Why Firefox. .

Just got my first mac last week, and I keep hearing switch to fire fox. .is there a reason?. . .what does it do that safari doesnt and vise versa?

There is no reason or pressing need to use it. Whatever browser you use is simply a matter of preference.
There is nothing wrong with either Safari or Firefox.

Six and one, half dozen and another.

I think it boils down to personal preference. For me I've tried most of 'em and in the end Safari is to my liking. You'll have to play with both and see which one YOU like.

I use Firefox on Windows but to be honest I prefer the feel of Safari so use that when I'm on Mac. There's not much difference in terms of the core functionality (tabbed browsing, etc) but I find Apple's own apps just seems to work flawlessly . . .

Also consider Safari's integration with things like Mail. I *love* the ability, for example, to mail an entire web page to another user just by pressing CMD-I while viewing it in Safari. I don't think you can do this in Firefox.

CrossBones is right of course - what I have just described is a personal preference item. However, there are a few real benefits of using Safari vs. the others, and this is one of them.

Well, In my case, it is the cross platform usability that attracted me to FF. Since I am working with different operating systems it is important to have my bookmarks and other settings identical. With FF + Foxmarks combination I am always synced no matter which operating system I run. FF also has thousands of plugins/extras to suite various needs(of cause you don't need all of them).

I've never liked Firefox, sorry. It feels 'homemade' and is inconsistent visually with the OS, whether on Mac or PC.

I use Safari and Firefox.. as others have said you just have to use them and see what fits you best.. its like asking what does a toyota offer than a honda does not.

They are both great. I use Safari for integration with Mac, but sometimes I use Firefox when some random plugin won't work with Safari. I keep both on my machine.

I use Firefox. I find it performs better and Safari was crashing a lot for me, especially on ESPN (where I spend a lot of time). Plus Firefox has an endless amount of plug-ins that give me features I like.

All in all, minus the integration with OS X it doesn't give me much else.

I find Opera to be perfect for my tastes. I have never had a problem with it. It just has the most customization of any browser I have ever used.

I know I am in the minority on this. Most people prefer Firefox. If you get a chance, check Opera out. You may like it

FireFox for XP
Safari for OS X

DrQuincy said:

I use Firefox on Windows but to be honest I prefer the feel of Safari so use that when I'm on Mac. There's not much difference in terms of the core functionality (tabbed browsing, etc) but I find Apple's own apps just seems to work flawlessly . . .

Click to expand...

For the most part I agree with you. But there are few firefox extensions that I love. Like adblock+ with the filterset.g updater as well as TabMix. I used to use Tabbrowser Extension but I still don't think its supported on 2.0 yet.

I use both on them on my Mac and IE and Firefox on my PC. I have them set up to different home pages, so I change between them depending on what I plan to do on the web.

If you frequent Myspace, which is a bad habit I can't seem to kick, then Firefox is handy to have around. The site is mostly geared towards PC users, so some things will send Safari into a Sgt. Shultz-esque "I know nothing! Nooothing!" mode. Firefox tends to handle the tsunami of html garbage a little better in that instance.

I prefer Shiira as it gives you the wonderful feel and integration of Safari with what I feel are enough extra features to compete with Firefox (not to mention a smaller memory footprint and a shorter startup time).

There's already some good information inside of the Applications and Games section of this forum here

iSebastianGrey said:

If you frequent Myspace, which is a bad habit I can't seem to kick, then Firefox is handy to have around. The site is mostly geared towards PC users, so some things will send Safari into a Sgt. Shultz-esque "I know nothing! Nooothing!" mode. Firefox tends to handle the tsunami of html garbage a little better in that instance.

Click to expand...

I would disagree with this. I feel that Safari handles the poor code on MySpace a lot better than FireFox. FireFox regularly crashes on MySpace, I have never had Safari crash on MySpace. Most of the stuff on MySpace is flash based, so Safari can handle that easily. Also Flip4Mac only work with Safari so is one of the only ways of watching WMV in a webpage.

I am not a big fan of FireFox on OS X, it is very slow and resource hungry and looks very ugly against the OS X Cocoa interface. It has lots of extensions that some people are unable to live without, and it can display some pages Safari can't and Gecko is still one of the best.

Personally, as a pretty basic user who just casually surfs the web, then Safari is great. For power users, Safari may not fit the bill.

I love the intergration with OS X of Safari and its speed. It would be nice if there was an option for the popup blocker to block specific addresses or give an option like Firefox rather than blocking everything. However, I don't use the popup blocker anymore and I rarely get popups anyway, so no biggie.

As others have said it is just a matter of personal preference.

For all practical purposes I prefer Firefox. While I think Safari looks better and probably even works better, I can block junk easily with Firefox.

<rant>
Adblock in Firefox gets rid of all of the junk. rob_squared mentioned it earlier. I don't need all manner of junk trying to get my attention. I don't like uninvited flash animations, I don't like animated gifs. Google style text adverts are fine, and - once in a while I'll actually visit a Google ad link - but I won't even look at the jumping garbage.
</rant>

I used to have Norton Personal Firewall on Windows block all my adverts (I have since changed from Norton though to Kaspersky Antivirus 6.0 and ZoneAlarm Pro. Norton was just way too slow compared to Kaspersky which is very lightweight and catches 99% of known viruses, but I won't bore you with that because this is a Mac forum ). Anyway, Norton ad blocker was getting increasingly annoying because it was blocking adverts from legit websites. With Firefox on the PC I just have pop-up blocking turned on by default. With Safari I haven't bothered, and as I said before, I hardly notice all the adverts anyway, maybe I am just used to it, unless they are over the top. As for popups, I hardly get any without a popup blocker, maybe it is the Mac with a lack of spyware, or maybe advertisers just don't bother anymore with popups as they know that most web browsers these days will just block them anyways. I think that the concern about popups is very overated now.

Another Shiira user here.