What internet browser do you use?

Macinbowl · Post by **Macinbowl** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:53 am

I'm using safari most of the time but there's some bug here and there that force me to use Firefox for some task...

Is there a fast and reliable internet browser out there???

rcannonp · Post by **rcannonp** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 5:30 am

I use Firefox. I like Safari, but there are certain FF extensions that I now feel lost without. Version 2 is a little buggy. I'm kind of interested to see what they will do with 3.

You might give Camino or Opera a try.

carrythebanner · Post by **carrythebanner** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:12 am

I've been using Opera. It has some handy features, particularly if you do any sort of web development.

inhouseprod · Post by **inhouseprod** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:33 am

I go back and forth between Firefox and Safari. Every time Apple releases an update for Safari, I try it and see how I like it, but there are certain extensions for Firefox that I really like and I can't get those in Safari.

Right now, I'm running Firefox 3 beta 4 and it's working wonderfully - no noticeable bugs or crashes and it's much, much faster than Firefox 2 was.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 1:15 pm

Camino still seems the fastest, most reliable, most secure, and best rendering of all of the Mac browsers -- though I haven't tried Opera since version 6 or 7 and now it's up to version 9.

Firefox 3 may render (no pun intended) Camino irrelevant, as it is supposed to use Mac native platform for graphics/etc. (Firefox is often illegible or formats poorly on-screen).

On my machine at least, it takes very little to crash Safari (I have the latest update, whatever that is). But I ALWAYS have to use it for financial transactions related to on-line purchases of software from most European sites, as we're lucky enough when European sites support the Mac to start with, and when they do, it's usually Safari-only. The Mac is almost non-existent in Europe, so it's hard for people to test against it.

Macinbowl · Post by **Macinbowl** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 2:14 pm

I downloaded Camino and so far I'm really happy. It's faster than Safari and every site I visited loaded just fine. No need to go to Firefox...

Seems like I'm switching to Camino... Safari and Firefox are still on my application folder though.

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 4:58 pm

I use Firefox as my everyday browser and occasionally use Safari (mostly when I check sites I build for compatibility).

I occasionally check out Camino to see where it is. Camino, for those that don't know, is basically Firefox with a Cocoa (Mac OS X native) front end. Both Camino & Firefox us the exact same rendering engine (Gecko). Where I usually get disillusioned with Camino is that they are usually an update or 2 behind Firefox. It's a necessary evil to be behind when you rely on building on the latest trunk release of another project.

Firefox with the SafeHistory, SafeCache, NoScript and Adblock add-ons is the safest browser on the market.

I also like that I can run the same browser on any platform I have to use (Mac, Windows, Linux).

bdr · Post by **bdr** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 6:37 pm

I've used Safari since it first came out. But this version (3.0.4) has been the buggiest I've ever used. Constant crashes.

Dwetmaster · Post by **Dwetmaster** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 7:22 pm

Firefox is always the first thing I install on any new computer I had. I never gave it safari a real try as I'm not interested in it. I remember trying camino for a few days but went back to Firefox after. The native cocoa for firefox 3 will a good addon for me.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Wed Mar 12, 2008 8:27 pm

Steve, I believe you are referring to the beta of Firefox 3? I don't think Firefox 2 uses Gecko. At least, it isn't Cocoa-based; that's why Camino was released, and it's part of the Firefox 3 effort to get it more native looking on the Mac.

Anyway, this info is straight from the source, but it may be out of date as it's what the Mozilla website said when I downloaded both Firefox and Camino about a year or so ago.

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 10:56 am

mhschmieder wrote:Steve, I believe you are referring to the beta of Firefox 3? I don't think Firefox 2 uses Gecko. At least, it isn't Cocoa-based; that's why Camino was released, and it's part of the Firefox 3 effort to get it more native looking on the Mac.

Anyway, this info is straight from the source, but it may be out of date as it's what the Mozilla website said when I downloaded both Firefox and Camino about a year or so ago.

All Mozilla browsers use the Gecko rendering engine (that's what makes them Mozilla browsers). Firefox has always been a gecko browser, being a direct descendant of the original Gecko browser, Netscape. Camino, Deer Park, Sea Monkey, et al are all just different projects based on the same Gecko engine.

Cocoa is not a pre-requisite for Gecko, Camino simply takes the Gecko engine and wraps it in a cocoa front end (GUI).

Safari is nothing more than a Cocoa front end for the WebKit engine. The difference is that Apple has incorporated WebKit into the OS framework (because they can). Safari is based on the Konqueror browser (from the KDE project).

Hope that makes sense, i think you've confused Cocoa & Gecko as mutually inclusive technologies.

mhschmieder · Post by **mhschmieder** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 2:32 pm

Thanks for straightening that out; I thought they were mutually exclusive.

Not sure then why fonts look better in Camino than Firefox -- even after I heavily modified preferences in both browsers.

For whatever reason, Camino seems slightly faster at loading pages also. Though both browsers are way faster than Safari.

sdemott · Post by **sdemott** » Thu Mar 13, 2008 5:13 pm

mhschmieder wrote:Thanks for straightening that out; I thought they were mutually exclusive.

Not sure then why fonts look better in Camino than Firefox -- even after I heavily modified preferences in both browsers.

For whatever reason, Camino seems slightly faster at loading pages also. Though both browsers are way faster than Safari.

Using the Cocoa front end Camino can use the Mac OS font smoothing, rather than relying on a 3rd party "smooth type" style implementation. That's (more or less) what I mean by Cocoa front end. The "behind the scenes" heavy lifting of converting web pages into layout is done by Gecko, then passed to the Cocoa part of the code to create what you see. So it gets native Mac text & image display, while using the same rendering engine that Navigator, Firefox, et al are using and most websites are best viewed with.

Camino is fast - I give it that. I just can't quite kick the Firefox habit. And on my MBP Firefox is no slouch.

kelldammit · Post by **kelldammit** » Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:30 pm

i end up using omniweb, it's not as fast, but saving workspaces, and the ability to "disguise" itself as a different browser on a per-webpage (it remembers, and lets you change these prefs very easily), and dot mac syncability are the trump cards for me.
i like opera...it'd be my next choice for sure, but no os integration, and no dot mac...

kell

Diazruanova · Post by **Diazruanova** » Mon Mar 17, 2008 7:30 am

sdemott wrote:I use Firefox as my everyday browser and occasionally use Safari (mostly when I check sites I build for compatibility).

Firefox with the SafeHistory, SafeCache, NoScript and Adblock add-ons is the safest browser on the market.

I also like that I can run the same browser on any platform I have to use (Mac, Windows, Linux).

Ditto