Sho Fukamachi Online

The new Firefox 3 is superior to Safari in pretty much every way you care to name. It’s faster to load pages, more responsive, less prone to beachballs and more stable. Even better, it has a well-implemented plugins system which is invaluable for improving the web experience and development.

About the only criticisms I can make are that it’s uglier – I do prefer Safari’s look, which is more elegant and restrained. However, that in itself isn’t enough for me to put up with its slowness.

I also can’t understand why Mozilla don’t use Apple’s built-in localisation system; all Firefox downloads are locked to one language, forcing any users like myself who switch between accounts in different languages to maintain two different binaries – the only use I’ve ever found for the ~/Applications folder. Still, that’s not such a big deal.

Another feature from Safari I miss is the page size buttons you can place near the address bar, which I use constantly. I also generally prefer Safari’s “bookmark bar” and use it for pretty much all my bookmarks. (edit – you can now do this in FF3 too).

On the other hand, it is unfathomable that Apple has never implemented a decent plug-in architecture for Safari besides media handlers. All current plugins fall under the ignomious category of “unsupported hacks” and are not advisable to use. This is a great pity, since plugins can be truly wonderful – the experience of browsing the internet is improved so much by use of the Adblock plugin, for example, that this plugin is in itself almost enough of a reason to switch.

I have heard that the forthcoming Safari 3 is similarly much improved in terms of speed and responsiveness – not to mention implementation of new features in HTML and CSS. Let’s hope the release of FF3 stimulates Apple to get Safari 3 out the door as soon as possible – not their usual trick of tying it to an OS release, the nearest candidate being at least 6 months away and more likely 12.

I still use Safari, but I’m launching FF more and more – usually prompted by the latest Safari beachball or crash. I try to use the standard OS software where possible, generally, but when something else is so clearly superior it’s hard to justify continuing with the incumbent – I certainly don’t understand why so many windows users stick with IE, for example. The fact that I’ve delegated all my RSS needs to Mail.app further decreases any lock-in to Safari