Web browser options for Mac..

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Hello,

I've made a previous post about my disappointment with safari and my migration to Mozilla Firefox. Well, I've been looking @ omniweb b/c of strong recommendation but during my research i have stumbled across other popular browsers. Now I've downloaded them but wanted to ask experienced users of Opera, OmniWeb and Camino to tell me why they recommend these respective browsers. Right now I'm actually using Camino but I really do not see a difference other than aesthetics than Firefox but of course I know there's someone out there who can explain it to me.

Thanks!
 
D

Desolate One

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Well I can only share my personal experience w/ Windows browsers since I've never had a problem w/ Safari. It works great for me on my iBook.

On my Xp machine- Opera was very sluggish as was Mozilla (pre Fire Fox). IE, well I don't think I need to go into that. On the PC I just have Fire Fox now.

Like I stated earlier, Safari has been good to me. :)

Was there anything in specific you didn't like about Safari?
 
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Phiber

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Firefox blows. There are things that Mozilla didn't have problems with but for some reason Firefox takes issues. Boo.

Honestly, it's too bad there isn't a version of IE for Mac anymore. Face it, the internet is built for Microsoft.
 
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theres IE for mac, it blows as well, so no one uses it. omniweb has all sorts of features, the tabbed browsing is the best Ive seen, you can save workspaces like in photoshop so all stays the same when you open it, input of stylized text and such, the bookmark bar is better than in safari, its cool.
 
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Phiber

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Macman said:
theres IE for mac, it blows as well, so no one uses it. omniweb has all sorts of features, the tabbed browsing is the best Ive seen, you can save workspaces like in photoshop so all stays the same when you open it, input of stylized text and such, the bookmark bar is better than in safari, its cool.

I stand corrected then. I was under the impression that Microsoft had ceased development on IE for Mac in light of the development of Safari.
 
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General_K

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The version of IE for Mac that Macman speaks of is very out of date. Microsoft does not have a current version of IE for Mac.

And yes, it does blow. :eek:
 
T

tariq

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Phiber said:
Firefox blows.

Care to elaborate? Firefox is the best platform independant browser out there.


As for browser overviews...

OmniWeb - nice novelty features and gui, but it becomes quite cumbersome for everyday "power" surfing

Firefox (mac) - one of the best browsers available, only negatives are 1) it uses non-OSX widgets and 2) it's more of a port than a true OSX app

Camino - My current favourite browser. Uses the same engine as Firefox, but uses OSX widgets and was designed for OSX. A little rough around the edges, but its only v0.82

Stick to Camino. Also, download these optimized G4/G5 builds, they run much faster! :)

G4 >> http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
G5 >> http://mbencher.ilnm.com/camino/
 
M

meltbanana314

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tariq said:
Firefox is the best platform independant browser out there.

Mozilla and Mozilla Firefox are really the only (free) cross platform browsers out there, and they are only marginally better than the versions of Safari I've used on Macs. Firefox is fast, and I don't mind the GUI inconsistancies, but when I try to use different extensions on the same machine, I run into some conflicts.

Some extensions have quirks where they won't work with each other, or with this and that version of Firefox, or only work if you have a Windows or Linux machine, and I've had more trouble with my profile getting screwed up than I'd care to remember. (Your mileage may vary.)

With SafariSpeed - I find that Safari's KHTML bests Firefox and Camino's Gecko 99% of the time. I'd only keep Camino as a backup for when KHTML/Safari doesn't render certain pages correctly.

EDIT: Again, your mileage may vary.
 
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The reason why I initially had issues with Safari was that I didn't find it fast in loading web pages as my experience with my windows machine using Firefox. I had just migrated to Mac only 2 months ago and was told by a close friend who recommended Mac to me persistently that using Mac for the net and other things would be just as fast as Windows. Being very upset with Safari and the fact it could not load certain web pages fast led me to give Firefox a try and it's been a successful marriage so far. I also found Safari very plain looking compared to the customizable themes on firefox but of course that's all aesthetics but i felt the safari look to have that Mac look like Word 2004 has. I even went to great lengths to erase safari off my machine although now I'm inclined to give it a second try. Dumb question but can I download it off the apple website or do i have to load my Mac cd to get it? I also gave Omniweb a try but didn't like using their tabbed browsers because it comes out on the right side of the window and i only have a 12 inch screen which ends up taking up too much space. I think my comfort with firefox also comes from my experience with it on pc. Camino pretty much seems to be just like firefox although someone mentioned Camino uses Mac OS X widgets and Firefox is a port? Can someone explain the difference to me? In the end I''m a casual internet user and of course am always looking for good browsing alternatives but in the end I think I will stick to Firefox and Safari.
 
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you can get customized themese for safari, and an app called safari speed or something like that that speed up safari. The only way to reinstall safari is to use pacifist to extract the package that installs safari from the os x discs, then install it by itself.
 
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here are a few safari theme samples:
04-13_safarifox.png

01-20_darkbuttons_v21.gif

11-11_alientouch.jpg
 
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Thanks for the screen shots Vincent! Is that customizable theme a third party option or created by Apple? Secondly, is Safari your exclusive browser? Do you find any problems loading up specific web pages?
 
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its third party, and free, different sites offer different themes and the like, everything from full makeovers to made over buttons or loading bars, depends on your wants. as far as loading pages, I used to have a problem, but thats cause many websites now require specific browsers and sometimes on pc only, theres a thread somewhere here describing a terminal command that lets ou fool the site to think youre using a pc and IE or a required browser, I use that, I dont remember it, but you should search for it.
 
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vjamacaddict

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Safari Runs Slow on G4 iBook

I don't use Safari on my new G4 iBook, because it runs much too slow. I've been using Firefox, and I really like the popup blocker. Some websites/pages don't work with Firefox, so I'm stuck with Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Safari for those webpages.

vjamacaddict
G4 iBook, OS X 10.3.7, Superdrive, Bluetooth

Desolate One said:
Well I can only share my personal experience w/ Windows browsers since I've never had a problem w/ Safari. It works great for me on my iBook.

On my Xp machine- Opera was very sluggish as was Mozilla (pre Fire Fox). IE, well I don't think I need to go into that. On the PC I just have Fire Fox now.

Like I stated earlier, Safari has been good to me. :)

Was there anything in specific you didn't like about Safari?
 
V

vjamacaddict

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Safari Speed ?

Yes, I installed Safari Speed. It made absolutely no difference whatsoever. Maybe it's installed in the wrong place? I can see the SafariSpeed in the Macintosh HD folder. Should it be in the System Folder? Or in the Safari folder, or somewhere else?

meltbanana314 said:
Have you tried SafariSpeed?

(http://www.scifience.com/safarispeed.html)

It's a godsend when using it on my grandfather's 1GHz eMac with 128MB RAM and Earthlink dialup...
 
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meltbanana314

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vjamacaddict said:
Yes, I installed Safari Speed. It made absolutely no difference whatsoever.

It's not outrageously noticeable in a lot of circumstances (in fact, when I get my iBook and install SafariSpeed I'll probably need a stopwatch to see a difference, but on the eMac I just makes browsing seem a little 'snappier.')

But now that Mac OS X has a more modern version of Firefox (1.0, instead of being a few months behind Linux/Windows versions.) I might give it a try again, especially since I figured out how to enable pipelining.
 

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vjamacaddict said:
I've been using Firefox, and I really like the popup blocker.
Safari have a pop up blocker also, in case you did not know.
 
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The fastest browser I've ever seen/heard of is Shiira. It's Japanese-built, so while you can use it in English, it's difficult to find upgrades for it, as the developers speak Japanese. The buttons also suck by default. You can get new buttons, though; there's a Safari replica theme for it that's basically perfect. The one problem is, I think it still uses a rendering engine no better than Safari (the main fault with the browser in the first place), which is why I stick with Firefox. Safari just can't handle certain websites properly (funnily enough, it used to be that Safari couldn't render certain parts of Apple homepage properly from what I've heard). It really all depends on what you like, though. Most people just get certain feelings about this browser or that one and make their decisions based on that. The speed differences between Safari, Firefox, Shiira, and Camino, from my experience, have not been terribly significant. I wouldn't know about older versions obviously because I'm a newcomer to Macs. but the newer ones, which I have experienced, it's not a big difference typically. I'd just say use the one you like the look and feel of (and if the rendering engine is a big deal to you like it is to me, go with a Mozilla browser).
 
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tariq

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I switched back to Safari last night. Overall, its quite good, but very SLOW to render pages (SafariSpeed doesn't work).

I'm using Saft (to add search bar engines) and PithHelmet (for adblocking). With those two plug-ins, it's bearable. The one thing that REALLY sucks about Safari is there is no way to import Bookmarks (yes there are workarounds, but it only works for Mozilla and IE). I had to resort to dragging every bookmark from Camino into Safari, a huge pain.

I hope Apple adds some of these features to new versions of Safari, because last night I seriously felt like I was back on the PC using Windows. Had to spend alot of time to tweak, uninstall/reinstall programs, do unnecessary work, etc.
 

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