Safari vs Mozilla
 

Im a long time Mozilla fan from my previous life as a Windows home user. I recently bought a MAC mini and have been trying to learn to use the delivered programs before loading a bunch of stuff that used to like on my windows machine. I know Mozilla is delivered with some of th macs, but Safari came with my mini.

The MAC people that I work with have told me that one of things i was going to like most about the machine was Safari. They were wrong. Its slower and it dosnt have allow tabbed browsing. I can accept not having the tabbed browsing feature, but the slowness bugs me. Safari is supposed to be fast. this is not a cache issue. I just loaded mozilla and it was easily twice as fast the first time I launched it and logged into my frequently visted sites. What am I missing? i thought Safari was the superior browser?

also, how do you guys like the MAC mail client? I think I like it a little better than Thunderbird so im going to hold off on loading that for a while. I use webmail for 99% of my stuff anywway so this is not such a big deal for me.

Safari has tabbed browsing, go into preferences -> tabs and enable it.

I'm not sure about speed vs Mozilla as I've never used Mozilla. I've used Firefox and Opera but those were on PCs. Safari is pretty fast on my Mac, but it is an iMac G5 w/ 2 GB RAM. I recall reading some tests on the web that concluded Safari was about mid-pack in speed - but browser speed tests seem to be more art than science, I'm not sure how reliable they are.

The other nice thing about Safari is that it gets updated via Apple's AutoUpdate, which I set to weekly.

How do you like the Mac Mini? I am thinking about getting one and building an "ammo can Mac".

thanks. I'll try that.

I like the mini. Some of my USB stuff is flaking out every once in a while, but Im still getting used to it.

Sherman, you've got to get Camino.

http://www.caminobrowser.org/

been using it for over a year, love it, very fast.

thanks, Shaun. I'll download Camino and try it as well.

I think i interchange the words Mozilla and Firefox too quickly. I think Firefox is what Im referring to as Mozilla.

I'll use anything - even lynx - to avoid IE

me to. IE has not been an option for me for years. Even on a PC.

I use as many of Apple's native programs as I can, but I couldn't take Safari. It's got a lot of features that I like, but it is definitely slow. Firefox is what I now use. It's really, really quick. I hate Internet Explorer, but I've used it on my Mac in the past, and it is the fastest. :(

Are you saying IE is the fastest browser?

Camino is on the order of 2-3x faster in back to back tests opening up Pelican threads, whether text based or filled with pics.

I use Firefox, but I think IE is faster. Camino may very well be faster than IE -- I haven't used it.

I took my work IBM T42 to the IT fix-it desk yesterday because whenever I switch over to wifi (for meetings, working from home, etc) within 1/2 hour my machine BSODs.

I got yelled at for having Firefox installed. As if that were the cause of the problem.

Un-f*cking-believable. There's a plague of viruses and backdoors and trojans out there, and their primary vector is IE. And our IT f*ckers want us to use it? It can only be in the interest of job security.

I heard this line once, and never has it been more appropriate: "I wish he worked for me. Then I could fire him."

i like safari, especially with Saft installed haoli.dnsalias.com/Saft/

I like mail.app for my home mail, though I'm still using pine at work. Some habbits just die hard.

I think 10.3's mail.app was a little nicer, but 10.4 version has grown on me.

Britt

Mozilla, Firefox and Camino are all Mozilla.org apps.

Difference between Mozilla and Firefox is add ons. Mozilla is a full suite that includes email where Firefox does not. No clue what the diff with Camino is.

I use the Mozilla suite simply cause I like the interface, Firefox bugs me for some reason.

As far as tabbed browsing in Safari hold the command key when you click on a new link.

I use Entourage for my mail although the Apple Mail app is just fine.

What USB stuff is flaking out? How exactly is it flaking out. I know from a previous post that you got a USB hub. Does the hub have a power supply or does it simpy expand ports? if it is not self powered then you may be using more juice than the Mini's bus can supply.

I know I've said this before but for Mac laptops and the minis it really does pay to invest in a Hitachi 7200 rpm drive. They max out at 60 gig but they make all the difference in performance. Toss the original drive into an external enclosure and use it as portable storage or as a back up drive.

Don't worry about loading non apple stuff. You are far less likely to have issues than on a PC. One of the things that make them more stable is the consistency of the hardware.

You don't have to worry about which soundcard in combination with which video card in combination with other peripherals create bugs.

One of my favorite sites. versiontracker.com like tucows but easier to navigate.

I have used Opera on both my Windows and Mac machines. Easily my favorite.

Seems to have stability problems on the the Mac though...

How about mail clients? Mac or Thunderbird? Or something else?

Mail in OS X 10.4 works with Spotlight, has a pretty good junk filter, and gets auto-updated. Good enough reason to use it, for me. I did like Thunderbird on the PC though.

I use Tbird to keep my interface the same between my Linux and Mac boxen.

The only time I use IE is under severe duress - some a-hole in HP's IT dept has coded various pages to only work in IE. Period; if sees that your're not running it, it prints an error message that only IE X.X and newer are supported, and quits.

Thom, have you tried setting your browser to report itself as IE? Not sure where the settting is in your particular browser, but most let you set it to lie to the web server, and report you are using IE 6.