Sunday, May 10, 2009

Safari vs Firefox

I recently reinstalled my OS. I just did a fresh install of Windows Xp, not because I like it but because I don't yet have the funds for a MAC and my computer wont run Vista (or Windows 7 for that matter).

I took the excuse to try a different Browser. I installed the latest Safari browser from Apple. It's got some great features. You can browse you history using cover flow with safari. It shows reasonable size previews of the websites you've visited in a flowing bookcase like way (the same way iTunes does it), making it a breeze to find a size you visited the other day even if you don't know what it is called.

Safari also shows you twelve of your most often visited sites (or you can 'pin' your favorites) as a preview every time you open up a new tab (ctrl+t).

Apart from that (and a bunch of other feature I probably don't know about), Safari has a great apple-like interface consistent with itunes and OS X.

However despite this (and being an avid Mac OS X fan) I think I like firefox more. Firefox just worked more like I do. I appreciate the logic in putting the tabs up in the title bare to save screen real estate, but I still like the firefox way better.

I didn't notice too much speed difference, I think 'sometimes faster-sometimes slower' is probably appropriate and really this is not a big deal for me.

I guess I just like having a home button available by default (although it wasn't too hard to turn this on in safari) and the way 'find' works in firefox.

I'm writing this in a Safari window, but I think I will install Firefox any day now. I might try to keep using Safari long enough to make sure my dislikes are not born out of habit. If Safari doesn't grow on me, then I'm going back to Firefox.

One thing is for sure, they are far superior to IE. Why anyone would still use Internet Explorer is beyond me.

Yes, I guess I should try chrome (I once tried opera, but liked that not one bit), at lease the underlying technology implemented in chrome looks excellent, I just want to see if Safari is better than Firefox (or Firefox is better than Safari) first.

I'll keep you posted.

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