For around two years I have been a Camino user on my Mac. It didn’t start out this way when I got my first Mac three years ago - I was very much a Safari girl. However, I started running into annoying issues where I was being beachballed and had to Force Quit on a regular basis.
I then switched to Firefox for the Mac but it’s distinct Mac-look-lack was a turn off for me and then I heard about Camino which is Mozilla power with Mac Style. It wasn’t long before this became my browser of choice and I’ve used it pretty much exclusively since. There are occasions when websites won’t work correctly in Camino such as my online banking or the o2 website which throws an annoying pop-up at me which repeatedly tells me that my browser is out of date, so for these occasions I almost always use Firefox.
I downloaded Firefox 3 last week on release day to help break the Guinness World Record for most downloaded software in 24 hours. I used it briefly but one thing I noticed was how fast it was. Blazingly so, even compared to Camino 1.6. I was also impressed with it’s slick Mac look. I’m glad it’s finally been updated to at least look like a Mac browser. But, I don’t think it’s one that I could switch over to completely. It’s useful for the sites that won’t play ball in my browser, however.
The problem now is the choice: Camino, Firefox, Safari. I *want* to go back to using Safari as it’s much more stable now and I do like the fact that it’s Apple’s own and has a gorgeous UI (fangirl alert!). Plus on testing it out again today I have found it is MUCH faster than Camino. Of course, the other great thing about switching back to Safari on the iMac and PowerBook will be the ability to sync bookmarks across machines with .Mac/MobileMe. So, looks like I’ll be letting Safari back into my affections…
So, what’s your favourite browser?
23 Jun 08
3:52 pm
I have been using Safari since it first came out. The .Mac/MobileMe bookmark syncing is very nice. I do keep Firefox 3 around just in case, but since Safari went Windows, too, I have been running into fewer sites that don’t work well with it.
23 Jun 08
4:22 pm
I use Safari 99% of the time on the Mac. The other 1% or so I use Firefox when needed. I also use .Mac to sync bookmarks as well. I work as a Windows Server Admin so I use Firefox 99% on the pc though. It would be nice to be able to sync bookmarks with Safari on Windows.
~Jaxmac
23 Jun 08
4:55 pm
Firefox 3 for me, using Foxmarks for syncing.
If you want the Safari look with FF, try this
>>>>> http://www.takebacktheweb.org/
23 Jun 08
5:38 pm
I never gotten myself attached to FireFox on the Mac. Camino (tend to use the customized build) and Safari are always on my Dock. I still think Camino pukes out images faster than Safari does.
As for FireFox, all those add-ons are confusing to me. Meanwhile, I have OmniWeb, FireFox, Opera, Flock, Safari, and Camino live inside my Application folder.
23 Jun 08
6:19 pm
I am a 50:50 split between FF & Safari on the mac, and on the PC at home it is 100% FF while in work IE:FF is about 70:30 - shame i work for a company whose app runs in IE.
K.
23 Jun 08
7:29 pm
Being a PC user I’m on FF3. Have been since the early betas. I run FF Portable so I can easily just copy the lot over to a pen drive and use it on any machine. Handy for when I have to go into the office (once, twice a year!).
24 Jun 08
5:23 am
Firefox keeps me happy most of the time (even when I use it in Vista). However, I have noticed that some websites don’t work well with Firefox but work fine with Safari! So sometimes I will use Safari.
24 Jun 08
2:16 pm
Cheers for the comments, everyone. Sounds like Firefox and Safari are the generally the most favoured browsers amongst us so far.
Can you remember the very first browser you ever used? It might surprise some that Internet Explorer *wasn’t* my first - I owe that honour to Netscape Navigator! Infact, I used that for about the first 12-18 months (along with Netscape Mail) of owning my first PC and it wasn’t until peer pressure that I tried IE and Outlook Express. Hated them to begin with but eventually made the transition. After IE came Firefox on the PC.
24 Jun 08
2:30 pm
Mosaic and Netscape Navigator. IE was virtually unheard of and not easy to find on the Uni computers. Oh and I used Lynx if I couldn’t be bothered to fire up NN as our email system had Lynx integrated into it.
I can vaguely remember moving to IE once NN went a bit loopy (version 4 I think), and IE had better support (can’t believe I said that!). However once I found Firefox I switched back and that was that!
BTW. Not sure why but I couldn’t post this comment, kept getting a 406. Nothing insecure in my post though! May need to extend that code I gave you to the wp-comments-post.php file too.
24 Jun 08
4:01 pm
I was a reluctant switcher to Firefox, it has to be said. Once I was on IE then I pretty much was happy with it (can’t believe I said that either, haha) but everytime I’d get some kind of security error I’d post it over at DDN Cafe and it wouldn’t take long before the FF army came out and said ‘GAPB’ (Get A Proper Browser) with the link to Firefox. I gave it a second chance and stuck with it after that.
Funny you should mention the 406, Sarah, because as I was trying to upload media into a post yesterday I’d get an HTTP error, or the media pop-up would just hang. Not sure why that’s happening again suddenly. I’ve just added wp-comments-post.php to that code and tried uploading media again, but still getting the error message. Hmmmm
Could you try posting again now and see if you get any further errors. Thanks!
24 Jun 08
11:00 pm
I think the media uploader uses a different file which will also need adding to your list. As it happens (sheer coincidence) I’ve been asked about that on my 406 error post so I’ll have to have a look and work out which file is used. I’ll let you know once I work it out tomorrow, too late now!
Oh and no problem replying this time.
Change that, they gave me the filename, it’s media-upload.php
24 Jun 08
11:42 pm
Glad you’re not getting the error when commenting now.
I checked and media-upload.php is already in my list (that was actually the first one I ever put into the code as I had trouble with media-upload after upgrading to WP 2.5) so it’s a bit odd why it’s now not working when nothing has been changed.
I also had someone e-mail me today saying they too are experiencing the media-uploads.php error and wanted to know how to fix it. Strange happenings indeed.
26 Jun 08
5:30 pm
Just a quickie to say I’ve been using Safari for a couple of days now and I have no intention of giving it up.
I also installed Inquisitor 3 - http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/ - which I used briefly before switching fully to Camino a couple of years ago. Loving that