Alternate browser

[MikeFromMesa]

I have been using a Mac now for about 10 years and have been quite happy with it compared to Windows. But the one thing that continues to nag at me is the fact that some websites just do not work properly with Safari. I have had this problem, on and off, for a long time and am uncertain as to the cause. Perhaps it is a poorly written website or perhaps I am missing some app on the Mac, but sometimes I end up having to access the Parallels VM on my machine to use Windows Explorer and I assume there is a better solution to this problem.

I have installed the Adobe Flash Player which I assumed might have been the issue, but it made no difference so I was wondering what the best alternative browser for the Mac might be. I know there are a lot of other browsers, Chrome and Opera being the ones I know of the best, but I have no idea what might be the most compatible with online websites.

The sites I have trouble with are standard commercial sites - I can not successfully update my Rand McNally GPS on their website with Safari, but I can with Windows Explorer, I can not successfully display some information on my bank's website with Safari and the latest was a comparison of RVs I was trying to do on a manufacturer's website. The buttons to add the second and third RVs to the comparison just did not do anything, but worked with Windows Explorer.

Perhaps someone can suggest a good alternative browser to Safari, or make some suggestion as to what will fix the issue I am having.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Honestly, if a website works with Internet Explorer and doesn't with Safari, that's just horrifying! IE is the least compliant and least secure browser around. Anyone who's had to create websites knows the gymnastics that you have to go through to make it look decent on IE.

Anyway, any decent website should work perfectly fine on Safari. You can also keep Chrome handy to see if that works better. Opera is based on the same "engine" as Chrome, so if a website doesn't work on Chrome, it won't work on Opera. The other option you have is FireFox.

I would recommend keeping Chrome and Safari handy and switching between those as necessary. I primarily use Chrome and frankly any site that doesn't work on Chrome isn't worth me visiting.

 

[ferrarr]

Start off with which version of Mac OS X/OS X/macOS your Mac is running now?

10.6 Snow Leopard?
10.7 Lion?
10.8 Mountain Lion?
10.9 Mavericks?
10.10 Yosemite?
10.11 El Capitan?
10.12 Sierra?
10.13 High Sierra?

 

[badshoehabit]

I've used several and am currently using Chrome but some sites won't fully load (probably because I have ad and pop-up blockers enabled) so I still have Safari in the dock. Used Firefox too and can't remember why i ditched it.

 

[pine man]

the one thing that continues to nag at me is the fact that some websites just do not work properly with Safari.

I couldn't agree more and it is even worse on iPhone/iPad.

I have been using Macs for about four years and in recent years have always kept an up to date version of Firefox available in case Safari played silly beggars. About 6 months ago Safari got up to all sorts of tricks so I made Firefox the default browser while I tried to fix Safari. Safari was fixed when I later installed a new update but by that time I had settled in to Firefox, which remains the default.

Firefox, on my Mac, is probably not so quick as Safari but every site I go to is displayed every time.

 

[MikeFromMesa]

Start off with which version of Mac OS X/OS X/macOS your Mac is running now?

10.6 Snow Leopard?
10.7 Lion?
10.8 Mountain Lion?
10.9 Mavericks?
10.10 Yosemite?
10.11 El Capitan?
10.12 Sierra?
10.13 High Sierra?

Yes. Careless of me.

High Sierra on a MacBook Pro.

 

[MightyGem]

Anyway, any decent website should work perfectly fine on Safari.

Yes, they should, but I occasionally get one that doesn't. Firefox usually solves the problem.

 

[MacInWin]

Funny this thread started today. I use Safari and until today I have never had a problem with it. But today, for some reason, it's not downloading images from various news sites and the loading process for the page never ends. I have had to clear history twice just today. Wonder if something has changed somewhere?

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Of all the browsers that I've tried for the Macintosh, FireFox seems to be the most compatible with all of the Web sites I've visited:

Firefox (free)
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

However, I've really been digging this new browser. It's FAST, it has ad-blocking and other security built-in, and it's just a joy to use!:

Brave browser (free)
https://brave.com/
(There are versions for both the Mac and for iOS)

If you don't like either of the above, there are literally over 200 browsers for the Macintosh!!!:
404 Not Found
That site is currently being updated. If you can't access it, try this archived version of the page:
The Mac Web Browsers List

With the recent (almost unfathomable) decision by congress (here in the U.S.) to allow ISP's to spy on users and sell their information, many folks have turned to the TOR network to maintain their anonymity. (TOR randomly bounces your communications between a network of servers, so you can't be traced.) The TOR folks offer a browser that uses the TOR network by default with no add-ons necessary:

TOR Browser (free)
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en

The Epic browser is many people's choice for remaining anonymous on the Web. Sadly, Google is trying to strangle them out of existence.
https://www.epicbrowser.com/

 

[pine man]

Brave browser (free)

Thanks for pointing out this browser. I have been doing a bit of testing (not very scientific) and it is definitely faster than Safari and probably about the same speed as Firefox but it deals with ads much better than any other browser I have ever tried.

The browser is available for Mac, Windows and IOS, which I use all of but, so far, you cannot synchronise between them all as far as I can make out and whatever you set the preferences at it always opens with its own homepage.

Definitely worth keeping an eye on though;-)

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Brave browser (free)

...whatever you set the preferences at it always opens with its own homepage.

I have no problem with setting whatever home page that I want in Brave and having it stick. You might want to try clearing Brave's preferences and/or it's cache.

 

[pine man]

Got it to stick ok and installed it on PC and Mac, looks good, BUT I cannot find any way of making it synchronise across both devices.

From what I can find out the latest version appears to be in a beta stage as far as synch goes.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Got it to stick ok and installed it on PC and Mac, looks good, BUT I cannot find any way of making it synchronise across both devices.

From what I can find out the latest version appears to be in a beta stage as far as synch goes.

Yes, the Brave browser is still quite young. Fortunately development is coming along quickly. There are frequent updates. It was only this month, in fact, that there was a major upgrade that caused the Brave browser to go from being really good...to pretty darn awesome! It's now at a point where, when I switch to another browser (I have nine different browsers installed on my main Mac), I wonder why I put up with any other browser than Brave.

Brave isn't perfect in all respects yet. But it is already better than most other browsers in most key respects. It is indeed worthy of keeping a close eye on.

 

[Pasquanel]

Since I switched to a Mac 6 years ago I have used Safari faithfully, so today I installed Brave and it's definitely much faster! Add to that the add blocking this is a keeper! The one negative is it will not sync with Safari.
Thanks for posting the link I think I tried Brave when it was first introduced but this version if very fast!

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Brave is based on Chromium (open source version of Chrome) as is Opera. So these all should be relatively performant compared to each other. Firefox has just gotten to be too bloated these days.

 

[chscag]

I noticed the remark from several of our members about Brave not syncing with Safari. Right now, the only browser that syncs across your devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) is Safari, and it does that thru iCloud. I find Chrome to be faster than Safari but it too has some quirks. Right now I'm using a 64bit dev version of Chrome: Version 71.0.3578.10 (Official Build) dev (64-bit)

 

[pine man]

The one negative is it will not sync with Safari.

It will not even sync with itself on different devices but when it does I'll certainly change to it.

Right now, the only browser that syncs across your devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad) is Safari,

....and Firefox.

 

[chscag]

Firefox syncs across devices using iCloud? Are you sure about that @pine man? You can set bookmarks in Firefox for the Mac and they will magically appear on your iPhone or iPad?

 

[ferrarr]

Firefox syncs across devices using iCloud? Are you sure about that @pine man? You can set bookmarks in Firefox for the Mac and they will magically appear on your iPhone or iPad?

No, log in to Firefox, and then it will sync across all devices logged in to the same Firefox account.

 

[pine man]

As ferrar says above. I have Firefox synched to my Mac, a PC, two iPhones and an iPad. It works faultlessly.