Rating the Mac OS X web browsers

[Phil St. Romain]

You don't have to post to the thread to vote:

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I've generally got Mozilla and Omniweb open, but rely more on Mozilla, which seems fastest and most stable to me.

Omniweb tends to be better in text areas, and there is also spell-checking. :D

I do boot up IE when I need to look at pages with Java.

At different times, I've tried iCab, Opera, and even the new Chimera, which looks quite promising. All seem to crash too often to really do much work with.

[meancode]

i would use OmniWeb more, but it simply has yet to support the entire html and css spec. not to mention it does not have full javascript support. they are getting better, the 4.1 beta is a huge step in the right direction. since i do a lot of web dev, i am using IE to guage my sites as IE is pretty close to a true spec, and it has the most user base. when ever OmniWeb gets everything in place i will swich in a heartbeat. the advantages of OmniWeb and all its prefs like pop up window blocking, etc. are killer.

[Craig R. Arko]

I'm with Ken here. I'm trying to make OmniWeb my everyday browser (heck, I paid for it), but it's not quite there yet.

60% IE, 30% OmniWeb, 5% Mozilla (including Mozilla under X11, since fink has a port), 5% others (Opera, Dillo, Links, iCab).

[lerkfish]

I want to use omniweb, I also paid for it, but it simply isn't there yet.
I like mozilla, and use it, but unfortunately IE just has more features that I'm used to. (drat them!)

[AHunter3]

iCab is my everyday browsing environment. Now and then I hit a web site that doesn't like iCab (or isn't liked by iCab) and then I fire up Opera as my alternative. I have not run into anything that neither of them can cope with.

[Phil St. Romain]

For those who are interested, Mozilla 0.99 is out, and it's faster and smoother than anything yet. The Mail program is improved, and Composer is enormously better--could even serve as one's web editor for basic, uncomplicated pages.

Read about the improvements on versiontracker. Lots of cool Cocoa widgets and more options for plug-ins. It's really coming along!

[yoyo52]

I paid for OmniWeb, but rarely use it, for the reasons others have given. Mozilla I do use from time to time. But my default is IE, unfortunately.

[gowrann]

I am now using OmniWeb 4.1 beta as my default browser, the only issue is Javascript which fails on certain scripts (but it's a beta!!).

A fine alternative to MSIE.

[ThinkPad]

I didn't see Netscape on the poll, which is what I use all the time. I downloaded Opera, but just don't like it. IE went in the trash the first day I got this iBook.

[zs]

Just switched over from the evil side and am not regretting it. It's crashed on me twice while previewing my posts here, but luckily, I was able to take a screen shot of what I typed and retype it. At least it didn't give the "Forever Spinning Rainbow CD/Beachball of Death" (FSRCD/BoD) taking 99% of one of my CPUs like that other browser so graciously does. At least when the Crash Reporter pops up, I don't have to wait and wonder if the app will resume like normal in 10 minutes.

I can't wait until it gets out of beta. The cookie management and image filtering rocks. Spell checking is definitely a plus. As soon as I get some cash, I'm going to pay for it. Really. :)

[Phil St. Romain]

ThinkPad, I was remiss in mentioning Netscape. Those of you using it should vote it as "Other."

zs, there's a newer, faster, more stable beta version of Omniweb 4.1. It's now up to b61. You can grab it here (http://www.omnigroup.com/ftp/pub/software/MacOSX/.sneakypeek/)

[Craig R. Arko]

I suppose most of us have come to think of Netscape and Mozilla as the same, which they are not (quite). Mozilla works. :D

[yoyo52]

I'm just wondering if the latest version of Netscape for X is supposed to get beyond the spinning beach ball and actually open. It's really an interesting concept in browsers ;)

[hyperjeff]

My time percentages: 85% OmniWeb, 14% Opera, 1% Others

I use OmniWeb for its gorgeous page rendering and bookmark system, along with the best advertisement and pop-up winow filtering I've found. But the page draws can be slow at times, which is why I use Opera for my daily news skimming and forum hopping. It's very fast, nice small icons for certain features and does fairly decent ad filtering. (The irony being that Opera failed to submit this post to this forum and I had to use OmniWeb.)

The Cocoa browsers have the advantage of spell checking, full access to system services, being able to use the scroll wheel in any frame without having to focus on the window in question (very handy) and better drag-n-drop. I use IE only if I absolutely have to test a piece of complicated javascript or such, but I think it's generally a lame browser, feelings about MS aside.

[peepster]

I use OmniWeb 4.1 sneaky peeks (currently on sp61) almost all the time now. Java is handled very well in the more recent sneaky peeks. Speed is the only thing I don't like about the OmniWeb browser... most annoying is how slow it is at displaying cached pages.

[macmath]

I use Mozilla 90% of the time and iCab 10% of the time. I have Netscape around for old times sake and use it now and then. As for IE, I do my best to run a Microsoft-free machine. Mozilla is very fast and seems to work at sites where iCab does not.

Ed

[Mikey-San]

I'm all about some iCab, I tell you what . . .

I would use OmniWeb as my main browser if it were nearly as configurable as iCab. So far, nothing seems to be, as far as interface and functionality control and--thank you, Mr Clauss--content filtering out the ass. Can't beat iCab's contextual menus, either. (Don't get me started on how useful the error reporting is, especially when, if you don't like iCab's, you can call the W3C's validator or BBEdit's validator from the contextual menu! Woo!)

It's an interesting experience to browse the Web without popups, popunders, or ads. Ever. Not even the dreaded inline frame ad-trick can get past iCab. iCab is also extraordinarily fast, especially under Mac OS X. Makes IE and OmniWeb look like NS 6. ;-)

As long as you do one thing, and set its InScript (JavaScript) identity to MSIE 5, it's one hell of a browser. Its CSS support is still a little weak, though. I'm a bit biased here, though, since I never use CSS. Why anyone would remove link underlining--which many places seem to do--is WAY beyond me. (It sucks when you try your hardest not to force your own standards on a page's design, and let the designer do what he or she intended.)

I must concede, however, that I stick to IE for things like my on-line banking and certain on-line parts ordering systems which suck but shall remain nameless.

I know I'll be forking over the $29 for the release version of iCab, no doubt.


-/-
Mikey-San
http://www.mikey-san.net/

[durandal64]

I use OmniWeb sp63 99% of the time. Whenever it can't do a page correctly, I slime myself with that pathetic excuse for a Carbonization, Internet Explorer 5.1.
I use OmniWeb for a simple reason: It's the only browser that offers the Mac OS X UI experience. It's very clean and elegant looking, and once you see pages rendered with Quartz fonts and Aqua buttons and menus, it's hard to look at anything else.
The speed on the latest sp releases is greatly improved, and I have no qualms with the quickness of the browser. JavaScript also works well 90% of the time. But, OmniWeb's CSS implementation sucks royally. I've gotten some really weird page renders on CSS-heavy pages. It completely lacks support for level 2 CSS, and level 1 is barely acceptable. I really wish they'd fix this ASAP. I haven't paid for it, yet, because I want the OS X browser wars to settle a bit. There's no arguably best browser; there's just what the individual prefers. And, OmniWeb's lack of basic CSS support makes me want to hold off on buying it until it's full-featured.
There's a browser called Chimera coming along. It's Cocoa and uses the Gecko rendering engine (the same one Mozilla uses, arguably the best engine available). It's in very early development (0.2, I think, maybe not even that), but once it starts hitting the higher version numbers, it may very well usurp OmniWeb from the browser throne on my machine. If they take interface tips from the Omni guys, then it'll definitely be my #1 browser.

[hschickel]

I have used IE since the public beta. When OSX first came out (and up to OSX.1 prerelease) I used the Classic version of IE. Frankly, I just didn't get how anyone could trade the relative stability and speed of IE for anything mentioned above. Not a single one of the browsers mentioned would go more than 10 minutes without crashing or refusing to render a page.

Yesterday I downloaded OmniGroup's OmniWeb 4.1 beta 2 (v380). Holy moly!!! This thing is fast, full featured, multi-threaded, and it does not need a resize on every 10th site. Most importantly it has not crashed now in 2 days. The last version I tried wouldn't go more than 2 minutes. As mentioned above Omniweb will fail on some sites and some of the feature implementations are maddening (rear windows in FILO order for instance). But I have to say the lack of a spinning ball when viewing more than a couple of pages makes up for a lot of missed sites and hopefully with a little feedback they'll discover FIFO. I dare say the next version will become my default browser and Omnigroup will get my cash. In any case, I'm changing my vote now.

OMNIWEB rocks.

Hugh

ps - check out omnigraffle for a much nicer alternative to visio.

[dschep]

I use Mozilla most of the time since it has tabbed browsing and IE doesn'nt match my non-aqua theme.

Daniel :)

[mnewman]

I hate to see iCab getting so few votes since it's my browser of choice in both 9 and X. It's fast, it's lean, it gets rid of ads and it handles (now here's the rub) _almost_ every page I visit. Exceptions are some secure pages, including my bank (First Hawaiian), for which I revert to the dreaded IE....

[Cheerios]

Omniweb nearly fulltime.. hte popup add blocking, the speed... I cannot stand IE, except when doing something w/ the schools site, which is NS/IE only... grumble grumble... That, and filing my FASFA were the only things IE came out of hte apps folder for, lately. i havn't tried iCab in a LONG time, but when i used it before, i just couldn't get comfy in it... it was like a pair of shoes that are just shaped wrong for you... it's not that they aren't the right size, something's just... funky.

[vonleigh]

Omniweb is my browser of choice. It's so elegant, so well written, and as the author says: "How you feel when you use a browser is the product of a thousand little details, and we've sweated over every one"

And it's so true. The bookmarks are so easy to use. The graphics (enhanced by cocoa) are beautiful. The fact that I get spell checking while writing (even this) is wonderful (and now I'm using aspell thanks to a tip published here).

Also, the fact that you can type in: "google words to search for" and it automatically goes to google and puts in your search terms. Or the fact that you can write "apple/macosx" and it automatically completes "www.apple.com/macosx" is great.

I also love the fact that the maximize button (plus) maximizes it not to my full screen real estate, but to the maximum that is optimal for that specific page. If I want it full page, then it's as simple as shift-clicking it.

All in all it's a wonderful browser. The only reason I use Mozilla is to access my banking online.

And last, no more pop-ups!

Vonleigh

[sbur]

I really don't like how slow and bloated netscape is, but that's what I use because it works. (I voted Mozzilla as it was the closest choice.) It has never crashed or frozen on me, and IE has frozen three times TODAY!

Why is mozzilla better than netscape?

Anyway, I tried IE, and couldn't last a full work week. It has problems with one of our internal "cold-fusion" designed web pages that I need access to. I also don't like the way it handles session history. In netscape, I can use the go menu to get back to an older page, then use back to go back further. IE lets you go back to the older page, but "back" takes you to the next-most recent page on the "Go" menu list. This is annoying.

I also like the fact that you can clear the url-bar history with netscape. I like having it remember url's I type, but it gets cluttered after a while, so it's nice to be able to wipe it clean. If IE can do this, it isn't obvious.

Netscape also has a good enough news client. I've tried the others, but I guess I don't use the newsgroups enough to care for all the options the others give. Netscape is just a plain and functional reader.

Opera, iCab, OmniWeb, and chimera were also unable to access the colf-fusion built page. It's a shame, because OmniWeb was strikingly beatiful in its rendering.

There are only three things that really bother me about netscape:

1) it's slow to start up, and slightly slow to render...but that's not a major problem. We're only talking a couple of seconds here, not minutes.

2) I want an inline pdf view for netscape. I really hate that it downloads pdf files, then opens them with acrobat (or preview, or whatever). I liked the old inline way of doing it.

3) I want a way to block pop-up/over/under ads. These are the most annoying thing ever to delevope on the web. Do they really work? I find myself having a negative view of the ads I remember...that little security cam ad is the most memorable for me, but it is also the most annoying...in this case, name association is not a good thing.

Other than that, it is the most functional browser I've tested for OS X. I have yet to find a page it won't render, and it has been incredibly stable since the 6.2.2 release.

Someone please sell me on Mozilla...why should I switch? (I tried one of the early releases, and I wasn't impressed with the look...the feel was exactly netscape. This makes sense since the netscape release is based on mozilla.)

[AKcrab]

Mozilla has hit release candidate 2.. Get it here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla/nightly/latest-1.0.0/

(Maybe not the official candidate 2, but the 'about mozilla' says candidate 2)

It will give you pop blocking (it's been in there quite a while now) and great speed rendering (my oppinion). I have found the release candidates extremely stable as well.

If there was spell-check, and I would be completely satisfied.

[osxpez]

I'm giving OmniWeb a try at the moment. But it doesn't really handle enough of the web content out there today. And it lacks tabbed browsing. Something I have got addicted to very fast! Mozilla rules still.

[bahamutX]

I use Chimera but since it's still 'young' there's not much features so I use Omniweb if Chimera can't load something

[Meems]

I tossed the MicroStuff (to be polite here) immediately.

I now use the latest OmniWeb beta (paid for) as my primary browser. It's very quick. Netscape 6.2.3 is my secondary. I don't use Netscape for mail anymore. The program sometimes flakes out in a strange way (even for Netscape). It will crash, removing ALL access to my Netscape User Profile, denying access to all my previous mail and identity.

I end up having to re-enter stuff from scratch.

So (although it's a work in progress) I use Apple Mail, Thoth and Interarchy 4.1 for their respective specialized strengths.

I like iCab, I just got tired of it expiring on me. Although I do understand their reasoning for it.

I haven't used a version of Mozilla in a long time. I actually used it before Netscape for OSX. I did like it at the time, but wondered if it installed files (I can't find) that made Netscape unstable in the first place.

[greenfruit]

i use IE in X mainly, though at work i use Netscape for web and mail in 9.

ive started to use chimera a lot more (im writing this in Chimera now). Its just so much quicker with less beachballiness.

Netscape is TOO slow in X, but for some reason Mozilla seems fine.

Interarchy for ftp, though i fail to understand why it casnt be integral to X.

[Meems]

Greenfruit,

Thanks for the info on the latest Mozilla.

I love Interarchy 4.1 for X. It's very smooth and stable. Since it works great for me (and I had JUST bought the license a few months before they asked for a version 5 fee), I never moved up to later versions.

[greenfruit]

Meems (very clever, but isnt it MEMES), anyway, ive used interarchy for the last 3+ years and it is great. the main reason i use it over other ftp sw is the recoverable download from http option. very good on 100Mb+ files.

i also got a phone call from them a few months ago asking for suggestions for the next version. now THATS what i call service!

[Yaldaboath]

I just added my vote for Explorer, but it´s not completely honest. I usually have either Omniweb or Mozilla open too. Omniweb does indeed look great, but really isn´t fully functional, yet. I am looking forward to using it as default. Mozilla isn´t at all bad, but it is so damn ugly. Give us a good looking Mozilla, and one that doesn´t take half a minute to start up. So, like others, I´m using IE, slightly regretfully, as it is the browser with the best overall smooth performance. Though problem-free it is not.

[Phil St. Romain]

Yaldaboath, you can choose from a number of themes for Mozilla. Look under the View menu and you'll see, although you might have to go follow that Get New Themes option to get the one you like. I use the Pinball theme, which is very simple and quite attractive.

[RacerX]

Browsers by operating system:
Mac OS X: OmniWeb 4.1 (IE 5.1, when it is not crashing, for some pages)
Rhapsody 5.6: OmniWeb 3.1
Rhapsody 5.1: OmniWeb 3.0
OPENSTEP 4.2: OmniWeb 3.1
Mac OS 8/9: Netscape 4.7 (IE 5.1 without cookies)
IRIX 6.2: Netscape 4.7
IRIX 5.3: Netscape 4.0
Solaris 7: Netscape 4.7 (StarOffice 5.1 when I'm lazy :D )

[Thundarr]

Although I have been primarily an OmniWeb user, Chimera is really starting to grow on me. The tabs are quite nice in keeping multiple sites open and the speed is very nice. If OmniWeb could incorporate those two things I would stick with OminWeb (for you guys at OmniWeb, heed the advice). However, if Chimera starts adding in all the features of OmniWeb, I may just switch. For a version of 0.3, it sure has some incredible promise.

[Craig R. Arko]

Bwahaha... the race is on to produce the browser for Jaguar. Omni, Chimera, the long-shots IE and Mozilla, or some dark horse?

Sounded like Phil Schiller was favoring Chimera at the Xserve rollout, IIRC.

[nkuvu]

I think it's amusing how many people state in their posts that OmniWeb or Mozilla are the best browsers, and yet IE is still leading the polls.

So for those who use IE, why are you using it? And take note that this is not to be interpreted as "Why are you using that piece-o-garbage?" but as an honest question (even though I really don't like IE at all, I'm not trying to criticize anyone else's choice). What do you like about it? Have you tried other browsers? Is it just because it was already installed when you got your computer?

I use OmniWeb almost exclusively, until I need to look at my bank. Then I use IE since that's the only browser my bank supports. :p

[Phil St. Romain]

Maybe it's time I do the poll again? With IE 5.2, Omniweb 4.1, Chimera up to 0.3, Mozilla up to 1.0, and iCab at 2.8--those are all significant upgrades since the last one.

What say? Should we have a poll to see if we need another poll? :rolleyes: Or how about a couple of "seconds" to the motion of a new one?

[melg]

Originally posted by Phil St. Romain
What say? Should we have a poll to see if we need another poll? :rolleyes: Or how about a couple of "seconds" to the motion of a new one? I second the idea of a new poll. If others are like me, they've tried some of the suggested browsers and compared them to their favorite. I think it'll make for a more informed poll.

[AKcrab]

I'lll second the second, or third the new poll. Where's my link to parliamentary procedure..

[Phil St. Romain]

OK, that's all I needed. A new poll it is, and I'll close this thread, leaving a link to it from the new one.

Thanks to all who participated. Now you can vote in the next primary. :)