Alright, that is a sensationalist title, but I needed a strong title to show my hypocrisy. Today, I have made the switch from Safari 3 to Firefox 3. I have realized despite the numerous advantages Safari has with direct operating system integration, Firefox still wins out feature-wise. To help make my decision, I made several lists of the advantages and disadvantages that matter to me. Below are those lists.
Advantages of Safari
- Operating system dictionary integration. Supporting shortcuts like dictionary lookup (command+shift+D).
- iPod touch bookmark syncing.
- Launches fairly fast and browses pretty quickly.
- Has an amazing search plugin.
- Interface is completely “Mac-like”.
Disadvantages of Safari
- Flash currently chokes in Safari. Safari won’t crash, but can easily freeze for over a minute when viewing Flash content.
- After three operating system updates, the vanishing cookie bug remains.
- Some websites still won’t let you use Safari to fill out forms, etc.
Advantages of Firefox
- Lightning fast. Has not crashed or froze on me once since install.
- The amazing awesome bar.
- The bookmark “star” system works wonders. Very easy for temporarily bookmarking websites for later reference.
- When multiple tabs are open, the tab bar scrolls.
- Supports Google Gears.
- Extensions can fill any feature void.
Disadvantages of Firefox
- Interface is only partially Mac-like, even with GrApple.
- Spell checking is not as nice as Safari.
- Firefox 3 occasionally renders some pages strangly, due to the new text rendering.
Looking over the lists, Safari’s advantages are mostly in the interface, while the disadvantages can quickly become show stoppers. For Firefox, the advantages are in the features, while the disadvantages are only minor quibbles. When you enumerate the features, Firefox wins hands down - at least for me.
So, my final ruling is Firefox wins this browser round. If Safari 4 can manage to fix the Flash freezes and remember cookies, Safari has a good chance of winning round 4. Until then, Firefox will remain my browser of choice.
9 Comments
Great comparisons, but I’d have to disagree with you. At least for me, Firefox is significantly slower than Safari. Firefox has all those add-ons and plugins that I’ve managed to do without when using Safari.
You are definitely right about the Flash and cookie bugs, but I’d rather put up with them than use Firefox to be honest. I guess it’s really by preference.
Have you tried Firefox 3? Trust me, it’s way faster than Firefox 2.
I never understood the whole “Mac like interface” thing. For me, the nice thing about Firefox is that its interface if pretty consistent between MacWindowsUnix so I always feel at home. Firefox’s interface is Firefox-like!!
Actually, I get a little annoyed, because it does make an effort to adapt to the local OS practice, so the “Preferences” is always somewhere else. And the “Mac-like” practice of having a window’s menu bar at the top of the screen will always confuse me.
Obviously, I’m not a Mac user.
-d
About this: “Firefox 3 occasionally renders some pages strangly, due to the new text rendering.”
Did you enable any add-ons “by force”? I found that Google Reader Notifier (which is not officially supported by FF3) causes such behavior in my case, so I’ve switched it with Google Reader Watcher and now everything works fine.
I still prefer Camino over Firefox on the Mac. But with the new version of Opera, I am giving that a chance on my work PC, I think I’ll give it a shot on my Mac as well.
I love Firefox 3. Been using it since beta 1, and the new features are awesome. I can’t live without the AwesomeBar and the 1 click bookmarking. Also, Safari uses a LOT of RAM, while the new Firefox does a fantastic job at managing memory usage.
While that does make sense, I tend to disagree. The average user will spend most of their time switching between applications on one platform. Not switch from Firefox on one platform to Firefox on another. The consistency should come from the overall operating system interface, not the application.
It’s funny you mention that. I did have Google Reader Notifier enabled for a bit, but it was supposedly a 3.0 compatible version. I have since disabled it, and I haven’t noticed any weird rendering yet.
In addition to text rendering, this is why I use Safari on a Mac.
Your post got me thinking and now I’m running Firefox 3 over Safari 3. Firefox 3 has some really good features and plugins. I’ve switched for the moment and if my experience is still satisfactory, I’m going to stay.
Firefox 3 is a huge improvement over Firefox 2!
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