It ’s easy to see why , in the two year since it was introduced , Safari ( , November 2003 has speedily become the dominant browser app for OS X : It ’s silken , fast , and free , and it beat the trouser off of former champion Microsoft Internet Explorer .
But that does n’t mean Safari is right for every somebody and occasion . Sometimes you might want a skimpy , miserly browser app that does little but render entanglement page quickly and accurately . Other times , you might want a full - blown WWW - program entourage , with e - mail , chat , and hypertext markup language - redaction tools . Whatever you involve , there are plentitude of Safari alternatives to select from .
I look at nine alternative browsers : Firefox 1.0 Preview Release , Camino 0.8.1 , and Mozilla 1.8 , all from Mozilla ; America Online ’s Netscape 7.2 ; Microsoft Internet Explorer ( IE ) X 5.2.3 ; The Omni Group ’s OmniWeb 5.01 ; Freeverse Software ’s BumperCar 1.0 ; Opera Software ’s Opera 7.54 ; and Alexander Clauss ’s iCab X 2.9.8 .
( When testing these Web web web browser , we checked the following sites : Amazon.com , Backupbrain.com , CSS Zen Garden , css / edge , Discovery.com , Electoral Vote Predictor , andESPN.com . )
The first thing I noticed when taking these internet browser for a spin was that they ’re all pretty much equal when it comes to speeding . With the exception of IE , which is observably wearisome , show performance is roughly adequate .
I also ground that most have dependable if not excellent support for Web standards . In that obedience , they ’re all superior to the most wide used internet browser on the cyberspace , IE 6 for Windows . The one elision I found was iCab , which simply fail to expose most test pages right . As a result , I eliminated it from further considerateness .
Under the Hood
One reason for the uniformness of performance is that these browsers are based on just five dissimilar rendering engine . ( The rendering locomotive engine is the software core of a web browser . It ’s responsible for for interpret the HTML , CSS , JavaScript , images , and other components of a Web Thomas Nelson Page . ) OmniWeb , BumperCar , and Safari all swear on Apple ’s WebCore locomotive . Firefox , Camino , Mozilla , and Netscape apply Mozilla ’s Gecko engine . ( Both WebCore and Gecko are open rootage . ) Only Opera , IE , and iCab use proprietary engines .
Broadly speaking , browsers that use the same locomotive will perform almost identically in term of speed , and the page they render will await the same . What really sort out the browsers are the features they do ( or do n’t ) have on top of those rendering engine .
Mozilla ’s Different FlavorsTake , for example , the various Mozilla browsers . They ’re all base on Gecko , but they motley widely . At the one end is Mozilla itself , which admit tools for everything from e - mail service and chatter to HTML editing . At the other is Firefox , which remove everything extraneous , leaving only an excellent , uncluttered browsing dick .
For pure browse , Firefox is hard to scramble . My only ill is that it miss the Mac oxygen look - and - feel . For that , you demand Camino , which fuse the Mozilla computer code to Cocoa , so it looks and feel more Mac - same . But Camino has been update sporadically over the retiring year , and it still miss essentials such as automatic forms . Still , it ’s a internet browser to watch .
form Mozilla YoursOne great matter about the Mozilla web internet browser is that people have written plug - IN that allow you add new feature . There arehundreds of these extensions , and they crop from improved advertizing blocking to peter for Web developer . If Firefox and Mozilla lack a feature you want , you ’ll probably happen an extension that has it .
Apple at the Core
The one web browser app that really stands out is OmniWeb . It reimagines the whole melodic theme of tabbed browse , it gives you detailed control over your browse experience , and it has a slew of other innovations that power users will love .
In some web browser app , admit Safari , the horizontal tab bar is too slender to handle many tabs ; the name of each check contract to become unreadable and then splatter off the border of the windowpane . OmniWeb fixes that by putting thumbnail mental picture of your tabs in a drawer on the side of the windowpane , making it easy for you to swap between tab key . The Workspaces boast saves aggregation of windowpane you ’ve browsed ( include their position and size of it on your screenland ) , so if you have a finicky set of sites you browse often , you could play them all back up with a click . If your Mac crashes , OmniWeb automatically reestablish and reloads all the varlet you were browsing .
Other features are as well thought out . Some sites use annoyingly small fonts or are otherwise hard to read . OmniWeb ’s per - web site preferences lick that problem ; you may change the text zoom , face , and page colors for the land site , and those change remain the next fourth dimension you visit . In improver to blocking pop - up windows , OmniWeb blocks advertizement on pages .
The uncollectible news about OmniWeb is that , unlike most other web browser app here , it is n’t free . ( There is a spare 30 - mean solar day test . ) I think the innovative features and terrific port are worth the $ 30 — but not everyone will .
The ease of the PackIE still performs moderately well , but its time has passed . One IE feature I long for is the Scrapbook , which lay aside copies of Web pages — thoroughgoing for save maps and receipt from online leverage . Opera is fast but not free ; a variant without annoying advertizement will cost $ 39 . It has integrate e - chain armour and IRC chat documentation but does n’t look or feel like a native Mac program . And iCab would have been a good web web browser in 1998 , but you could decamp it today .
If you ’re a parent concerned about where your kids are last online , you might study BumperCar . base on OmniWeb , it focalize on protecting children from objectionable Web content ; its excellent filters let you see your kids ’ browsing experience .
Macworld’s Buying Advice
For regular browse , there ’s no reason not to stick with Safari ; it will serve you well . If you need to work with Macs and Windows machines , and want the same browse experience on both platforms , then Firefox is an excellent pick . For Mac tycoon users , OmniWeb should be the first alternative selection . l
[ Tom Negrino is the author ofMacromedia Contribute 3 for Windows andMacintosh : Visual QuickStart Guide(Peachpit Press , 2004 ) . ]
