Safari Vs. Firefox On The Mac: Firefox Wins

I'm done with my fast-and-dirty evaluation of the Safari as a potential replacement for Firefox on the Mac, and I'm sticking with Firefox. Here's why I stuck with Firefox, and what I still miss about Safari.

Mainly, I preferred Firefox's integration with the del.icio.us online social bookmarking service. The del.icio.us Bookmarks add-on for Firefox integrates del.icio.us bookmarks with the native Firefox bookmarks. You can add select del.icio.us bookmarks to your Firefox toolbar, and add bookmarks to del.icio.us using Cmd-D.

When you add bookmarks, the plug-in suggests keywords and lets you know when your blurb is too long. I have 1,788 del.icio.us bookmarks. I add to them every day. del.icio.us is my primary bookmarking system.

Firefox lets you look at the URL for a link by hovering over that link, which is very useful. You can see where you're going before you click.

Firefox does a better job of blocking popups.

Firefox lets me limit all new tabs to a single window, while Safari opened up multiple windows and multiple tabs in each window.

Also, as an editor at InformationWeek, I serve the magazine better by accessing our Web site and RSS feeds using a popular browser, so I can help make sure the site looks good to our readers who use Firefox.

But I miss Safari. It's a nicer-looking browser. It's more Mac-like. And text displayed in Safari looks better than in Firefox. Mac enthusiasts tend to prefer Safari for those reasons.

I'm not going to argue with anybody about their browser choice, it's a matter of personal preference. For instance, I would never point out that Safari users are morally inferior, have bad breath, and don't wash below the neck or above the wrist. Those things are true, but I wouldn't point them out.

Like I said in my earlier blog post: I wish I could combine the best features of Firefox and Safari.

The Mozilla team, which develops Firefox, is looking for your input in how to improve the experience for Mac users. Colin Barrett wants to know what sucks about Firefox on the Mac.. Quite a few interesting responses there; people want Firefox on the Mac to be faster, and more like native Mac applications.