I find Safari to be horribly slow. I keep trying different browsers, most recently Opera, but I always keep coming back to Firefox.

I can't live without several Firefox extensions, especially Google Browser Sync, which syncs not only bookmarks, but cookies, passwords, and open cookies & tabs between my computers. I haven't found that functionality in any other browser, which is what always brings me back to Firefox.

I'll wait until I see what's in Leopard...

I've been using OmniWeb since early v4. It's the best browser on OS X. And yes, I paid for it, and no, I don't work for OG.

Despite its "features", Firefox is... well... awful. It's awkward, clunky, the UI is terrible, and such an obvious Windows port. You have to search for and install at least half a dozen extensions to Firefox to make it do what OW does. Camino is buggy and slow since it was switched to the same rendering engine.

One thing overlooked in this review is that OW has a nice little built in text editing window for posting comments like this. Just click the little + sign in the upper right hand corner of the window, and viola, a separate dedicated resizable window for text editing pops up that you can use just like TextEdit.

Overall, nothing better out there for the Mac than OW. Firefox is the best browser for Windows, but well... it's Windows, so that's not saying much.

One of this big things that OmniWeb does not support properly is Keychain Access:

1. It cannot handle two username/password combinations for the same site (Safari can).

2. It cannot handle any changes to any of the fields in Keychain; if you rename the 'Name' field in Keychain Access, OmniWeb will not recognise the username and password for that site any more.

There are a lot of little, everyday features that Safari has which other browsers lack.

Standard Firefox on Mac is not great, however about 4 months ago I started using a optimized version of Firefox for Mac

You can find it here.

http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2007/02/24/firefox-2002

I like to see what the author of this article thought of it.



Gavin

I understand Safari has a 1 second delay per page? Someone told me that once. Anyway, this application removes it:
http://www.scifience.net/safarispeed/

Not only can you drag around those "tab" thumbnails within a window, but you can drag them between windows. Have a tab you want in its own window? double-click its thumbnail, and it opens a new window. This is great for when you open a site, and decide you want to open new tabs from that site, but you don't want to clutter up your other window with even more tags. Open in a new window, and start "tabbing". Say you want that page back in its previous window? Simply drag its tab thumbnail back to the original window.
What if you want to open a new tab, but not at the bottom of the list? Easy, simply drag its link from the web page to where you want it in the drawer, and it will open there. Suppose you would like to replace the contents of a tab with a link in the current window--same thing, only drag it on top of the already-existing tab.

Omni is tabbed browsing on steroids. It ought to be illegal.

As to the complaints about Omni and keychain access--I have yet to personally notice any issues with the keychain, and I had multiples of items in my keychain long before I got Omni--Safari created them all! It made a mess of my keychain, so I doubt Omni can be much worse.

Oh, and Omni has _awesome_ ad blocking power, as well as site-specific security features for graphics, cookies, popup windows, look, etc.

My only complaint is that it crashes on my computer far too often, and only when certain graphic-intensive, Cocoa-based apps open, so I think it's video memory-related, and due to my ancient Pismo with a mere 8meg of video ram... But since Omni remembers all my windows and tabs, it's a simple matter of relaunching, and moving onward--another plus of Omni over most other browsers...

-Jon
(another satisfied customer)

I find Camino to be faster and responsive than Safari. I use Safari mainly when I want to email a page to friends and relatives.

i still hope for a simple uncluttered browser (OW's well organized but I don't want a 1/4 of the features) with great gui that renders pages flawlessly and beautifully (could there be one without the other??)

maybe shiira--by 2009!

There are a bunch of OW feature that I use every day and make it, for me, completely the stand out browser, bar none.

- Workspaces. For regular daily browsing and for work-in-progress, workspaces are a stand out feature.

- Per-site preferences

- Zoom text boxes

- Wickedly configurable shortcuts

- Wickedly configurable ad blocking

Reading this article and the one before it, plus the comments (most of which are quite useful), I'm struck by one thing: a person's choice of browser is probably akin to her/his choice of car, based upon personal taste, needs, and choice. For example, some like OmniWeb's approach to tabbed browsing: I found that it just takes up way too much space--and I have a 20-inch iMac. I tried OmniWeb on my 12-inch PowerBook--ONCE. Others like the plug-ins/extensions for Firefox. I haven't found much use for them and I dislike the "Windows-look" of Firefox.

As a Panther user, I can't comment upon the latest Safari: mine is rather slow but usually reliable. I usually use Camino but go back to Safari to view embedded QuickTime videos correctly. I used to "need" the way Safari and iCab, unlike Firefox, etc., use the bookmarks as well as history for auto-completion in the address bar. However, I found that Camino and Firefox allow keywords for quick access to sites, which I have found to be more convenient in most cases. (Other browsers may do this, too.)

I like a simple, clean-looking browser that's fast and straight-forward to use. Right now, Camino fits that bill. Shiira is also very nice-looking, but lacks bookmark keywords or auto-completion from bookmarks as well as history.

I switched to OW and really like it. The most compelling feature for me is, by far, Workspaces. Allows me to visit all the sites I want to visit in a much more efficient manner. I have separate workspaces constructed for general news, sports, weather, business stuff, finances, etc... I don’t have to manually bring up 4 websites, I just load a workspace and it’s all right there automatically.

Great stuff.

Quote

Anonymous wrote:
I switched to OW and really like it. The most compelling feature for me is, by far, Workspaces. Allows me to visit all the sites I want to visit in a much more efficient manner. I have separate workspaces constructed for general news, sports, weather, business stuff, finances, etc... I don’t have to manually bring up 4 websites, I just load a workspace and it’s all right there automatically.

Great stuff.

I prefer the Mac-ness of Safari, but I found my MacBook with 2GB feeling sluggish, and I did some reading and came across some info about a memory leak in Safari.

I decided to try Firefox full-time for awhile, and my system seems to be running more smoothly. Fewer pinwheels of death, and though I'm not crazy about FF's interface, stability comes before appearance for me.