not referring to the number of buttons - this can be customized in both browsers. The Safari toolbar/bookmark bar/tab-section is flat looking and free of any colours - FF has the eye-catching enlarged back-button, icons on the tabs, one icon in front of the URL, the star in the location bar and another icon on the search field. In addition there is a stronger 3D effect (not extreme, but it is clearly more dimensional than in Safari). These things combined cause the section to draw more attention away from the page, especially when viewing text-heavy and mostly color-free sites like the one here. Safari's top section, even when viewing "pale" pages, stays in the background - it is never more prominent than the document being viewed. OS X' window layout philosophy is document centric, not window centric - FF adds more "optical weight" to the window. This is neither bad nor forbidden, but IMHO: If the browser is more important than the content being viewed - why waste the time surfing in the first place
I don't have any issues reading the history. I actually prefer it to Safari since it gives the page name and favicon and not just the URL. I usually don't spend much time having to read it since typing a few letters usually brings the site I want to the top of the list.
I agree, having the icons and titles is good. I was really just disliking the actual implementation/layout, not the idea itself. This could be more OS X like and show a cleaner geometry, otherwise it is fine.
I actually find the back button being larger very intuitive since that is the button that gets used the most often. Granted, I have Back mapped to the side thumb button of my mouse so it's mostly a non-issue.
We have the Logitech MX Revolution with dedicated forward/back buttons for all workplaces, so almost nobody is using the browser buttons. My problem with it is not the practicality issue - it is a design issue. Neither is the back button performing a more important or even critical function than the other buttons not is there anything else special about it, so the interface should not mislead the user. I can give any user in our company Safari, Camino, OmniWeb, Opera and everybody will detect and identify the back button in them immediately. With the FF3 layout it will take less than five minutes for the first person to walk up and ask "what happens when I click on this, it is different, can we have a formal introduction" ... I hate it when software causes this.
There isn't a dropdown arrow on the Forward button. It's separate and apparently shows recent pages. Unfortunately, yes it's a bit odd that holding down either Back or Forward will show the same dropdown list of sites. Perhaps its a bug that will be fixed.
Well, yes, it is not on the forward button, but attached to it and in the same button group. While nobody would expect a "history" button here at all, making it a drop-down button that is attached to nothing is clearly not brilliant. Putting something dealing with history next to the forward instead of the back button is clearly less than not brilliant... Seriously - this is nuts.
I think like most things you've mentioned, it comes down to personal choice. I believe you can just delete the auto-lists (I'm not willing to try because I think they could be useful). I think it's a nice idea to auto generate these lists. I also disagree that having in the bookmark button in the address bar is counter-intuitive; it's seem the perfect place for it and much more intuitive than the disconnected + button in Safari (I actually didn't know what that button was for until just a little while ago). It's also nice that it's not locked into Google searches.
Hmm, some of it is personal choice/taste for sure. Some things are not logical from my point of view and some are simply too far from OS X standards. This does not make it a bad browser at all, and there are ample improvements over FF2, just, I still see a tendency to emphasize on gimmicks rather than OS X compliance and a desire to make the browser itself more important than what it displays. I would prefer it the other way around, but of course this is a subjective opinion.
Safari is soooo much faster!
so, what does everyone think? is it running faster than safari? i think i might switch, safari gives me problems a lot recently.
you should try webkit nightly builds. or FF3 for that matter, I've been using that for ages, and the last betas and RCs were solid. in fact the last 2 RC are identical to the final version.
on my machine, FF3 and webkit runs head to head; I have not touched Safari for months.