Live data from Hacker News

Mac People: Safari or Firefox 3?

news.ycombinator.com

11–20 of 57 posts

Re: Mac People: Safari or Firefox 3?

#13
post #3

When I switched from Windows, I went straight to Firefox because I felt comfortable there. But (3 years ago), Firefox started getting buggy and slow. I loved the add-ons, but I switched to Camino because it was more Mac-like and stable. But since Beta 3 for Firefox came out, I've switched back and been really impressed with it. One feature that Firefox and Camino both have is the "Search for text when I start typing"…

Safari has the search for text while typing now too. It's cool.

But can you navigate with it?

Re: Mac People: Safari or Firefox 3?

#14
post #4

Camino

Camino has to be one of the worst browsers I have ever used. I don't know what they are up to. In my mind, Camino should simply be Firefox with Webkit replacing the gecko engine... but it's not even on par with Firefox.

One thing I hate about Mac in general is their hate for navigating solely with the keyboard. A lot of third-party apps do a good job letting you navigate using your kb only (such as cmd+1, cmd+2... to hit tabs in FF) but the last time I used Camino they were seriously lacking in that department. Clicking links with the mousewheel is also very important to me (to open in a new tab).

Re: Mac People: Safari or Firefox 3?

#18
post #2

I'm still sticking with Safari. Firefox's faster, but there's nothing that beats the speed of Safari on Mac, and in addition it is Cocoa (while Firefox is Carbon.) For some reason, this makes Safari feel like a more solid browser, and Firefox feeling like a typical Carbon app (whatever that is - just a weird user experience using it.) If the dealbreaker is extensions, then I have to say that the only extensions I use…

http://delicioussafari.com/

It's shareware, but it only nags when accessing bookmarks, not when saving them (which is all I ever used the FF extension for anyway...)

Re: Mac People: Safari or Firefox 3?

#20
For security reasons you need more than one browser anyway. One for webmail, banking and all kinds of private password-protected stuff, and the second one - for the rest. Which is which doesn't really matter, although personally I chose Safari for important stuff and Firefox for the rest.

One of the reasons I do this, in case you are not aware, is the IFRAME flaw, that allows a malicious web site to load, say, your bank's page into a hidden IFRAME, check to see if you are logged in and then - you guessed it.

(I just thought actually, could be the other way around, because vulnerabilities in Firefox are better known and more often exploited by not-so-trustworthy sites. So maybe it'd be smarter to use Safari for "the rest" and Firefox - for your banking, PayPal, eBay, webemail, etc.)

Post reply on HN