Recently, I decided to take some browsers for a spin. I've been using Safari beta, Firefox 3 beta 4, IE8 dev beta, and latest release of Opera. It's really kinda fun using so many different browsers at the same time (even within a few minutes of each other). It really highlights the differences. Firefox 3 beta 4: New UI is a nice improvement overall. It seems pretty snappy. The new Download tracker is sort of a bummer. Why hide the "clear" button? Also, the tabs don't have close buttons on them. I wheel-click them closed anyway, but still, that seems like a step in the wrong direction. Text fields (like the one I am typing this post in) seem to get corrupted though. My cursor gets misplaced (appears in the wrong spot, even though the "real" cursor is correct) and I get a bar on the left edge of the screen. Some pages that loaded correctly in FF2 don't load correctly anymore. Internet Explorer 8 Beta ("for designers and developers") I realize this is a very early beta aimed at letting web developers get a head start on retooling their sites for the "standards conforming" IE8, so maybe I am being too harsh with this review, but here goes anyway: IE8 beta sucks donkey balls. I appreciate the effort to conform to standards and all... However, outside of "emulate IE7 mode" (i.e., nonstandard!), many pages DON'T WORK for shit. Simple stuff like text boxes are often un-editable. Things, don't just render incorrectly, they are often totally unusable. Even windows live mail doesn't work in IE8 mode. Gmail manages to work perfectly though. Hmm. I suspect these big problems are due to the browser being detected as IE, and the "wrong" code being used (in order to be compatible with the non-standard previous IE versions). It is a nice thought for them to conform to standards, but it also sucks ass that stuff just plain doesn't work. If you could toggle IE7 emulation on and/off without restarting the browser it wouldn't be as big of a deal. Safari for Windows beta: Safari beta is the best in terms of working on most pages. In fact, overall it is probably the best of the 4 I've been using. However, it has some annoying caveats: Web hotkeys (like Ctrl+B for bold when posting in WF) do not work at all. The tabs can't be closed with a middle-click, and the close button is tiny. There is no button to open a new tab (without opening a link), there is no home button. I realize there are hotkeys for these actions, but still, its bad form to at least not have an OPTION to have buttons. last, and oddly, being a release version, somehow still strikes me as "least"... Opera: Opera is just... Opera. There's not much I can say. It seems to not really have any big flaws, but it also seems to be the LEAST appealing of all the browsers I use. The thing Opera pimps the most is speed. Frankly, it doesn't seem faster to me. I think it probably is faster, but since it often doesn't show anything on screen until the entire page is loaded, it turns out being slower (often you find a link you want to click BEFORE page rendering is complete!) Maybe the reason it is unappealing is because it has all the rendering issues of a non-IE7 browser, an uninspired UI, a slightly smaller/plain rendering method for text, and no real features that make it stand out. In summation: I think I still prefer regular old FF2 or IE7. Safari font smoothing is great for certain pages, and of course the buttons/checkboxes/etc are all very appealing. Safari beta shows promise, if only Apple would allow a bit of customization. At the moment, it looks like FF3 will be my future browser of choice, once it comes out of beta stage of course. What is everyone elses browser of choice / reasons why they think it is superior?
I'm using Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4, and so far I'm pretty impressed. My favorite skin doesn't work yet, but that's to be expected. The whole interface seems cleaner and more polished, and I like the search function in the download Window. I've tried Opera, and its nice, but unfortunately about as bland as unsalted butter.
There's supposedly a fancy new file handler in FF3b4. There is also a rumor going around (hopefully it is true), that they will finally resolve that fiasco that is the "mailto" link, and allow us to link it to webmail rather than the default OS mail client. That's just a rumor though, haven't found much concrete. I'm just hoping it is true.
Speaking of FF3B4, have you had any issues with the text formatting? I've had major issues with posting because I'll get random black lines running down one side of the post box, or when I backspace. As for me, I also just tried out Safari 3 for Windows. It's nice, and has a home button as well as a few other fixes not found in the beta version, but there's this text issue that irritates me. It makes the text look thick, always bold. I've tried to reduce it with no luck. It always looks that way. J.
As I mentioned, I get that too. Re-reading it, I realize I was really unclear about how I described it though. That's just Mac-style font smoothing. I find that it looks better for larger text (and also non-black text, like the thread and forum titles at wordforge). I think the windows font smoothing is better for black text and any text that is "normal" sized or smaller. In Safari, you can press Ctrl+, to open options. Go to the preference tab and you can adjust your font smoothing setting. There isn't big difference though between the various choices.
I use Firefox Three Beta 4 and have yet to see any black lines anywhere. Also when you say the tabs don't have close buttons are you talking about the tabs within the browser that show pages or some other type of tab? My tabs all have the little red box with the X in them that enables me to close them.
No, I read back over it and you described it fine. What I have is called "trying to type at 4:00 in the morning when I should be asleep". Sorry about that. I tried and it looks about the same. Oh well, the Safari browser will be a nice backup browser. Even though the text thing bothers me, everything else looks great! J.
Rockin' it Opera style. Switched over nearly three years ago after Firefox's out-of-control memory leaks and crashes got the best of me, and haven't really looked back since. I've tried FF3b4, and it's just...meh. I don't see the speed increase, and while Opera's got a little larger of a footprint, it's big issues have been ironed out long ago. I think Firefox's biggest strength is also its biggest weakness - the extension system. By offloading a lot of functionality to extensions, it does decrease the footprint and only require users to run what they need. At the same time, this semi-core functionality then ends up being written by people who are generally outside of browser development. Some of them are fine coders. Some of them really, really aren't. So you can get some pretty wacky, hacked up and memory-leaking code just to get some functionality that you deem to be "core," and then, even if it works, it'll probably break the second they release an update. Basically, I'd like to see some resources on the project go towards releasing what are essentially "Mozilla approved" extensions that are guaranteed to at least be of the level of the browser in terms of quality and sophistication. Examples would be tab management, stupid Web 2.0 bullshit like the new context menu going into IE8 for shit like Digg, and even something as simple as being able to right-click on the address bar and click "Paste and go," although that should really just be a built in option. At the same time, from Opera, I'd really like to see the ability to remove some functonality that I don't use, like their mail client, widgets (fuck I hate that bullshit), their good-for-basics-but-nothing-else Bittorrent client, and such.
Mine don't (see attachment). Maybe one of my extensions from FF2 is to blame. Maybe I should do a reinstall.
Yeah you definitely have a problem somewhere. Here's my browser. I also use for my theme Classic Compact 3.0.3. Change your theme (if you haven't already) and see what happens. I know that when I got the Beta some of the themes I had for Fire Fox 2 weren't compatible. Perhaps yours isn't compatible but Fire Fox doesn't have it listed as not compatible.
I've also noticed my PC has slowed to a crawl in the past few days. I'm wondering if FF3 has a massive memory leak somewhere. J.
Kyle, about extensions: Any chance you had just read this? The guy being quoted in the article is right... the "focus" highlighting feature of Safari definitely needs to be stolen and copied by other browsers. I can't believe I forgot to mention it in the original post, but really, it's probably the best improvement Safari has over any competition. It's also one of those features that has no downside whatsoever. And it is also true that extensions shouldn't be relied upon for key features. However, I'd say that NOT having good extension support is maybe one of the biggest downsides a browser could have.
You can close tabs with a middle-click? I really had no idea. With the way I keep my hands when browsing - pretty much in "Quake formation" - right hand on the mouse unless I'm typing something, left hand on the left side of the keyboard - ctrl-w or command-w is just faster than moving the mouse all the way across the screen (1600x1200) to a tab. One of the things I like about Firefox over Safari is that I can double-click the tab bar to open a new tab. I think there is a home button in Safari though, unless they removed it from the Windows version. EDIT: yes, there is, along with print, change text size, autofill, and report bug. Go to View>Customize Toolbar. Also, Safari Windows is out of beta. Powa, were you using the beta, or 3.1, which came out yesterday? One other thing I like about Safari is that triple-click properly selects the whole paragraph, not just the line. Don't forget the web inspector either.
Yeah, but with Ctrl-w you can only close the CURRENT tab. Often after browsing for a while, I have a bunch of tabs built up, I'll go through and middle click a bunch to clear out the list. Also, it works in IntelliJ, Visual Studio, IE, Pidgin, and a few other tabbed apps that I have, that don't use the same hotkey as browsers. I just became really accustomed to middle-clicking a tab to close it. Still have the beta at this moment, actually. Works for me in Firefox 3b4... you have to be pretty quick on the clicks though. That's neat too... but seems pretty similar to firebug, from what I can tell. Does it debug javascript, or just show html/css/DOM info? Can't seem to find out how to enable it in the beta... is it not included?
Got the release version, still can't get to web inspector. Maybe it's Mac only? Edit: by the way, having that home button makes Safari a lot more bearable, since wheel-clicking it doubles as having a "new tab" button.
I can see why. I honestly never knew you could do that, in any app. Get 3.1. It seems to have bug fixes. Good to know. Can you have 3b4 and 2.0.x installed side by side on Windows? Preferences->Advanced->Show Develop menu in Menu Bar, and then everything will be in the Develop menu (might be called the Debug menu in the beta). I don't think it has a JS debugger, but I could be wrong.
It SAYS you can in the installer... however, it looks like I have two side-by-side installs of Firefox 3b4. YMMV. Ah, that worked (I updated to release already so I'm not sure if it was in the beta or not). Neat that you can open pages with other browsers and inspect them as well (well, it says you can, but it doesn't work). I'm sure if I gave safari admin rights (I am on vista), then it would work though.
Certainly agree with the Safari highlighting - it's damn slick. While I agree with most of the article, I don't necessarily agree that just because an extension is popular that it should be baked into the browser. That kind of defeats the real purpose of extensions. I'd just rather there be some extensions created by Firefox devs that are treated as "officially sponsored" and possibly with optional installation when Firefox is installed. What I'd also like to see is a volunteer team of extension developers, those who have created high-quality, useful, and programmatically sound extensions, essentially start up a sort of certification as well. Not necessarily to discourage use of non-certified extensions, but to encourage developers to extensively test their own extensions before releasing them to the public, even as alphas/betas. Interestingly, Opera does have an extension system of sorts - you can basically run any javascript as an extension, and they can also talk to outside applications pretty easily - the Opera version of Something Awful Last Read did this. That does have the benefit of keeping a lot of the code outside of the browser so that it causes fewer conflicts and memory leaks, and also allows developers to better extensively test their applications against such maladies. Of course, there aren't too many of these, really. Two reasons - one, it is harder, no question. Two, Opera has a lot of functionality built-in that Firefox would use an extension for. Sometimes, like for tab management, that's a good thing. Other times, for the widgets and the mail client, that is kind of lame.
I've been using Opera since about 4.x and prefer it to the other browsers (and I've tried most of them). The default skin looks horrible, I'll admit, so the first thing I do is reskin it to something more appealing. I find it to be a bit faster on my machine, and since it's not one of the two dominant browsers, the "security by obscurity" is a nice factor. I do occassionally have problems with certain pages loading properly, and in those instances I use Firefox.
By the way, regarding Opera page rendering, if it's going a little slow for you, you can turn up the speed under Preferences -> Advanced -> Browsing, then hitting the dropdown for redrawing. Or am I misunderstanding something?
I should note that a recent build of Safari got a 100 on the Acid3 test. Next release version should do the same. Test your browser: http://acid3.acidtests.org/ If you look online for acid test results, be wary of the date... a lot of the first results that google gives are inaccurate and outdated.
Opera beat WebKit to 100% compatibility overall, but WebKit beat Opera in letting the public get its hands on the nightly.
Thank you for planting the seed to Safari a try! I really like it. Biggest feature that I like is being able to open folders full of bookmarks all at once. I don't know if Firefox or IE do that, but if they do Safari has them beat hands down when it comes to making it clear how to do it. One minor problem, yahoo mail doesn't render in completely when I click on a message. (I'm using Vista). It also doesn't seem to accommodate audio streams, although my knowledge of that is limited to clicking on the "listen here" button, so it's possible I"m missing a setting of some kind. Between Firefox, IE, Safari and Opera, I can set up each of them to handle various groups of websites with a click of a button! For example, finances (bank accounts, insurance) under IE, my favorite BBS's on Safari and news sites on Firefox. Haven't gotten that done yet, but I will soon...
What I like about Safari so far is it seems like the browser itself loads in a lot faster and smoother than does Firefox. Plus, I'm not having some of the problems with it that I have with Firefox. Things like the browser completely freezing up and forcing me to reboot the computer to clear it out.
