Mac Browsers
Every now and then, I have a browser crisis. I don’t know what comes over me, but I go on this crusade to yet again find the “perfect” browser for the Mac.
I never have this problem on the PC, because the choices for Windows are pretty limited. You have IE (or some other 3rd-party browser that’s just an IE variant), or Firefox. Opera is in there, too, but I’ve never really liked Opera. Naturally, Firefox is the choice.
With the Mac, however, the decision is much more difficult because there are so many choices. Here is a list of some of the most common ones:
There are quite a few others out there I haven’t mentioned, too. To be honest, Opera and iCab are out of my running by default. I’ve never cared for either of them for various reasons, but that still leaves five very good choices.
I’ve typically stuck to Safari since OS X was released, aside from a brief stint with OmniWeb a few years back. Lately, however, I’ve been having a lot of problems with Safari crashing on me. It doesn’t just crash… it sends my cursor into a spinning beach ball fit that brings my entire system to a grinding halt. That kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen on a Mac, but Safari has managed to do it several times now. I’ve come to rely on my Mac’s ability to keep on trudging along no matter how many apps may crash, so having one render my machine unusable unless I pull the plug and restart is totally unacceptable.
I thought that the problem may be isolated to my machine, but I’ve had reports from other folks that they’ve experienced similar problems. Thus, the hunt for the Better Browser™.
In my list, you can divide the list into two groups: WebKit-based brosers, and Gecko-based browsers. WebKit and Gecko are rendering engines. The first is one developed by Apple (based on kHTML, an open-source engine), and the second is an open-source engine.
WebKit is a very good engine, that does a lot of things that other rendering engines don’t, including using embedded color profiles from images correctly, handling typography in vastly better ways than most browsers, etc. This is one of the main reasons I’ve always liked Safari. The question I have is that if Safari can crash and burn so badly, and if it’s due to the rendering engine (which I believe it is), why wouldn’t other browsers that use WebKit have the same problem? These other browsers include OmniWeb and Shiira.
OmniWeb is a really nice browser. It probably has more features available to it than any other browser out there, and does some unique things like allow you to set display preferences per site, and it will display its tabs in a drawer as little preview graphics of the site. While this is nice, I never change the display preferences for sites, and I’m too used to having tabs across the top of the browser, rather than down the side in a drawer. Add to that the fact that OmniWeb costs $15 (it used to be $30), and it drops a couple of notches. The thing that keeps it on my list is that I did use it as my main browser for about a year a while back, and I loved it. I’m just having a hard time justifying the cost, when I could run into the same problems.
If Shiira version 2 were available today as a full release rather than a beta, that’s probably what I’d use, despite my WebKit concerns. I really like the interface, and the development team for this browser has made some huge strides in developing a very nice alternative to Safari. For the moment, however, version 1.2.2 is the only release version available, and it’s not really my favorite.
Now on to the Gecko-based browsers.
Firefox is a wonderful browser. As a matter of fact, it’s what I use at both my jobs on both Mac and PC. I’m comfortable with it, it’s extensible, pays close attention to web standards, and is constantly improved. The problem is, on my little Mac mini, it’s sluggish. I’m so used to Safari being snappy, that it’s difficult for me to drop back to a browser that’s not all that responsive. Add to the the disadvantages of poor handling of color profiles, and some glaring typography issues, and I have a hard time going to it as my primary browser.
Camino is probably the strongest candidate right now, because it’s very lightweight and faster than all get out. It shares some of the rendering issues that Firefox has, but it’s so fast that I’d be willing to put up with some of those things. I also have a couple of Mac geek friends that use Camino exclusively, which gives it a lot of street cred.
I’m not quite ready to make a change—I’d like some feedback from other Mac users to see what other people are using, and what they prefer. No matter what I decide, I’m sure I’m going to have to make some compromises.
Once I have this browser thing worked out, I’ll have to then work on finding the ultimate RSS reader. I’ll save that for another day. 
February 14th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
I’ve been through the exact same process no fewer than 3 times since switching about two years ago. I love Safari, but it has its problems (as you mentioned). My two backups are currently Firefox, for those sites that just refuse to render properly (cisco.com forms, for instance), and Camino, because it really is a nice browser. It lacks the sharpness and polish of Safari but it’s still pretty clean and fast.
As for RSS, I’ve been using NewsFire and NetNewsWire side by side for a couple of days and I must say I prefer NewsFire for its speed and fit/finish.
February 14th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
Recent versions of Safari, Shiira and Omniweb are not WebCore, they are WebKit. That’s a huge difference; while WebCore is a poor choice for a rendering engine, WebKit is the best available (better than Gecko).
February 17th, 2007 at 9:24 am
You know, when I first wrote this article, I had stated that the engine for Safari,etc. was WebKit, but after reading around and seing other sites claim that it’s actaully WebCore, I quickly edited my post. I’m guessing I ran across older info… just proves that you’re better off going with your gut. I’ve changed everything back. Thanks for the info!
February 18th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Current versions of Safari, Shiira, and OmniWeb all use WebKit. By virtue of using WebKit they are also using WebCore, as WebCore is an internal component of WebKit.
From a conceptual point of view, WebKit provides a higher-level programming interface around the WebCore engine which makes it easier for application developers to use, and requiring very little application-level code. WebCore has a lower-level programming interface that can change heavily between versions. There is little to no reason for an application developer to use WebCore directly, in fact by doing so they will create a lot of extra work for themselves. In the past OmniWeb used a custom version of WebCore directly as they needed to make modifications at the engine level and WebKit was not open source. After WebKit was open sourced they moved their application up to the higher level.
February 21st, 2007 at 10:28 am
Thanks for helping to clear that up Mark!