IE for Windows via Parallels?


I don't see why anyone would do that... and while you're at it, why not any browser through Parallels or VNC?

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I have "any browser through Parallels" as an option. I didn't include VNC because that requires two machines; using Parallels is just another app on the same machine.

And I don't know why anyone would choose it, but so far two people have!

-rob.

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The reason is NOT that someone WANTS to use IE 5/6/7/+; but rather that some sites demand it. Any site that uses Active-X controls must be run in a Win & IE environment.

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Well, the question asks "current favorite".....

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it had similar features I use in FireFox:

• DomInspector (I like the one in WebKit)
• FireBug, there is no substitute :-)
• Multiple search engines

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There might be no replacement for FireBug (though the DOM inspector and Drosera [from the WebKit nightlies] are pretty durn good), but AcidSearch is a more than capable replacement for Firefox's multiple search engine feature.

It lets you define new search engines with their own keyboard shortcuts and address bar keywords, and (my favorite feature), also lets you make search groups (also with custom shortcuts).

I have one set up to search for album art which searches Amazon, WalMart, Google Images, and Yahoo Images in different tabs, with a single keystroke. It is very nice, and worth checking out (especially if you hate Firefox's looks/font rendering/speed as much as I do).

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Regarding Firefox, there is NO substitute for the Foxmarks Bookmarks synchronizer either. The Firefox extension allows users to automatically synchronize bookmarks on multiple computers, as well as access favorite web pages on any computer, anytime. If only there was a way for Safari to take advantage of Foxmarks ... I'd use Safari a whole lot more. In fact, there are a number of Firefox extensions that I use daily:
- Adblock Plus (and the Filterset.G update)
- NoScript
- ForecastFox
- Download statusbar
- Video Downloader
- NukeAnything Enhanced
- StumbleUpon

If only Safari could take advantage of all FireFox extensions ...

Regards,
Rich

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I too didn't use Firefox because of how slow it was, but these tweaks make it as fast as Safari, so now it's my browser of choice.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299854/posts

I would you Safari, but there are too many websites it just chokes on.

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Yikes. Aside from the untrustworthy host site, the actual suggestions posted there are years out of date and inaccurate. For starters, maxrequests has a hard limit at 8. And setting initialpaint.delay to 0 can lead to LONGER total load times (although this issue is probably less common on a new C2D CPU).

Try linking to a better source for much better information.

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For me it's indeed Safari. With the plug-ins SafariStand (mainly for Quicksearches right from the Addressbar) and PithHelmet (mainly to get rid of ads and pop-unders etc).

Safari is fast, supports drag & drop of formatted text and has a great UI. And if it should ever fail on a website or webservice, then there's still Firefox, waiting to get launched about once a month (even less in fact).

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As a long-time supporter of the Mozilla project (I've followed it since its inception in 1998) and long-time Mozilla and Firefox user on Windows, I am quite disappointed with the lack of quality of Firefox on the OS X platform, as well as the lack of some features present in Safari.

It's (very) slowly getting better, but there are still plenty of highly-visible and annoying bugs (e.g. incorrect file and creator types added to downloaded files, lack of high-resolution trackpad scrolling, new windows clipped off the bottom of the screen, Cmd+w *not* closing a window, poor bookmark and history management and searching (when compared with Safari), to name a few.) The worst part is that there are fixes for some the simple annoying problems, but they never make it into the released code for some lame reason. I actually compile my own version of Firefox with some of the fixes (enabling high-resolution scrolling and disabling creator type for downloads)

I use Firefox for a few select tasks that work better in Firefox than Safari, but 95% of my general browsing is done in Safari, which when combined with PithHelmet and Inquisitor plug-ins is the best browser available on any platform, IMO.

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This post sums up my feelings on the matter better than I could. I use Bon Echo for those 10% of the sites that have problems with Safari (mainly my online banking & PayPal accounts)...it's a FireFox build optimized for my G5 processor and I really like some of the extensions and tools available for it. But, in the end, Safari is prettier, faster and you can't beat the integration with Cocoa apps & AppleScript.
I was a big fan of Camino last year, but it hasn't been updated at all since then and has no RSS feed reader. I've tried standalone RSS readers, Vienna mostly, but none are a simple or intuitive as Safari's implementation. I had hopes initially for Opera and it does offer good speed and excellent importation of Bookmarks, but the interface is confusing and often frustrating. In the end, Safari remains the champ on my Macs.

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Camino has actually improved a lot in the past year. Not sure where you have been looking for it. www.caminobrowser.org

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He probably uses the stable releases. I've been using Camino nightlies and love it! I used to have several Camino plugins installed but it has grown rapidly and I don't need any of those plugins anymore. The only helper app that I use is CaminoKnight, which updates Camino to the latest nightly automatically.

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and I voted for it, as I use it the most. But I have high hopes for Shiira and Sunrise Browser. If they were a bit more feature rich, I'd switch right now.

The one thing Safari has over many other browsers is that is is pretty clean and simply laid out. Also the integrated RSS reader is exactly what I need - no more and no less than necessary. I think many of the other browsers try to be all things to all people and it ends up becoming less useful.

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I cannot agree with this comment more. Safari is clean and has just what you need to get the job done.

I have yet to find a plug-in for Firefox that was little more than a curiosity. Firefox is great for Windows and Linux (where app consistency is pretty irrelevant a concern), but for OS X, Firefox just sticks out like a sore thumb.

Only problems I have with Safari are it tends to memory leak a bit (I just restart it to fix that), and it doesn't confirm closing (so you could have twenty tabs open and accidentally hit Apple+Q instead of Apple+W and they would all close). Apart from those, its a solid browser.

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OK, but on my box I cannot view videos -- I do have QT 7.1.6 and have installed Fkip4MacWMV. Also when opening several windows it slows down considerably. Finally some pages (viewable with other browsers) are just blank!

My setup: 20' iMac Intel Core 2 Duo, 500GB HD, 3GB RAM, latest Safari/Firefox/Camino/Opera/Shiira

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I use webkit all the time. It has stability issues, but the DOM inspector is really cool.

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No other browser has enough features for heavy browsing, and few other browsers are as fast.

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... rocks hard! Seriously! I originally registered it back in the 4.x days and never really used it. But since the 5.x Webkit incarnations I'm addicted! Safari can't keep up, even with Saft installed (which will die in Leopard, I guess ...).

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I use OmniWeb because it renders the page beautifully - Firefox's rendering is ugly! And OmniWeb is more feature rich than Safari. The tab system is better for lots of simultaneous sites open - I currently have 36! the current version is very stable. There's a reason its the only browser that costs money: because its the only one worth anything! That's a slight exaggeration: I like Safari too.

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Two I use Safari.
1: Common spell-check dictionary between applications..
2: Excellent support in DevonThink Pro via applescript.

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For the record, I prefer the Gecko engine over KHTML, and have generally found it to be more compatible, though I can't remember the last time Safari has given me a problem.

That said, Firefox in OS X feels wrong to me. It doesn't feel like an OS X app; go through the preferences menu to see what I mean. Its built-in RSS is clumsy and not even comparable to Safari's. I've looked at external RSS readers to use in conjunction with Firefox or Camino, but none feel as intuitive to me as Safari's own. I'm sold on it.

Camino is nice, but suffers from not having built-in RSS, in addition to an irregular update schedule. Even if I could make the switch, I don't know how I'd feel about the browser's stagnate development.

As for the others, I've downloaded them for examination once or twice but none appealed to me. So far Safari is the winner.

But isn't it nice to have choices? In Windows you're either using IE or Firefox (as serious contenders); in OS X the choices are much wider, and have been for a long time.

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Safari with Saft and SafariStand is absolutely unbeatable. OmniWeb comes really really close, but it seems to be missing nice options like downloading files to folders organised by date.

Safari is just so nice, slick and elegant, and those plugins extend it to a powerful workhorse. Add Inquisitor, and searching gets better too.

At this point, there's no way I can outright switch to anything else.

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OmniWeb is the only choice for me, nothing else comes close to it imho.

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I don't think there is one good browser, if you force me to vote then I'll say Safari but I HAVE to use Opera, Firefox and Camino on a daily basis and since I use Linux at work and Mac OS X at home I'm often using Opera because Firefox sucks on the Mac (yet lots of people will vote for it, see below)

I don't understand why the different browser developers don't look at the good features of each different browser and try to make their browser the best.

If you're going to do a what is the best browser poll you should do What is the worse browser? In order to keep the figures honest.

Furthermore, we all use browsers for different purposes, so if I spend all my day playing Travian and watching google videos, my idea of what is the best browser is going to differ from the guy who does web banking and plays java games.

All to say that I don't think this poll is worth much and should be taken jovially!

Jerry

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I don't understand why the different browser developers don't look at the good features of each different browser and try to make their browser the best. [...] Furthermore, we all use browsers for different purposes, so [...] my idea of what is the best browser is going to differ from the guy who does web banking and plays java games.

Sounds like you answered your own question.

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At any given time I have Ubuntu Linux, Windows Vista and the OSX 10.4.9 running on my macbook. Opera is the ONLY browser I've found that is both fast, feature rich, and I can share the same bookmark/settings files for all 3. Definately a nice piece of work.

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Camino works best for me when filing cases with the US District Court system - they expect IE 7 or Netscape on a Windows box.

Firefox works best with Audible and a number of aggregator sites as well as Westlaw and Lexis (proprietary legal databases).

Everything else, Safari is fast and reliable. I even like the .pdf integration for my legal filings - I can read the other side's responses without the two-step process (download then open) and, as the courts only give one free copy of a pleading away I'd have to pay $0.08/pg to re-download if I had an aborted / corrupted file - and that doesn't happen with the way Safari and the Fed Courts interact....

I don't much like Safari's bookmark editing features (what editing features?) - but I use Bookdog from http://www.sheepsystems.com to handle the bookmarks in all three browsers.

I use Opera exclusively on the XP box I have to use from time to time.

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Safari gets my vote. It's so easy & intuitive for browsing, exactly as a Mac app should be. And while I love to "Pimp My Safari", having to go find stuff to configure the app as I wish — like Firefox requires — isn't so fun. Saft is the one add-on I've found that I can't live without. (A bunch of us nagged my company's IT guy until he let us put it on our work machines.)

But for me, NetNewsWire comes darn close to winning. Fact is, Safari's way of doing RSS is rudimentary at best. Right now I try to use Safari for "doing" (work or non-work tasks on my To Do list) and NNW for "not-doing" (goofing off and everything else). But because NNW lacks both history & bookmarking features, this doesn't always work and I find myself switching between the two.



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I would go with Firefox except that it is too unreliable at displaying web pages. Many are fine, some are pathetic. cnn.com, for example, is way wrong. So I am sticking with Safari for now.

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--Chip

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They all lack certain options and qualities of the old "world browsers"

IE5 for Mac and Netscape 4.9_

I find myslef juggling 3 or 4 different browsers constantly on my Mac for one reason or another_

Google is in bed with Apple but does not fully support Safari_ No Google Chat_

I have trouble loggin into both my bank account and cell phone account withou Firefox_ Firefox however will not allow for simple things like CMND-Click to be assigned to anything other than opening a new Tab_ I do not always want a Tab open and having to slide down a con-textual menu to find the damn command wastes time as a web0designer_

Camino is hit or miss at best_ I like the concept - but it consistantly falls short_

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Camino is as fast as Safari and works better with (ugh!) Microsoft-based intranet sites I need to login to that Safari can never seem to get to work. I've also has problems with Safari at other websites that require logins--banking, etc. Although it lacks private browsing, which I never use anyway, Camino seems to have all the features of Safari i commonly use, most importantly remembering passwords and autofill. So for me Camino is the chioce until Safari works better with the intranet sites I need to visit.

I love all the add-in stuff for Firefox, particularly for molecular biology websites, but it's just way too slow.

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I used to use the "G5 optimized version" of firefox....then my debit card number was stolen... I don't know if it was b/c of firefox or not, but I switched back to Safari and never looked back....I also remember reading a hint, I think It was on this site, that said all "Firefox stored passwords" were not encrypted and anyone using your machine could easily look them up.

Anyway, Safari has come a long way since version 1.0 I can't complain. A few bells and whistles via a new browser isn't worth the possiblity of my identy being compromised.

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Please Add *SeaMonkey* to the next Poll.

Thanks!

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- iMac, 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X - 10.4.8, Firefox 2.0.0.2, Safari 2.0.4


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Still in beta, but the only browser which lets you save content to a database (and works when WebArchives don't). Beta at http://www.ansemond.com

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I agree, SeaMonkey is in my opinion, the best browser to date. Since the inception of the internet, I have used every single browser developed to run on the Mac platform.

The only problem I see with SM is importing. Not being able to import bookmarks or address books is a huge oversight.

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I've been using Firefox for several months now, but after my Mac crashing 5 times in the last three days, I may be ready for a switch. Still trying to isolate the reasons, but each time, I've been using Firefox 2.0.

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I use Safari as my primary browser:

It looks much better than Firefox.
I am invested in it: passwords, bookmarks, familiarity.
I like its ease of use on a laptop--I find the keyboard shortcuts easier to navigate than on Firefox.

But Safari crashes hard with multiple tabs. Saft seems to be a partial answer (for recovery), but the better answer would be a more stable Safari so crashes don't happen in the first place: Surely Apple has the resources to improve this right?

I configured a hot-key to clear history on the fly in Safari (command-option-x), but this only works part of the time (can anyone explain that?)

I wish Safari could be my browswer of choice, but now it is my browser of default.

I use Firefox as a secondary and indispensable browser:

I keep Firefox configured with proxy settings, so I have that functionality available whenever I want.
I use Firefox for on-line banking.
I like the ease with which I can erase all private data upon exit automatically.
I just discovered the power and the speed of Down Them All, and I love the general extensibility and flexibility of FF. I wish it could be my browser of choice.

Firefox is a delightful and powerful playground, but not everything works just yet. Some webpages do not load properly, which is a major problem that drives me back to Safari.

From these posts, it looks like I should take OmniWeb seriously.

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Which sites do not work right for Firefox? I have the opposite problem, lots of web pages do not load properly in Safari & OmniWeb, which drives me back to Firefox.

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Webkit Nightly Build as a separate option. Sure, it's Safari, but there's a lot of functionality in the nightly builds that aren't available in Safari using the system version of the Webkit.

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Hm. Doesn't seem to be an option for, "They all suck." I use a combination of Firefox (for features and extensibility) and Safari (for stability and standards-compliant page rendering), but I can't say that I actually like either of them, or any of the others.

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I would love to use Camino, which is in my experience faster and smoother than Safari, but for two things:
1. The cmd-I keystroke that lets me send webpages intact in Safari via email
2. The fact that Safari fully supports Services, which I use for many things, including the "Send Selection" option under Mail in Services (for sending highlighted text in a webpage via Mail)
Am I perhaps not aware of something that would change my mind?
Rick

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G5 2.5GHz 1.5Gb RAM, OS 10.4.8

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Heh... was going to post my whole standard rant, but then I discovered I already posted it, in Browser Wars #5. Opinion largely unchanged since then - still "none of the above", as they dropped IE development while it was still crashey, but half my safari complaints are still true (a few safari add-ons have nixed some of the more egregious problems since then, like not getting a confirmation dialog when closing a window with multiple tabs open.) Haven't tried FF 2 yet, though, if the performance is up to snuff that could be the one. But barring that, my opinion is, we haven't got an adequate browser for OS X yet... we're closer than we were, but until we get something like IE's multi-page web archives and advanced download management capabilities in a more up-to-date browser, I remain cantankerous.

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Though i've often become frustrated with the lack of a good way to do interactive ad/content blocking, i still use Camino 90% of the time.

I used to switch out to FF for weeks or months at a time just for a couple of the available extensions, and only used Safari when i wanted the 'Activity' window or the others choked, but Safari has gotten somewhat better, including a few extensions, and has now moved to 2nd... kind of.

I live with Camino's lack of a "realtime" ad-block extension by keeping a finely tuned "userContent.css" file which eliminates more clutter than just ads on my most visited sites.

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-- to be announced --

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Just to fan the flames…

Camino is by far the best available web browser, at least for me. Here's why:

1. Webkit is not being actively developed for any version of the Mac OS before Tiger. This really irks me. I've heard that the WebKit developers are considering changing their build practices so that Panther users can benefit, too, but knowing Apple, I doubt that will happen. Anyway, this pretty much rules out webkit-based browsers, eg Shiira and Safari, since, as WebKit stands right now, for Panther, its javascript support just sucks.

2. Firefox is too slow. I love it's features and simple extensibility, but a lot of these features are written in ECMAscript, and overall the performance is quite sluggish. It takes about 30 seconds just to start up, and loading new pages takes a long time, too. Besides, if I really wanted Firefox, I would be running some other *nix distro.

Camino suffers from neither of these problems. It is fast, it is in active development for ALL versions of Mac OS X, not just Tiger, and it is attractive to look at (after I've updated its icons). I run Privoxy to get rid of ads, so I really don't need adblock or anything like that, and I figured out which icons to drag into the Resources folder with a little applescript magic.

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I would use firefox if it was as fast as Safari and integrated in OS X.
All the nice features are located in my dashboard anyway.

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neonleif.dk

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I made Lynx my default browser on OS X. I use Safari and Firefox too, but Lynx leaves all the GUI browsers in the dust.

I suppose it goes without saying that since Lynx is my favorite, I really hate Captcha; this site forced me to use Firefox just to register. But future visits here I expect to do in Lynx for its convenience, speed, stability, and terminal scrollback.

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For Aqua, I use Safari for RSS and video content; Camino for just about everything else. For Darwin, I use Links for frames support and Lynx for the rest.

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With the addition of Saft, Safari is my main browser. This setup has some really nice features:

Downloads are easily resumable. If you've cancelled a download and cleared the download list, simply double-click the partially-complete .download file in Finder to resume.

Downloaded files have the URL from which they were downloaded stored in their Spotlight Comments -- an excellent feature which can be used in AppleScripts and Folder Action Scripts to automatically organise downloads.

Firefox-esque 'type-ahead find' (added by Saft)

Keyword searches (added by Saft) e.g. enter "osxh some text" into the address bar to search Mac OS X Hints for 'some text'.

Overall, its good support for OS X technologies gives it the edge.

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It has to be Firefox, it is not perfect yet but it is the only one that works in MacOS X

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... and it works great. I submitted the instructions on how to make your Mac OS X Server bind dns server use OpenDNS, and OpenDNS published it.

http://www.opendns.com/start/mac_os_x_server.php

Our users love it!

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WebKit. Technically it's just Safari with a different engine, but it's brilliantly fast.
:-)

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