Why has Apple ruined Safari?

Safari has been one of my favorite browsers, FF coming in second. FF launches really slow for me. Don't know why, but Safari opens immediately, and I like the clean simple look (although, I removed all the buttons like refresh, forward/backward etc because I only use keyboard shortcuts), and I love the way it manages your bookmarks. And it's pretty fast to me, I never saw a problem with Safari. It's been my primary browser for a long time.

I like Safari. Run good on my Osx.4. Whole lot cleaner than ie8 that i was using.

Firefox is slow to launch but it's pretty good once it's open. Safari on the other hand does open right away. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Safari is a "native" app in that it was written with Cocoa while Firefox was not (for obvious reasons). I have noticed that Safari beach balls once in a while though for no apparent reason which I don't really get with Firefox.

Safari is an excellent speedy browser. Start up time is ridiculously fast... Google Chrome loads pages a bit faster, but Safari starts faster. This is probably because Safari is 64 bit vs the 32 bit release of chrome.

vansmith said:

Firefox is slow to launch but it's pretty good once it's open. Safari on the other hand does open right away. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Safari is a "native" app in that it was written with Cocoa while Firefox was not (for obvious reasons). I have noticed that Safari beach balls once in a while though for no apparent reason which I don't really get with Firefox.

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I'll wait an extra 5 seconds for Firefox to start in trade for superb RSS feed handling. Until Safari can display RSS feeds in the toolbar like Firefox does (i.e. showing a drop-down list of article summaries upon clicking), I'd have a hard time switching. Also, Safari's handling of tabs is inferior, you never know when a link will open a new tab or a new window. I'm sure there's some logic to it, but I've never managed to figure it out.

Safari's clean design is somewhat appealing, but it's almost too clean - simple things that a browser should display (IMO) are missing. For those reasons I just can't bring myself to use Safari. Some may find page rendering very fast, but I'd rather see the whole page rendered rapidly, rather than watching pages be "painted" as they are downloaded.

cwa107 said:

I'll wait an extra 5 seconds for Firefox to start in trade for superb RSS feed handling. Until Safari can display RSS feeds in the toolbar like Firefox does (i.e. showing a drop-down list of article summaries upon clicking), I'd have a hard time switching. Also, Safari's handling of tabs is inferior, you never know when a link will open a new tab or a new window. I'm sure there's some logic to it, but I've never managed to figure it out.

Safari's clean design is somewhat appealing, but it's almost too clean - simple things that a browser should display (IMO) are missing. For those reasons I just can't bring myself to use Safari. Some may find page rendering very fast, but I'd rather see the whole page rendered rapidly, rather than watching pages be "painted" as they are downloaded.

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Tabs in safari are fine once you lock it to always open in a new tab

Actually, the one thing I do have a problem with Safari is it's inability to open links to external sites in a new tab. My one pet peeve with Safari. FF did that, and I loved that feature. I think if I wanted a completely customizable web browser, with exceptional speeds and lots of features, FF would be my first choice. But those are not where my needs meet, all I need is a clean, super fast and easy web browser. Safari does that for me. I do use FF on occasion, too, just not as much as Safari.

@vansmith

Very true, that happens to me as well. Also, when Safari is first starting up, Google Calendar (my home page) takes ages to load. After that Google Calendar hardly even blinks before the page loads completely (reloading the page and after re launching Safari). Or if Safari is already open, it will load in milliseconds.

I like that I can have the "New Window" icon over in the right hand corner in FF. New window? Boom! Boom! Boom! As fast as you can click. Slam the cursor in the screen corner to open spaces up and drag all those windows into the boxes and you are speed surfin'.

Add-on's? Oh yea! Bring 'em on!

Never had so much fun on a computer.

dtravis7 said:

Safari 4.0.4 here on 10.5.8 and 10.6.2. Works great and fast. Fastest browser out there on SunSpider Java and better on ACID 3. I see one small error on chrome still.

Firefox is a great browser and I understand the fan base it has. On Windows I use it 99% of the time.

I do like Opera also but on OSX I have tried everything and keep going back to Safari and use the others on problem pages.

I have Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Camino all installed.

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I agree completely. I use IE 6 on my Windows box at work where I have to, everything else is FF (I'd use Safari there but it requires Admin access...). I've tried Chrome, FF, Opera, iCab (nice browser btw) on the Mac but Safari still seems to work the best.

None of them are perfect!
I have camino, safari, ff and chrome installed. Camino and chrome are not the best for arabic....for example, but I love chrome. I love the sleekness of safari but once in awhile it acts crazy, and if I'm watching hulu or something it says that flash is all of a sudden not working and it goes wonky on me. And safari can't handle all websites. Firefox is great but it's so bulky!!!! They need a sleeker version for mac! It's just so ugly!!!! It makes me feel like I'm on a windows machine!
ff and safari seem to tolerate arabic the best....
I need to try opera
I'm such a web browser w*****

Safari works great for me and is super fast! it's the only browser i've been using since i've got my new MB

safari is a memory hog even thought it runs smooth, i much prefer chrome now thats out

maconvert said:

None of them are perfect!
I have camino, safari, ff and chrome installed. Camino and chrome are not the best for arabic....for example, but I love chrome. I love the sleekness of safari but once in awhile it acts crazy, and if I'm watching hulu or something it says that flash is all of a sudden not working and it goes wonky on me. And safari can't handle all websites. Firefox is great but it's so bulky!!!! They need a sleeker version for mac! It's just so ugly!!!! It makes me feel like I'm on a windows machine!
ff and safari seem to tolerate arabic the best....
I need to try opera
I'm such a web browser w*****

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You do realize that there are things called themes right? Which pretty much lets your browser look like anything you want.

CrimsonRequiem said:

You do realize that there are things called themes right? Which pretty much lets your browser look like anything you want.

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There is a line of thinking that says if you don't make the UI so ugly by default themes are not a big deal.

That's what I like about FF. You can make it totally customizeable. As well as all the add-ons FF has available to further customize.