One weekend chore: regressing from OmniWeb to Safari, because the former is just too slow and leaky under Tiger.
If OmniWeb moves to the new Webkit, I may return, but the browser has many lingering stability and performance problems that, over time, offset its otherwise insanely great experience.
The web browser scene on OS X is still crappy. Think about it:
- Safari has grown into adept handling of the basics, but doesn’t really do much;
- Firefox’s Mac port is terrible, totally phoned in;
- Camino manages to somehow combine the limitations of Safari with the shitty user experience of Firefox;
- a plague of marginal or experimental browsers (iCab, Shiira, Trailblazer) offer interesting features and half-baked implementation;
- Opera boasts useless 20th-century junk such as integrated e-mail at the cool price of $40 — twice as much as OmniWeb, the other commercial, non-bundled browser; and
- OmniWeb is close to perfect, if you have the mega amounts of horsepower to run it.
This is, of course, much better than it was a few years ago, when OS X stunk and Internet Explorer was the browser of “choice.”
George Hotelling | 27-Jun-05 at 9:12 am | Permalink
I read somewhere—most likely in my chair staring at my computer—that Firefox is planning to “go native” in 1.5. I think that meant that it would use Cocoa, which would hopefully alleviate some of the shittiness. Plus, it would mean the cool stuff like Greasemonkey and the cool stuff like Ctrl-Cmd-D dictionary lookups would work in the same browser.
I’m worried that the Intel announcement will interfere with the development effort, but not for any particular reason. I just thought this would be a good place to latch on my fear of the Intel announcment.
For your recrods, I spend 90% of my time in Firefox.
Brian | 27-Jun-05 at 10:09 am | Permalink
Yeah, the Mozilla Foundation hired Josh Aas to work on the Mac ports — I have high hopes, but as they say, hope is not a plan.