Switch from safari to firefox

sum_ifx_i

Registered
New release of safari 1.2.4 (v125.11) seems to be less stable. So I switched to Firefox 1.0. Presently much faster, more stable and better chances of getting the right behavior on many sites.

A couple of relatively "hidden" features of safari that are useful to switchers:
1) to change default browser in panther you must go into safari preferences, not into system preference (this is not as rational as it was in jaguar, apple is getting worse and worse as time passes, but what can we do..)
2) to export safari bookmarks (and then import safari bookmarks into firefox) you have to use the debug menu of safari, save to an html file and then import the hmtl file from firefox
 
Hmmm - interesting thoughts. I have never had any real problems with safari, except for the short period of time i was forced to use dialup in between DSL companies - about a year ago.
I use Safari 1.2.4 as my full time browser and Firefox 1.0 to access banking sites. I was using Camino, but i got damned tired of it crashing like a drunk redneck and deleted it.
I also use Mozilla 1.7, but it is seems really sluggish at times.
 
I guess my experiences just don't jive with everyone elses. Over the last several weeks I've tried Firefox on both my home PowerBook and my work XP machine. After a day I went back to Safari and IE.

Numerous web sites I typically visit rendered screwy with Firefox on both the Mac and XP. In addition, Firefox screens would render terribly jerky - moving blocks all over for awhile until things settled down. This alone killed it for me - maybe it's faster than Safari - but the disorientation of all the scattered rendering negated any performance benifits. In addition, on the Mac, Firefox's scroll rates irritated me. On XP numerous of my company's drop down menus didn't work.

Although I hate IE, it allows me to get my work done. And I've truely enjoyed Safari at home - it's a beautiful browser and works solid for me. I very rarely have troubles with web sites. The only one I can think of right now is gmail.

Anyways, this just reflect my experiences based on my habits of what I do online. I'm online quite a number of hours every day. I'm sticking with Safari (happily) and IE (regretably) for now.

Erik
 
g/re/p said:
I use Safari 1.2.4 as my full time browser and Firefox 1.0 to access banking sites.

This is an interesting statement. I know this is the forum for news, etc., but I had to reply to this. I posted a message in the how to forum about this not long ago.

Safari has always worked for me except for sites designed for IE. I regularly update my Mac with Apple. But lately, Safari has been showing problems. Sometimes I have to press enter to access a page after Safari says it can't open the page. The second try always works. And just the other day Safari stopped working with Bank Of America's web site. I couldn't perform a transfer, send trouble email, or download for quicken. I downloaded FireFox and the quicken download worked as normal. So something has changed in Safari. If anyone else has had this problem, please email me or start a new post on the How-To forum. I find it VERY irritating to have to keep THREE BROWSERS on hand depending on the sites I visit. And none of these (old Mac IE, Safari, or FireFox) can deal with some content targeted for IE browsers. I know HTML was designed such that browsers could render pages the way the see fit. But wouldn't it be nice to see a new generation of browsers/HTML that render EXACTLY on any compliant platform? Thanks for listening. (Sorry if this content is in the worng place - don't flame me. I'm just posting in reply to the quote above.)
 
Hi,

I liked Safari but switched to Firefox as it generally takes Safari 10+ seconds to display a drop-down menu of my bookmarks after I've clicked on the Safari Bookmarks Toolbar name.

I still use Safari with .Mac as Firefox doesn't display a number of items within my .Mac account.

I've also found Firefox to be a little faster in rendering pages. Firefox and Safari both crash occasionally so this is a non-issue for me.

ap
 
Firefox's OS X version seems half-assed. It does not utilize OS X's built in spellchecker, it doesn't use Aqua-style form elements, and scrolling lags more than in IE 5. It also doesn't maximize properly, and it doesn't recognize several common OS X file extensions as downloadable. Speed wise? If Firefox is any faster, the difference is negligible on my system. At least until the recently announced "aquafication" release (1.1), I'm sticking with Safari.
 
this thread made me a little curious, so i downloaded it and tested on a few sites. i wanted to try some videos so i went to upn.com and it was very choppy compared to safari. it would actually freeze half the video and still play the bottom portion. then i went to gwenstefani.com to check out some flash and that was fine....... where it hung up was when i clicked a news article and it brings you to a heavily animated page. it just froze completely, i had to force quit.

so, needles to say, safari is my main browser still.
 
WinWord10 said:
Firefox's OS X version seems half-assed. It does not utilize OS X's built in spellchecker, it doesn't use Aqua-style form elements, and scrolling lags more than in IE 5. It also doesn't maximize properly, and it doesn't recognize several common OS X file extensions as downloadable. Speed wise? If Firefox is any faster, the difference is negligible on my system. At least until the recently announced "aquafication" release (1.1), I'm sticking with Safari.
Then give Camino a try. Camino uses an Aqua interface or download CaminIcon and skin away. Lastly, I also use CaminoKnight to download the http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/camino/nightly/latest/ nightly build to keep up to date on the latest internet browser trends. The people on the Camino project are far more active in updating then the Firefox team. You can search at Versiontracker and see all the Camino side projects.
 
I use either Safari or Firefox, depending on the advantages/drawbacks of the current version.

Firefox 1.0 is faster than the current Safari, so I use it. I just miss the multiple pages launch on one click that I have with Safari with "Auto-Tab".
 
i'm a big fan of firefox. i especially like the extensions you can get to use with it, makes things a little more "integrated". :)
 
Satcomer said:
Then give Camino a try. Camino uses an Aqua interface or download CaminIcon and skin away. Lastly, I also use CaminoKnight to download the http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/camino/nightly/latest/ nightly build to keep up to date on the latest internet browser trends. The people on the Camino project are far more active in updating then the Firefox team. You can search at Versiontracker and see all the Camino side projects.

The Camino project has a grand total of about 2 programmers working on a regular basis, according to an article I read awhile ago, and they work so slowly at times that it takes months from one final release to the next. If I recall correctly, an entire year elapsed between 0.7 and 0.8. Additionally, Camino doesn't have spellchecker either, window maximizing works like on a Windows machine, and the future entire project is in jeopardy because of recent Firefox developments. Although it uses aqua form elements, so does Safari without requiring me to sacrifice useful features.
 
Firefox still has subpar text rendering. Is it _soooooo_ difficult to use Mac OS X' native text-handling? Well, probably yes, else the mozilla-derivates would use it... Webpages just look better on Safari and OmniWeb. And as a designer, I don't like to look at ugly text. I.e.: Camino, Firefox et al. are only used occasionally to test webpages.
 
Well, in Tiger Safari 2.0 is a bit faster than Firefox 1.0.

The main thing that keeps me from switching to Firefox is that it does not integrate with Keychain Access for saving and retrieving internet passwords. I have a lot of sites that I visit that have their passwords stored in my keychain (forums and the like). If Firefox could use the keychain I might consider using it more. Until then it's Safari for me...
 
cybergoober said:
Well, in Tiger Safari 2.0 is a bit faster than Firefox 1.0.

The main thing that keeps me from switching to Firefox is that it does not integrate with Keychain Access for saving and retrieving internet passwords. I have a lot of sites that I visit that have their passwords stored in my keychain (forums and the like). If Firefox could use the keychain I might consider using it more. Until then it's Safari for me...

firefox saves all my passwords and always works perfectly. almost every time you enter a un/pw in a site and login for the first time you should get a promt asking if you want to save or use just that once.
 
I know it's a weird gripe, and possibly even a correctable one if someone can tell me how, but firefox doesn't let me go back using backspace (or delete) only through Cmd+Left Arrow. Mouse gestures are another alternative in Firefox, but i'm using a powerbook so I don't have a right-click and holding down keys gets me to the same bother as before. It's all a rather mild inconvenience, but it's enough to make me stick with Safari for now.
 
blue&whiteman said:
firefox saves all my passwords and always works perfectly. almost every time you enter a un/pw in a site and login for the first time you should get a promt asking if you want to save or use just that once.

I am aware of that. I have probably 50 or so sites that I log into though. I already have this info in my keychain. In Firefox when I browse to one of these sites, if I can't remember the password (I have too damn many these days) I have to open Keychain Access, search for that site, show its password, blah blah blah... Basically it's just too much of a hassle at this point.

As I said Safari 2.0 is faster than Firefox in Tiger anyway ::angel:: . Firefox's extensions (a few of which are rather handy) alone aren't enough to compel me to switch. It also annoys me that the Close Tab widget is not part of the tab and is clear across the window (and yes I know the keyboard shortcuts, and I know I can right-click on the tab and select Close Tab...).
 
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