I’m not wed to a particular Web browser (although I can’t say that about operating systems). Working on the web, I’ve found that I use whatever browser can handle the work that I’m doing at any particular time. This used to be a big deal back in the day when not all browsers had tabs and the people were really concerned with cross-browser compatibility. While still a concern (remember IE 6?) cross-browser compatibility isn’t as big an issue.
For the past 2 years, I’ve been using the OS X version of Firefox exclusively, unless I needed to test something, then I’d use Internet Explorer in Windows. A few weeks ago, I realized how slow Firefox had gotten. While the slowdown was probably due to the large number of add-ons I had acquired, but rarely used, I decided to (mostly) give it up and use Safari.
Out of the gate, I found Safari to be much more responsive, although I did miss some things from Firefox. In comparing the two browsers, I’m not going to discuss add-ons. Yes, Firefox has them and Safari doesn’t. If you absolutely need functionality not in the core product, then you’ve got no choice but to go with Firefox.
RSS
I read a good number of sites each day, and rely on RSS for updates.
I really like Firefox’s live bookmarks RSS feature. It’s nice because I can see the headline of each article without loading the entire page and when I click through it takes me to the article. The one thing I don’t like about it, is that it doesn’t tell me when there are new articles, which means I end up compulsively clicking the bookmark to see if anything new is up.
When I switched to Safari, I really missed the Live Bookmarks feature. Safari also lets you group feeds into folders. And in a really handy feature, Safari lets you know when and how many updates are available for each folder and each feed. I don’t like the fact that Safari loads the entire feed, which on a site like Gizmodo, can be quite large. Although, I do like seeing the images in the feed.
URL autofill
Besides the load time/crashing, which are frustrating, the thing that really bothers me about Firefox is the URL autofill. For some reason (and I may have caused this with some under-the-hood tinkering), Firefox uses the page title as part of the autofill. So if I type “ap” in the url field, the first two suggestions are craiglist (based on “apartment” in the page title) and then My eBay (based on API appearing in the middle of the URL). The third option is Apple.com. This behavior drives me crazy because I have to scroll through results that aren’t even close to what I want.
Safari on the other hand, bases the URL autofill solely on the URL, so when I type “ap” all my results contain those two letters at the beginning of the url. That’s much better.
Form autofill
I really like who Safari’s form autofill works. It’s especially handy when I’m typing my name, address, ZIP, phone number. I type the first few letters of my name or email, hit tab and voila! the rest of my info is autofilled.
Firefox will autofill each line individually, so instead of hitting tab once, I have to hit each for each line.
Search
One thing that I got really used in Firefox, was the ability to type in search terms in the URL bar and get relevant results. For example, if I type “Meatball Recipes” in the URL bar, it takes me to an about.com page that displays meatball recipes.
Safari on the other hand is more literal with what is inputted into the URL bar. Using the meatball example, Safari turns it into http://meatball%20recipes/ and I get nothing.
I also really like Firefox’s google search box suggestions. All I have to do is type “meat” in the google search box, and then scroll down to the “meatball recipe” suggestion.
In Safari, I have to write out the entire search.
Viewing the source
For developers and designers, Firefox is really the way to go. Just take the View Source function. Firefox makes it easy to see what’s what, by changing the text color depending on the code (much like HTML editors do). Sadly, Safari is just plain text.
Another thing that always bothers me about Firefox is that the Google Notifier always opens Gmail in a new tab, regardless of if I have a blank tab open. In Safari, if I have a blank tab open, Gmail loads in it. If not, Gmail loads in a new tab.
Conclusion
Right now, I’m primarily using Safari and things are working well. However, when I need to look at an RSS feed formatting, view a page’s source, or dig deeper into an issue, I’ll fire up Firefox.
The bottom line is that Safari is like a finely tuned Porsche. It’s fast and sexy, but you don’t want to add any aftermarket parts or haul anything in it. Firefox, on the other hand, is like a Subaru Outback. It’s great for running around town, won’t win any races, but can be outfitted with all sorts of racks, and can haul a bunch of stuff.
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