[muglo] Re: Safari sunstroke?
- From: "Eric D" <hideme666@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: muglo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 11:14:44 -0500
>I found another user on the Apple Support Discussion site with a G4 and
>the very same problem.
> From that site it's obviously many are dissatisfied with Safari and
>it's instability
It's funny how each browser attracts its own group of detractors and
proponents. Of the Mac browsers, the most effective is IE. I find that many
of the more complex sites are only compatible with MS IE. We Mac users are
in serious trouble if a future OS X version ever breaks MS IE and MS doesn't
fix it.
Of the others, Safari is perhaps the most useful for 95% of day-to-day
browsing. A few sites are now still only compatible with Camino or other
Mozilla-based browsers (and, of course, IE). Mozilla is good but it's too
bloated and un-Mac-like, Netscrape is not quite as good as Mozilla and it
too is horribly bloated and moderately un-Mac-like (not as much as Moz).
FireBird is showing potential (but is still pretty unstable) and my personal
hope is that Camino and FireBird join forces. Camino is a mature browser on
the Mac side and should (could) serve as the GUI for FireBird. Mozilla is
dieing. Long live FireBird!
I can't really comment on IE's stability since I don't use it much at all
(except for tough web sites) but this is my experience with the web browsers
for stability (having used the lot of 'em):
Safari > Camino ~ iCab ~ OmniWeb (may be changing since they are
incorporating KDE) > Netscape ~ Mozilla > FireBird
I'm sure the knee-jerk anti-Microsoftees will take exception and seek to
defend Netscrash/Mozilla. They are browsers with significant potential but
their bloat simply makes them useless. Cutting out the composer and e-mailer
function will make Mozilla *much* better (and also allow programmers to
focus on what is important in Mozilla -- the HTML rendering engine). Mozilla
is good because it gives you cutting edge HTML support (which you'll never
find) but Netscrash is useless since it doesn't give you anything cutting
edge and all you get for your pain is an ugly non-Mac interface and extreme
bloat. IE is suffering from a lack of attention. It's still operating with a
2000/2001-era code base and has only had a few (minor) updates over the past
three years.
If you want a web site to test out the HTML robustness (not HTML
compliance!!!) of a browser, go to http://www.needahotel.com, car-rental
places or air-line booking sites. Only IE does them all (fortunately 3/4
work with Safari/Camino). I've also found a few other sites that prefer IE
(or Safari with slightly less functionality... KDE is a pretty damned robust
rendering engine... where Mozilla et al. fail). I've only found *one* site
in recent memory which didn't work in a single Mac browser (including IE)
and required me to fire up VPC and run IE 5.5.
>I'll try the Prefs delete and see what happens. But at present
>exploring other recommended browsers like Camino, Firebird and Omniweb
>- which I gather are more regularly updated and improved
You'll find only OmniWeb to be in the same league as Safari for some things
(Safari has best toolbar implementation but Camino has the best browsing
implementation since you can get rid of the toolbar completely). Camino
development has stalled in recent months (since Safari has taken over) and
has a number of stability issues and FireBird is still quite unstable and
not ready yet if you're worried about stability. I don't think FireBird will
*ever* be up to Mac quality (just like Netscape 7.1 is not a GUI quality
Mac-app) unless the Camino developers get their hands on it and clean up the
GUI (the Communicator/Netscrape heritage) to raise it to Mac OS X-standards.
I would also advise you to check out iCab. It's not as snazzy as some of the
others but it offers an entirely different browsing experience (it's a
one-man show) and there are a lot of people who swear by it. It's fairly
stable (same leage as Camino/Moz/Netscape) to boot.
OmniWeb is great for some people but for a lot of others it's half-assed. I
find that Safari now has the best implementation of tabbed browsing, closely
followed by Camino (Netscape/Mozilla are ATROCIOUS since the coders don't
know what to do with the ugly Communicator toolbar/URL bar)
>Having once recently lost all my Bookmarks with a G5 User ID problem,
>I've also just bought URL Manager Pro which has a safer and wider ,
>multi-browser use
I love it when I manage to lose my bookmarks (a chance to start over). What
I do is make a web page with the important bookmarks. Less important ones
are found with: www.google.com ;) (of course, I've mastered some of Google's
more advanced search features :)
Eric.
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