FireFox 3 versus Safari

Many Mac users are incredibly loyal to Safari. Some love it because of its minimalist feel and glossy, attractive interface. Others simply because it is made by Apple and they always support Apple products and software no matter what, out of loyalty. Even so, it may finally be time to switch to FireFox instead.

I love Apple products, but I am a loyal FireFox user and not a fan of Safari. Safari flat out doesn’t offer the functionality I need to handle my many daily tasks efficiently. Sure, it is pretty, as all Apple products are, but pretty doesn’t cut it when you need a browser you can really put to work.

In spite of being a loyal FireFox user for a long time, I still missed the beauty and minimalism of Safari. So when both browsers offered overhauls recently, I couldn’t help but try them out. The first thing I noticed about FireFox 3 was how much it was trying to look and feel like Safari.

Unfortunately, in trying so hard to look and feel sleek like Safari, FireFox made some major mistakes in their user interface that I flat out dislike. Sure, the corners are rounded, the buttons are oval and shiny and things have a more “Mac like” look and feel. But then you get a bit of Windows-style issues, like too many messy drop down lists inthe URL entry window for example, thrown in and it ends up feeling clunky.

Safari 3.1 is speedy. FireFox has always been speedy, but one issue that has always slowed it down has been its memory bleed problems. I was hoping that Mozilla would have fixed those in FireFox 3 for the Mac, but alas, such is not the case. In each of the several times it froze on me today after installation, it was using memory in the several GB range, and climbing, overloading the system (if you wonder how I know that - try out Activiy Monitor on your own Mac).

In third party testing, Safari 3.1 and FireFox 3 both passed the Acid 3 and SunScript benchmark tests with flying colors. They ran neck and neck as far as speed, and both comply with the Acid 3 web standards testing, getting high marks*. Even so, FireFox 3 ourperformed Safari on a couple of the benchmarks.

As for concrete examples of why Safari 3.1 has not yet hit the mark for me, a lack of compatibility with forms continues to plague the Apple browser. I should not continue to get “this web site is only compatible with Internet Explorer” or other similar errors when filling out web forms in Safari anymore. I don’t get those with FireFox 3 (or with Camino). Safari needs to address that for those of us who spend large portions of time online signing up for various things from events to social media sites.

So with the lukewarm comparison so far, how does FireFox 3 finally earn its stripes against Safari? Javascript. You’d think with the recent interest in developing Sproutcore, Apple’s new framework that utilizes Javascript more effectively, Safari would be all about Javascript processing. Not so - FireFox 3 kills Safari in Javascript timing issues. This gives it an edge no other feature does.

FireFox 3 also adds support for Growl, which is nice. One glaring error - it has issues with QuickSilver. They are fixable issues, to be sure, but I flat out don’t want to spend any extra time tweaking my browser, when the browser should be the one piece of software on the computer besides the Operating System that just works without having to think about it, in my opinion.

Apple isn’t down for the count with its browser yet. Safari 4 has already been released to Apple developers, meaning a new improved version is already being perfected. Apple never lets its products sit idle for long, something I love about the company. Maybe Safari 4 will address some of the issues that continue to plague Safari. Meanwhile, you can grab FireFox 3 here to try, and if you already have it and want help with the chronic memory bleed, you can try some quick fixes to improve performance.

*there is heated debate around the internet about the Acid 3 results.