Erik is challenging me to give Safari another chance, I’m going to take him up on it. I’m setting Safari as my default browser1 for the rest of the year, and I’ll try to keep some notes on the experience.
Erik is challenging me to give Safari another chance, I’m going to take him up on it. I’m setting Safari as my default browser1 for the rest of the year, and I’ll try to keep some notes on the experience.
Be sure to visit pimpmysafary.com for some very useful bookmarklet and other tools. You should also turn on the debug menu for extras.
In the terminal:
defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
Safari is my browser of choice, it simply feels better than Firefox… but it needs some add-ons to be used seriously.
I’ve had the debug menu on for ages – I do test in Safari. 🙂 The main interface issues to me so far are the metal (yuck) and the upside-down tabs.
I used Safari for most of this (2006) year, until I started using Google Reader. Firefox and IE are much snappier than safari in that interface.
The Saft plug-in is a must-have for Safari. It saves open tabs/windows, which has saved my *** numerous times. And it does lots of other cool things too.
I tried switching from Safari to Firefox, but Firefox is too slow, even on an Intel Mac. Camino is more tolerable, but still Safari eats it for breakfast as far as speed goes.
By the way, if you’re looking for other things you can do to boost productivity on your Mac, check out these netcasts with Merlin Mann of 43folders.com:
http://www.twit.tv/mb22
http://www.twit.tv/mb12
http://www.twit.tv/node/4471
SafariStand has a subset of Saft-like features that are most useful for me plus a few unique ones I’m also using. SS seems to interoperate better with other Safari plugins. It also needs updating less often after Safari/WebKit updates. And it’s free.
I donated to Saft before it was shareware and registered it when it became shareware. However, I only used it 5-6 times total and when Hao decided to force an upgrade to work on the latest version of Safari I decided not to use it anymore. I was happy to donate and register it once – but it was a rarely used utility for me and it really irked me to be forced to upgrade just to continue using it.
I registered Saft after it became shareware but skipped the paid upgrade for a Tiger-compatible version. Some features being added (e.g. ad blocking) were already capably handled with other plugins (e.g. PithHelmet) so it didn’t have enough value for me.
I’ve been using Safari more and more these days as well. One thing that’s really annoying about FireFox and IE is that they have _no_ color management!
Exported graphics from Photoshop on my sites look washed out and desaturated. The same graphics look as they were intended on Safari. :/