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Just a Thought - Foxy Firefox!
by - December 9th, 2004
Browsing For A Browser
Since it was first introduced, I've enjoyed using Safari, Apple's unique and entirely usable Web browser. What's not to enjoy? It's quick, looks great, and is lightweight; you can't ask for more from a Web browser.
Well...yeah, you can.
See, while Safari has been my default browser for some time now -I use it for 98% of my web-surfing- there are sites that, for one reason or another, it will not render. It is for those sites that I keep Internet Explorer (IE) around. It galls me to no end that I have to keep IE around, especially since Microsoft dropped upgrade support for the OS X version, which means that the IE we Mac users have will never have feature parity with the Windows version. (Not that there were a lot of great features to begin with, but that's another story.)
So, 99% of my Web browsing activity is centered on Safari and IE.
What about the final 1%, you ask? Well, from time to time I download one of the other available browsers to see how it compares to Safari. Until recently I'd been using Mozilla on rare occasions, and on even rarer occasions, OmniWeb; both are very competent browsers.
I recently downloaded and started checking out Firefox, and after about a week of comparing it with Safari and IE, I'm surprised to find that I have a new default browser. Surprised because, while I expected Firefox to mimic much of the goodness contained in Safari -which would have been interesting, but would not have been enough to get me to swap- I never expected it to be better than Safari, and to me it is in at least three very important aspects; speed, strange page rendering, cool features.
Boom! Deh It Is!
One of the things I've noticed about my venerable G4 Cube is that, after each update of OS X, things seem to take just a wee bit longer to happen than it use to. I've noticed this most in Safari.
I have 764MB of RAM in this box, and I use it for article writing, researching, and chatting. For those purposes, my Cube, which has a 1.5mbps DSL connection, is almost overkill. But, as I said, lately things have gotten a bit slower while I surf for information. When I click on a site in Safari, I can expect to wait anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds for the site to render. Not bad, especially since most sites render closer to the 5 seconds than the 15.
However. in my hardly-scientific site render test, in which I've compared the page render speeds of Firefox and Safari, Firefox literally throws up a Web page on my screen, while Safari leisurely paints it. For instance, The Mac Observer's main page takes about 8 seconds to completely render ( From the time you hit Reload button until the Reload button reappears.). It is pretty consistent. Firefox, on the other hand, shaves 2 seconds off Safari's time. It takes Safari 5 seconds to render Apple's main page, Firefox only needs 2 seconds. 2 seconds!!
And so it goes; a 2 second difference here, a 4 seconds difference there, but the net is that Firefox feels faster. Of course, the speed a page renders really depends on the a lot variables, but I've found the difference between Safari and Firefox to consistent and sizable.
Curses! Foiled Again!
As I mentioned earlier, I keep IE around because a very few sites either render poorly, or not at all in Safari, but they come up just fine in IE. I know this is partly due to lazy Web site creators who don't bother checking to make sure that what they create is accessible to everyone, not just Microsoft users. And it is partly to do with Big Redmond using non-standards in its backend applications, so databases, XML, and other supposedly standard run-time applications don't work with non-Microsoft browsers. It's enough to make you want to spit nails.
This became glaringly obvious this morning, when I tried to go to a page within Bestbuy.com's Web site; a new window appeared after I clicked a link that was suppose to have details of a web-only Thanksgiving sale on cameras, but the window remained blank. In fact all the sales links gave me blank windows.
I tried the links in IE and, sure enough, they rendered just fine. On a lark, I decided to try Firefox, and, you guessed it, it rendered fine as well.
My guess is that the Firefox developers took into account some of Microsoft's latest software releases so Firefox is more compatible with Microsoft based Web sites. I would imagine that Safari will also take these changes into account with its next upgrade, so these 2 browsers will likely have some parity it their ability to render Microsoft sites.
At the moment, however, Firefox will render what Safari won't.
Block-n-Pop
When Safari first came out, one feature that I, and many Apple users enjoyed was its ability to block pop-ups. Just click an option, and no more pop-ups. Who woulda thought that there may be times and sites where allowing pop-ups are necessary?
On certain sites I go to, accessible on by user ID and password, there are pages which use pop-ups to allow additional input, or offer information. When I visit these sites in Safari I usually get frustrated when I get no response from a link or button I've just pressed, until I remember that the link may produce a pop-up. I then have to turn off Safari's pop-up blocker.
Firefox has a more intelligent pop-up blocker; when you go to a site that has pop-ups for the first time Firefox asks you if you wish to allow or deny pop-ups from that site. You can also edit the list of site that Firefox will allow pop-ups from. This feature was available in Mozilla, but in Firefox, it seems much nicer, and seems to intrude in your browsing experience as little as possible.
Again, this is a feature I believe Safari will likely sport in its next iteration, but for now, Firefox has it.
There are other features in Firefox that make it worth looking at seriously. In the PC world, Firefox is becoming a strong competitor to IE, which I believe is a good thing because Web page developer will be more likely to consider compatibility with other browser when producing their pages.
And it is always good to remind the Gates Gang that they are not the only game in town.
I'm sure that Apple is updating Safari even as I write this, and the next version will be every bit as good, or better than Firefox; until then, for me, it's Firefox by default.
is a writer who currently lives in Orlando, FL. He's been a Mac fan since Atari Computers folded, but has worked with computers of nearly every type for 20 years.
You can send your comments directly to me, or you can also post your comments below.
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Observer Comments
Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:21 pm Subject: What keeps me from using it?
Wed Dec 08, 2004 1:24 pm Subject: Firefox vs. Camino
I really like Firefox a lot, but it lack two small features that keep it from being my default browser:
1. A keyboard command to cycle thru open tabs.
2. A "Close Tab" button for each tab (so you can close a tab without bringing it to the front.
If Firefox has either of these, I have have not found these options. I welcome anyone to correct me!
So, for now, Camino is my default browser on all 3 Macs that I use. However, camino's development seems to have really slowed down, so I am really keeping an eye on Safari and Firefox.
Quotemshoaf wrote:
I really like Firefox a lot, but it lack two small features that keep it from being my default browser:
1. A keyboard command to cycle thru open tabs.
2. A "Close Tab" button for each tab (so you can close a tab without bringing it to the front.
If Firefox has either of these, I have have not found these options. I welcome anyone to correct me!
I don't know if there's a keyboard command to cycle through tabs (though there is on Firefox for Windows
) but you can right- or control-click on a tab to get a menu, including an option to close the tab.
What disappoints me about Firefox is how form widgets (buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, etc.) have a Windows-esque appearance, versus a native Mac OS X appear like Safari.
Quotejimothy wrote:
What disappoints me about Firefox is how form widgets (buttons, checkboxes, scrollbars, etc.) have a Windows-esque appearance, versus a native Mac OS X appear like Safari.
Agreed. But I feebly attempt to justify it as Firefox maintaining the site designers' original intents. Or something like that.
Wed Dec 08, 2004 2:01 pm Subject: safari bookmark import
Quotejcbeckman wrote:
1) Can't sync bookmarks with .Mac. I have 7 Macs, and .Mac synchronization make life very easy.
2) Firefox doesn't use the system proxy settings. Safari and IE do. This matters a lot on my laptop, where I have a proxy server at work but none at home.
There is now an extension for Firefox 1.0 which lets you to switch proxies very easily, with a toolbar or just in the status bar. The name of the extension is SwitchProxy Tool and you will find it in the Firefox Extensions webpage.
Also there are two extensions for syncronizing bookmarks in Firefox, (bookmark synchronizer and SyncMarks), altough I think that in the new 1.0 version they don't still work very well. You can try them.
Quotemshoaf wrote:
I really like Firefox a lot, but it lack two small features that keep it from being my default browser:
1. A keyboard command to cycle thru open tabs.
2. A "Close Tab" button for each tab (so you can close a tab without bringing it to the front.
own, so I am really keeping an eye on Safari and Firefox.
Regarding closing tabs or cycling thru them, there are several extensions for tab-browsing (for example "Tab clicking options" and others) that you can install and try.
If there is anything that you miss you can also make suggestions in the firefox webpage, I think they usually take them in account.
I've been using Camino at work, just to see what the fuss was about, and I hate to admit it, but I'm thinking of using it as my main browser at home, too, for all the reasons Vern supplied.
I really like the seamlessness of Safari within OSX, but Camino (and I assume Firer=fox) is simply a better browser - even with Pith Helmet.
Way to go, Mozilla.
Wed Dec 08, 2004 3:01 pm Subject: Speed and PithHelmet
I also noticed Firefox was a goodish bit faster when I tried it again a few months ago (running on a 450MHz G3). However, after a bit more testing, I realized the real cause of Safari's slowness was PithHelmet (which I assume EVERYONE uses; you'd be insane not to). I had PithHelmet's "collapse filtered content" option on (or whatever it's called), which slowed things down a LOT (I guess because Safari had to re-render certain parts of the page). Simply turning this option off made Safari just as fast as Firefox, and the ads were still blocked.
I can't say for sure if this is the same problem you're having, but it sounds like it. I've just never seen the kind of difference you're describing with a well-oiled Safari.
That said, there's no doubt that Firefox is an awesome browser, and everyone ought to check it out. I find Safari and Firefox to be nearly equal in almost every regard. The two reasons I still use Safari are A) I prefer the way it renders text (I think it has to do with the difference in the two browsers' "minimum font size" features) and B) Safari scrolls much faster when you use the arrow keys. Just goes to show you how close they are.
Wed Dec 08, 2004 5:08 pm Subject: Could someone...
i have had pages not render in safari in the past, but a simple reload has had them come up with no problems... that doesnt mean i wouldnt like them to load the first time
i dont know what to think of firefox, i used camino from back when it was chimera (or even if you will navigator...) and it has been pretty cool, but development has come to an almost halt
either way, if i come across a page that wont load at all in safari, then i just presume that the site doesnt want my business
TRO
Quoterandompro42 wrote:
either way, if i come across a page that wont load at all in safari, then i just presume that the site doesnt want my business
Speaking of which, my wife found a print-shop the other day that had LOWER prices if you looked at the page using Safari than if you used IE.
We got the same price using IE on the Mac and IE on the PC, and a lower price using Safari.
I know this kind of thing is possible, but I'd never heard of anyone giving you a discount for using a Mac! I guess they're just good people at heart.
QuoteSmall White Car wrote:
Speaking of which, my wife found a print-shop the other day that had LOWER prices if you looked at the page using Safari than if you used IE.
I just had a discussion with my print broker yesterday that would support something along these lines. The printer's assumption would be that if you are using IE, you are probably not as knowledgeable of the tools you use, so they'd expect to have more tweaking to do to your files in prepress. A Safari user is obviously running OS X, so you know he/she is not on antiquated equipment, and are probably a bit more knowledgeable about submitting files to be commercially printed. Therefore the print shop expects less prepress time.
Oh, and thanks to all for your suggestions about the tabbed browsing shortcuts! I'll try 'em out!
Wed Dec 08, 2004 6:10 pm Subject: Why I use Firefox
My choice in using Firefox simply comes down to the fact that I can view recent sites simply by hitting the button to the right of the URL. Sites I don't want to bookmark, but that I need/want to visit a couple of times are easily accessible. It's a little feature that I never hear mentioned, but I love. I don't know if there is a way to do the same thing in Safari apart from a visit to History, but this is just easier for me.
firefox has a much snazzier logo - and blue t-shirts with it on, tho mine have been in the post a long time...
safari manages to make the header bars less intrusive with smaller icons and the brushed aluminium look (Americans repeat after me: 'al u min ium').
Have you noticed that you can design a page in Dreamweaver to work fine in safari, ie and firefox, but opera will render it just differently enough to make you wonder how it went wrong and worry about it for a while until you remember that microsoft took them out about the time of the 'swedish chef' incident.
http://www.jednet.co.uk
Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:10 pm Subject: Re: Why I hate firefox
QuoteAnonymous wrote:
It's not worth re-imaging my computer to have a browser with such miserable support.
Which version of OS X are you running?
Also, you can find excellent support for Mozilla using the MozillaZine forums. The members there are very helpful: http://forums.mozillazine.org/
Thu Dec 09, 2004 3:50 pm Subject: Firefox good, but not really OS X
I love having Firefox as an option, but couldn't use it as my main web browser. Why? Because I like Mac OS X.
Firefox does not behave like a Mac OS X application - editing text is different (keyboard shortcuts do not work, or rather, work like Linux/Windows). No Services, doesn't use the Keychain, text seems more washed-out, almost no AppleScript support, and more. Again, it is a great app, just not a great OS X app.
I paid for OmniWeb - it has _many_ power-user features, and is a thoroughly OS X-native application.
Thu Dec 09, 2004 8:49 pm Subject: Most recent pages ...
Quotetreadlightly wrote:
My choice in using Firefox simply comes down to the fact that I can view recent sites simply by hitting the button to the right of the URL. Sites I don't want to bookmark, but that I need/want to visit a couple of times are easily accessible. It's a little feature that I never hear mentioned, but I love. I don't know if there is a way to do the same thing in Safari apart from a visit to History, but this is just easier for me.
You mean, the last dozen or so recently visited pages? In Safari you can click-and-hold on the Back button, or control-click on the Back button, it'll bring up a list of the most recent hits.
Not that I'm urging you towards Safari or away from Firefox. Just pointing it out.
Wed Dec 15, 2004 3:30 am Subject: Wacko scrolling
I have 7 browsers installed in OS 10.3.6 on a 20-inch G4 iMac: Safari (use most of the time); Firefox (next most-used); iCab (has a really neat feature for saving a web page as a .zip file--and it doesn't re-download every file/object all over again, as IE does, plus iCab is the most versatile and most customizable browser around, including fonts. I wish that I could get Safari to ASK before accepting or rejecting cookies.); Camino; Mozilla; Netscape; and IE.
Firefox has a fresh look and can be skinned with themes to have an even snazzier look, but, if you use a scroll wheel, it will drive you bonkers. It doesn't behave consistently--sometimes, it jumps many lines with one click of the wheel, other times it moves only a few lines. If you move the wheel quickly, it jumps haphazardly. The original Netscape 7 had a similar, but worse problem, in that it didn't support scroll wheels at all and would sometimes crash if you moved the scroll wheel.
Safari's brushed metal look is a bit staid and it sometimes renders pages in an odd way. If I have problems with a page in Safari, Firefox is my first option. If it doesn't do it right, then IE is probably needed, as Camino, Mozilla, and Netscape seem to behave pretty much like Firefox and iCab has issues with some javascript and CSS programming (supposed to be fixed in iCab 3, whenever that finally comes out.)
As for speed, one area that Firefox has over Safari is displaying pages that are partially loaded. Safari sometimes spins the beachball and won't scroll the page, stop loading the page, or even quit, if it runs into a script that doesn't finish. I've had to force-quit Safari several times for this reason. Firefox, OTOH, displays what it has and seems to keep working in the background.
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