I remember the day well.
I wanted to try out Zillow, but it would only run on IE or Firefox, not Safari. I downloaded Firefox, tried it out and never looked back.
Best was using the same browser on my Macs and the corporate laptop. With the Safari for Windows, I thought I’d try Safari again, since I could duplicate the browser experience across platforms once again.It seems the experiment is over and I’m back to Firefox.
The reasons?
1. The web editor for WordPress is flaky in Safari, rock solid in Firefox.
2. While both browsers auto detect feeds, only Firefox allows direct subscription in Google Reader, by current reader of choice (sorry Brett!)
3. OS X antialiased font rendering is great on the Mac. On Windows, it makes Safari look fuzzy. I saw it immediately.
4. Safari spawns new windows even when I tell it not to. Firefox obediently opens new tabs and rarely overwrites a page that I want to keep open
5. Both browsers are equally prone to memory leaks and have to be shut down prior to using memory intensive programs like Photoshop. Safari failed to provide any gain.
6. The bookmark sidebar in Firefox allows for rapid scanning of pages for new content within a window, especially on a large monitor. Safari only displays bookmarks in the main content window.
7. There are nice EXIF browser plugins for Firefox that let me see what camera David Allen Harvey is using today (D200, D70s or M8?). No such plugins for Safari.
8. Both browsers allow tabs to be reordered. Only Firefox allows dragging a tab into another window. It’s one of my organizing methods when I doing extensive research on the web.
9. Only Firefox has find as you type in the toolbar search box. It’s usefulness borders on the uncanny.
I couldn’t think of 10. Really.
I keep coming back to Safari for one reason. On the Mac, there is the new Inspector for webkit. It allows you to browse styles while displaying the page. Select text and the synthesized CSS style is shown. Since I’m now engaged in understanding CSS for the first time, this is a very useful learning and troubleshooting tool.
The new Web Inspector is available on Mac and Windows.
And what do you mean only firefox has the ability to move tabs between windows? As far as i can make out unless you’re using an extension firefox doesn’t allow you to move a tab from one window to another. In safari it’s built in.
Although, I do realise there are quite a few things i wouldn’t mind from firefox. Namely Firebugs JS debugger.
Currently the WebInspector does just that — inspect — Firebug has an actual *working* debugger.
I don’t think I have any extensions. I can drag a tab from one window tab bar right into another one. But you are right, I can drag between windows in Safari as well. There’s a right click menu option in Safari to open the tag in a new window that I learned a long time ago. Did I just never try dragging into another window? Or maybe I missed when I tried and opened a new window, confirming my expectation?
Thanks for commenting.