Web Browsers: Memory vacuum or crasher?

Getting prepaired for the big switch, I've been reading some reviews of various web browsing applications and come to a decision: Firefox or Safari.

Coming from a Windows/Linux background, I've used Firefox as if it's the be-all-end-all of web browsing. I love the extensions and all that jazz.

I've also played around with Safari on my university's Mac machines, and found that it wasn't so bad.

People say Safari uses too much memory; on the polar, people say Firefox crashes and also uses too much memory.

So, my question is, from your (collective Mac community) experiences, which is the quote-unquote best browser for use on a system with my specs (off to the left)?

Why not just use both? I use Safari and Firefox, myself. It is silly to limit yourself to using only one browser, IMO.

What would be the benefits of using two unifunction applications instead of one application that functions better than the other?

i use all of them. opera, camino, firefox and safari. you have too. certain sites just work better with safari. some only work with firefox (win xp optimized sites mainly) and camino is for radio streaming. well... was. now it doesn't work anymore, don't know why.

Camino. It's the best. FF is slow and bloated.

I'm a former FF for Windows user. Camino has most of FF's practical features and none of it's hoggishness.

Neale said:

What would be the benefits of using two unifunction applications instead of one application that functions better than the other?

Click to expand...

Safari is great for its integration into the Mac OS. I use Safari about 90% of the time. Still, there are times when some sites don't load properly (usually poor HTML coding, or they are "optimized" hehe, for Windows) and Firefox comes into play as it seems to work better for sites like that.

yeah, safari just pings right up; you're browsing in a second. but don't look for properties on century 21 with it... won't work. or yahoo music... or basically anything "optimized" : read, paid off to exclusively support : for windows media player.

I have no probs at all to date, with using Safari, but agree that it doesn't hurt to have a 2nd web browser installed.

Yeah I actually use two different browsers myself. I use safari for all my personal stuff and then Firefox for all my web development stuff since it has a lot of extensions that I can use for web development, plus since it has the 2nd most marketshare it's good to make sure everything works for it.. then when Im done then I take a look in IE and then fix all those problems So I guess it depends on what you do.. the only reason I don't use safari for everything is because it's missing most all the functionality that I like to use with Firefox.

If you don't need the extensions of Firefox, but like the way it renders sites, go for Camino.

Neale said:

Firefox or Safari

Click to expand...

Firefox, with about 20 extensions. Can't live without SmoothWheel, Adblock, Prefbar and about:config. It never crashes, but there is a memory leak — sometimes — all protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. Maybe it's my setup, I dunno. But there's a "Restart Firefox" extension (maybe it's built in, now), so the memory leak ain't all that imaginary.

I also like it because I have SeaMonkey, as well, and Mozilla 1.3 on my OS 9 partition. All the bookmarks are interchangeable, and some of the extensions work on all three.

Thought I'd add one thing about Firefox (and SeaMonkey, too). Every time Spotlight — and Norton anti-virus — indexes Firefox's profile folder, it duplicates the bookmarks, so over time they could add up to the tens of thousands. You have to use the privacy tab in Spotlight's preferences to keep it out.