Firefox 3 versus Safari 3.1

My adventures with Firefox have generally ended badly. I’ve always found it to be sluggish and bloated. Start time and page renderings frustrated me, and after a few days of what I said would be a weeklong test I would give in and return to my browser of choice: Safari.

Nonetheless, with every new improvement, I download a Firefox update and toy around with it, trying to figure out what the fuss is all about. (I’ve done the same with OmniWeb and Camino, but never have I developed the love-hate relationship I have with Firefox.)

Then came Firefox 3, specifically FF3 Beta 2. FF3 was going to be more “Mac like”, and that intrigued me. Of course, the theme was still an add-on, but I could live with that.

The address bar was improved, bookmarks had tagging ability, the memory leak problem had been fixed and it was faster! The early reviews were intriguing, but I knew what was going to happen. What always happens was going to happen. I would download it, play with it a few days and then close it in disgust and violently rip it from my dock (well, as violently as you can rip a program from your dock.)

But a funny thing happened. I actually liked it. It felt good to use. Some of the features that I loved about it seemed to work better. It had advantages to Safari that made me not want to go back. And while I did go back and I largely skipped Beta 3, I’ve returned for Beta 4 and am giving Firefox the long-deserved test run it deserves.

Why? Several reasons.

Speed and rendering

Finally Firefox gives me the speed I need in a browser. Make no mistake, overall Safari is faster. Still, the difference in speed is not that noticeable. And on some sites, Firefox wins. I’m good with this new speed improvement.

The other big drawback, until now, was the way Firefox rendered pages. No other browser has ever done what Safari does with fonts. Reading pages in Safari is easy. Your eyes don’t strain. It’s a beautiful rendition of the text. Firefox 2 was abysmal. Not readable. Horribly ugly.

In Firefox 3, things are much improved. No need for Vi-sine as your browse. (See MacWorld for a quick comparison of text rendering — and a better review of FF3.)

Bookmarks

I admit that I hate bookmarks. They are wildly useful but hard to tame. I have hundreds upon hundreds of bookmarks that I routinely have to go and trim ever so often.

And bookmark functionality has never been well done. A single keyboard shortcut (usually Command-D) was about the extent of usefulness in bookmark implementation in Safari. Not being able to sort bookmarks alphabetically within folders (which can be done now, but it must be all bookmarks at once) is a nuisance.

But my biggest problem was organization. Del.icio.us answered the question with tags for bookmarks. The ability to sort and search by tags and then see what else was out there based on those tags revolutionized the way people browse with bookmarks.

Still, I hated having to use del.icio.us just to access bookmarks that I may not use every day but use frequently enough for the extra steps to be a nuisance. So I engaged Quicksilver to do the work for me, and that bit of functionality works well. (I’m a Quicksilver disciple.) I can search my del.icio.us tags and bookmarks from Quicksilver and launch what I need into my browser.

In the end, though, I want my core bookmarks native to my browser. I want to search by tags so that I do not worry about hierarchal filing of every last little site I bookmark.

Voila. Firefox 3 addresses my need, and it does so well. First, it adds tags to bookmarks. This is nice, but not revolutionary. Also, it defaults your bookmarks to an “Unfiled” folder so you can come back and clean up at your leisure.

Furthermore, it adds a set of Smart Bookmarks to your bookmarks bar. These show you recently bookmarked sites, recently used tags and the sites you visit the most.

One bit of functionality that is not native that should be is a menu item inside bookmark bar folders that allows you to add a bookmark to that particular folder. You can get this through an add-on.

Address bar functionality

Firefox 3 has a more intuitive address bar. When you begin typing the Web address, it provides you with smarter lists of addresses than does Safari. Instead of just a list of addresses, you get page titles with the addresses below it. But that’s just the beginning.

You can type a part of the page title or the address (say “store” for Apple Store or store.apple.com) and Firefox will find it and throw it toward the top of your list.

You can also search your bookmarks by tags in the address bar. For instance, typing in “research” will bring up a list of my sites that are tagged with “research”, complete with a tag icon that lets you know an address was found based on a tag and not on either page title or address.

RSS feeds

I’ve never used an add-on or a browser’s native RSS reading functionality for very long. The plug-ins in Firefox were never given a good shot based on my quick frustration with the program in the past. And neither Safari nor Firefox has good enough implementation of RSS reading at this time, though I’m hoping one eventually does.

Instead, I use Google Reader. Why? I’ll tell you later, but if you do not use it then I encourage you to give it a try.

That said, Firefox allows (and has since Firefox 2) a user to add feeds to Google Reader just as you would add a feed to Firefox itself or to a standalone application. Safari allows only adding the feed to Safari or to a standalone app. This lack of functionality is a real hinder to my workflow when I have to copy a feed address, open Google Reader and manually add the feed.

With Firefox, it’s a 1-2-3 step process that is seamless from feed to reader.

Zoom, zoom, zoom

Another improved functionality of Firefox 3 is its zoom capabilities. I use two monitors that are both set back on my desk. From time to time, my tired eyes demand larger print.

Until now, zooming in on a Web page more than about two times destroyed the page. The reason: Graphic elements were left alone, causing them to crowd into growing text. It was sloppy, first-generation implementation in second- and third-generation Web browsers.

Firefox 3 gets it right. When you zoom, now your images are zoomed proportionately as well. While you will see some natural degeneration of your images, you see a proportional Web page that is easier to read. Terrific!

Add-ons and plug-ins

Firefox 3 gets add-ons right for those of us who do not want to bloat our browser but still like a few frills.

With Firefox 2 on a Mac, every new add-on seemed to slow my browser by a fraction of a second. Given that Safari was (and still remains) the faster browser, slowing down was a big strike against Firefox 2.

However, now I can add-on my favorite frills and not be set back any real speed. Too, restarting Firefox is much quicker, so I don’t get “buyers remorse” waiting on the program to reload with my new toy attached.

To note: Some add-ons still do not work with Firefox 3. This includes some mighty important ones, like del.icio.us buttons, will not be available until the next version of the bookmarking network is launched.

Tab selections

I love being able to select tabs with the command key. Command-1 gives me my first tab, Command-2 my second tab, Command-3 my third tab and so on and so forth.

For someone who continually has multiple tabs going at once, usually for research or Web development, being able to quickly choose my tabs via my keyboard without having to flip through them is an absolute must.

This is not new in Firefox 3, but it is one of the reasons that Firefox has always been ahead of Safari, which selects bookmarks when using the Command key in conjunction with a number key. (This is also wildly useful, but I mimic this behavior with a Quicksilver trigger with my targets being Command-Option-Number.)

Style

Ironically, it’s Firefox 3’s overall look and style that keeps me coming back for more. Under Tiger, Safari was downright ugly. I used Saft to get an Aqua look, which made it bearable. Still, it was ugly.

Under Leopard, the unified look helps. Still, it has no pizzazz. It lacks the simple elegance that most Apple products have. Instead, it’s just simple.

On the flip side, Firefox 2 looked too cartoonish for me. I hate a bunch of toolbars and gaudy colored buttons. And the Mac themes of old were little better than Safari.

So the developers over at Mozilla put a bit of time into the “look and feel” of Firefox 3. They knew Mac users are a picky lot (and we are). So with substance, they wanted to add style.

Thankfully, they finally got it right. On a Mac, you get a native theme that feels like a Mac application. It is far more attractive than Safari. My only knock could be that the top tool bar is just a little deep, eating up a bit more screen real estate than it has too. Still, it is not enough to really matter.

Style may not be important to you, but it is to me. And enjoying the look and feel of the app I use as much as anything else on my computer is an absolute must!

Shortcomings

Firefox 3 is not without its shortcomings. The main one is the way it handles pdf’s. If you encounter a pdf with FF3, it downloads it to your desktop and leaves clutter. That’s a HUGE no-no for someone like me, who 90 percent of the time has a beautiful, black desktop with absolutely NOTHING on it.

To get around this, you can use the PDF Download add-on, but it doesn’t fully fix your problem. With the right settings, it will open your pdf in your default reader without downloading it, but the title is replaced with html naming conventions, which makes it difficult to rename if you decide to save the pdf. (This may work better with an Acrobat Reader plug-in. I’ve not tried it since I don’t have Reader installed.)

The other pdf-related functionality that Safari beats Firefox on is printing. Firefox 3 lacks the ability to natively export a page as a pdf. Instead, you have to print it and use Leopard’s built-in pdf drivers. However, the pdf that is rendered does not look like the page you viewed.

If you just need the nuts and bolts of the page, this will suffice. If you need a representational pdf of the page and its full contents, you’ll have to switch over to Safari for your pdf print needs.

I get around this by using Journler and dropping the FF3 page into it. That creates an archive of the page, which I can then print as a pdf in almost perfect form. (Journler, by the way, is a great piece of software. I’ll share with you my workflow in it later.)

Taking her for a spin

It was a few weeks ago when I killed off FF3b2. What got me was the pdf and no Web Archives. I’ve learned to live with the lack of great pdf functionality, and I’ve figured out a great workaround with Journler for my Web archives.

But even before doing so with FF3b4, I found myself remembering fondly my last interlude with the browser. It was a love-hate affair that finally found love. And so far, now a full week into using Firefox 3, I may have finally settled in with a new browser of choice.

Remember, this is still beta software, but it is thought to be about one or two steps away from its final form. Either way, it is a stable version that I have used with no real problems.