To help you get the most out of your mac!
In the weeks since its release, I’m sure that many of you have already downloaded the new beta version of Safari. Today I’m going to take you through a side by side comparison of the two in giving you a better understanding of them and letting you make the choice of which one you would like to use.
(From the Apple website)



(from Firefox)
(from Safari)
Both browsers have pop-up blockers built in with not much of a difference between them at all. Now one feature that both have is a find feature when searching through a web page. Safari takes the cake on this one because when it finds them it not only highlights the letters but they also pop out at you and the screen around it gets darker. Firefox simply highlights the text when you type letters in. Check out the comparison below – click on each picture for a bigger view.
Safari:

Firefox:

Safari has a feature called private browsing which essentially covers your “tracks” online by not saving any cookies, history and so forth. This is crucial when you browse the internet on public computers or on other people’s machines and you do not want to leave your tracks. Firefox does not have this option but that information can be deleted in just two clicks. Both browsers also have spellchecker which will underline dotted red lines under text it thinks you spelled wrong. An example is below.

Reopen windows from last session
What happens when you get an unexpected error when you are in the middle of typing something really long and your browser crashes and closes unexpectedly? Firefox has an awesome option to help when the program closes. It can automatically reopen everything you were working on including the text that you just typed! The next time you relaunch Firefox it will present you will the option to restore windows from the last session.

Safari, although it does not present you with such an option after an unexpected close, has a quite competitive new menu item called “Reopen All Windows From Last Session” that can be used at any time. Although it would have been nice to have Safari prompt you for this, I would still give Safari an edge over Firefox because even after quitting your browser voluntary you can still open all your last windows by going to the History menu item and select “Reopen All Windows From Last Session“. You no longer have to leave everything open at all times when you work with many windows on your browser, like me. You can safely close everything and the next time you launch Safari you can choose to reopen all your previous windows.

Overall Winner – Safari
I hope you enjoyed this quick comparison and I also hope it gave you a better idea of what to look for in a browser. Depending on what you use the internet for, either program could help your productivity.
The outside of the box said "Windows base machine or better", so I bought a Mac.
41 Responses to Safari 3 Faces Off Against Firefox
CoreLife » Blog Archive » Safari 3 VS Firefox 2
July 10th, 2007 at 4:37 pm
[...] In the weeks since its release, I’m sure that many of you have already downloaded the new beta version of Safari. MostOfMyMac.com takes you through a side by side comparison of the two in giving you a better understanding of them and letting you make the choice of which one you would like to use.read more | digg story [...]
alex
July 10th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I think firefox looks and feels much better, and that anything safari does, there is an extension for. True choice.
Let the flaming begin
Xipietotec
July 10th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
certain things are left out of this comparison:
Extensibility: Firefox wins hands down. In fact there’s an extension for resizing form fields.
Also, if you don’t like the way Firefox looks, you can change it, radically. Like say, my firefox shown here:
Also worth noting, is that firefox is bound to be slower on mac, because you have to run x11 on top of the default window manager in mac. Likewise, if you tweak the pipelining outside of their defaults, firefox is much more responsive.
The defaults are low, for slower computers.
Now, if you were testing this on windows, your results seem pretty interesting…since every other site ranked Safari lower on speed than both firefox and IE. Most curious indeed.
Xipietotec
July 10th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
seems it didn’t post my thumbnail, anyways a link to the picture is here:
http://img378.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenshot3en3.png
Safari 3 VS Firefox 2
July 10th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
[...] In the weeks since its release, I ’m sure that many of you have already downloaded the new beta version of Safari. Today I’m going to take you through a side by side comparison of the two in giving you a better understanding of them and letting you make the choice of which one you would like to use.read more | digg story [...]
John
July 10th, 2007 at 8:30 pm
you forgot the most important thing. When you do an upgrade from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0 it will wipe out your bookmarks without warning. If you don’t use your bookmarks on a daily basis, you may not notice until they are completely gone from your system.
Of course Safari still needs to fix the keyboard short cuts for switching between tabs, the current one is badly thought out and only works half the time.
Zomm
July 10th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
There is soo much missing in Safari it’s embarrassing.
It’s interface isn’t compliant with the basic requirements for those with poor eyesight and disabilities.. Who thinks grey text on dark grey background is a good idea.? Style over substance.
The open last session is nice.. does it remember the history on every individual tab as well? allowing you to hit “back” again and again on each tab? and does it remember any fields or text entry you were half way through entering? (Opera does and has for years).
Safari under windows is incredibly slow at scrolling and many functions.
The reality is that with the astounding array of extensions for Firefox it is vastly superior to Safari. Even straight out of the box it’s more suitable for most people due to the clean design etc.. And Safari certainly can’t be used in many Govt depts due to it’s inability to be made more compliant in the readability stakes..
Opera is much faster in many functions.
Safari has been tweaked to do better under the old (no updated in 3 years) iBench benchmarks.. Under most other situations it’s much slower.
Ram usage is higher.
etc.. etc…
Your super simplistic comparison does no one any good.
Chris
July 10th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Good post. I’ve been running the beta of Safari on my winbox and have noticed that it definitely has Firefox beat in speed.
I did want to note though, that most of the other things you mentioned which give Safari a one up on Firefox, can easily be incorporated into Firefox through various extensions. Granted, this is not as good as native support, but it does grant Firefox more of a competitive edge against Safari. As far as I know, Safari doesn’t support any sort of extension-system.
Anyways, nice work and thanks for the contribution.
Safari pour Windows, un bout de Mac dans votre PC ? « Proxilog, le blog !
July 10th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
[...] Une comparaison assez complète avec Firefox 2 est disponible ici : elle donne l’avantage à Safari… [...]
BTreeHugger
July 10th, 2007 at 10:21 pm
Several words of advice. First, be *very* specific when it comes to performance gains, or other functional metrics. That way at the very least people can take you seriously on those points. Say something like “Safari renders [page X] much more quickly” or “keyboard-browsing is more intuitive and responsive in Safari for pages like Digg” if that is what you mean. Citing the vendor’s official bar graphs will only be grounds for mockery of your post.
Secondly, rather than framing the subjective/cosmetic features as contests with winners and losers, simply frame it as explanations of why you the implementation in one browser over another. For instance, I much prefer the “little green arrow” that Firefox shows over Safari.. it’s purely a personal and subjective thing. But at least if you focus on why it’s more useful, TO YOU, people won’t have grounds to complain and you might at least spark a healthy debate rather than pointless flame-fests.
Finally, be careful when it comes to “missing or improved” features. If you claim a browser lacks a feature, there will be dozens of people to tell you why you are “wrong”. If you claim an improvement, see my second point – others will prefer the other way. Therefore you have to exhaust all possibilities carefully before you put your foot in your mouth. Firefox is *not* an easy target to pick on, because there are so many addons available that it’s likely one already exists that tips the balance of your argument in favor of Firefox.
Ens
July 10th, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Hey idiots, have you noticed the title of this webpage? MostofmyMac.com this has nothing to do with the Windows version of Safari, and to the guy that says that the Mac version of Firefox needs X11 to run, that is also BS. Think before you post
Mac Thinker
July 10th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
It doesn’t matter buddies, this is still relevant as firefox and safari are not two browsers working on both windows and mac…
Dr.Dichotomous
July 10th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
I’m not complaining about your personal preferences here.. but why aren’t you comparing an alpha Firefox to this alpha-ish beta of Safari? Firefox 3 is buggy, granted, but so is Safari 3. At least you could compare speed and features “as they will be”..
Mac Thinker
July 11th, 2007 at 12:06 am
Firefox still has a great advantage over Safari which is all the open source development of plugins and extensions around it. Unless Safari opens up their browser to such things I do not think that Firefox will ever die or so. I think that Safari will simply become a great alternative to users who want simplicity and coolness…
Apple really did a great job with Safari. And by the way for windows users, more features and available on Mac Safari than the windows version. This speed and user experience in the end is what matters…
I think Firefox can still catchup to some of the cool features of Safari, but maybe not without copying…
Jim
July 11th, 2007 at 12:29 am
“Safari has a feature called private browsing which essentially covers your “tracks” online by not saving any cookies, history and so forth. This is crucial when you browse the internet on public computers or on other people’s machines and you do not want to leave your tracks. Firefox does not have this option but that information can be deleted in just two clicks.”
There’s an extension called Stealther that does the same thing.
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1306
Safari 3 Faces off Against Firefox « Jak’s Life 2.0
July 11th, 2007 at 1:11 am
[...] 3 Faces off Against Firefox Jump to Comments In the first category, speed Safari is the clear winner loading a page in 2.14 seconds and Firefoxtaking 3.67 seconds to render the page. (Source) I personally love this difference, it might just be a placebo effect but everything seems so much faster using Safari 3. Next up is tabbed browsing, both browsers have it and allow you to use it easily, except when moving a tab in Safari you can actually see where it is going. In Firefox you have no clue where it’s going to end up, it’s more of a gamble than a convenience. And to go along with tabbed browsing and it’s looks comes overall appearances and because I am a mac fan boy I’ve gotta agree with MostOfMyMac.com and say that Safari has the best looks. Although when you need things it’s always handy to be able to find it well and with Firefox, searching is the easiest and most flexible (due to ability to change search engine). And lastly to restore a lost session you will find it easiest in Safari. Firefox makes you choose if you’d like to start a new session right when you open the app. But with Safari you are able to go into the history menu and chose restore previous session at any time during your new session. [...]
Ali
July 11th, 2007 at 1:16 am
I’ve tried all different kinds of browsers, but I cant live without Firefox’s extension. Firefox for mac is not as good as is on other platforms but no other browser has its power and extensibility either. I am a web developer and I cant imagine a day without firebug or scrapbook extensions
Kimble
July 11th, 2007 at 3:11 am
For some reason Apple is scared to _death_ by the thought that random people can customize their products. Just look at the iPhone, a great product they have put a lot of effort in restricting. Hello! Who creates a cellphone in 2007 that doesn’t allow you to change the background image?!
That’s Firefox real strength, all the plugins that lets you tweak and customize the browser to your personal needs. If your a webdeveloper you install webdeveloper plugings and so on..
Safari 3 VS Firefox 2 « Computer newsletter and security information
July 11th, 2007 at 8:14 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Chris
July 11th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Firefox is much better. End of story.
Konrad
July 11th, 2007 at 10:08 am
“Benchmark performance showed that it is faster in HTML performance, JavaScript performance as well as Application Launching compared not only to Firefox but IE and Opera also.”
This is outrageous lie. Safari is one of the slowest browser, as slow as IE7 (not previous versions, mind you). Opera is the fastest browser, Firefox is slower (not much), and both browsers beat IE7 and Safari hands down in page loading and scrolling. On Windows, of course.
Vinzy
July 11th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Hey guys – First of all I want to clarify that this was tested on a Mac.
I am responding to all the people who talk about the extensions – yes, Firefox is nice that it has all those, but I was doing a strict comparison downloading the two and running through them. I wasn’t searching around for tweaks as you can see.
And a question for you, why should I have to search around online for extensions when I can just use a browser that already has a bunch of those features?
onlooker
July 11th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Hope the look and feel of safari is better than Firefox. I won’t accept with regard to functionality. There are plenty of add-ons available with Firefox. The users are comforted with the shortcut keys and really safari browser lags in the race. Myself got frustrated when the shortcut key F6 is not projecting over to Address bar in Safari. One more to add upon, when tabbed browser is restored, effects had beed added upon and it could be irritating for the frequent browsers.
Firefox has a disadvantage, when an updation of version, the bookmarks are deleted without any further notification.(I am not sure if it happens only to me, expect comments regarding this)
http://npselvan.wordpress.com
dakira
July 11th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Hi.
You can forget these speedtests since Safari (not necessarily intentionally) cheats. To do such speedtests the javascript onLoad event is used. In all browsers except Safari this event is fired when all of the page is loaded (layout is completely rendered and such). In Safari on the other hand, the onLoad event is fired BEFORE anything else is done, falsifying most results. The only real way to test Safaris speed is to use a regular stopwatch.
Source: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/safaribenchmarks.html
genium
July 11th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Well, on my GNU/Linux Debian Etch system, the overall winner is Firefox (yes, better than iceweasel, opera…). Sorry, i can’t test safari on my machine
justanotherbody
July 11th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
The option to open all your windows from last session is part of firefox 2.x on both PC and *nix. Perhaps it didn’t make it to Mac, but I can’t image that would have been left out. Works exactly as if firefox crashed and you select the ‘restore session’ option.
Also, I get this is a mac biased posting, but if the interfaces are essentially the same put ‘tied’
Normally I wouldn’t bother, but when a post gets the crap digged out of it, it helps if it is somewhat accurate. This isn’t foxnews people!
Kate
July 11th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Safari still in beta, so i guess there’ll be improvement in final release.
There is why that’s firefox is more love, it’s flexibility. Extension and see flock social browser, its engine based on firefox 1.5
drumblius
July 12th, 2007 at 4:43 am
From the beginning of the article, it’s obvious that reviewer is on safari side.
I mean with statements like this “On a side note, if you have ever used Opera, you would understand that Safari is much faster.” you are going nowhere else except apple’s butt.
What’s the point of review based on “you know what I mean, it’s just faster” when no calculations where made. And again, comparing things like tabbs are inserted nicier arren’t very useful.
althow I’m big fan of opera, this time my vote goes fo firefox.
crappy review.
Nima Hejazi
July 14th, 2007 at 2:42 am
Safari has significant problem in showing Persian language. You totally cannot read websites in Persian and (maybe) Arabic languages.
Jack Sleight
July 16th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Just so you know, Firefox has an identical menu item to Safari to restore the last session, in addition to the prompt after an unexpected exit. It’s in “History” > “Restore from last session…”.
Mac Thinker
July 16th, 2007 at 11:34 am
They probably copied it from Safari to catch you rather quickly. The problem with firefox is that they can get away copying features from other browser it seems like…
Safari porté sur Windows
July 16th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
[...] Il est déjà comparé aux résultats de Firefox 2 et est dit plus performant… [...]
Chris
August 3rd, 2007 at 5:03 am
Watch the fastest browser running on any platform in action – very revealing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX1ZY4ASHsM
Mark Davidson
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:41 am
I’ve been using the restore session feature of firefox option for ages: you just have to set it in preferences and it automatically restores your last session when you reopen it.
Also, you failed to mention the different ways they deal with RSS feeds (IMO a major part of browsing).
Personally I love the live bookmark feature firefox has, allowing you to easily see headlines from your favourite blog/news site without changing what you’re viewing. However, I know others prefer Safari’s way of doing it: with a new tab that shows all the headlines, as well as how many you have yet to read.
I still prefer firefox because of its customizable search bar and live bookmarks feature. Regardless of the improvements apple has added to Safari.
Raihan Hasnain
August 9th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
just had a head to head comparison.
today im having connection problem, my target was to see which one loads windows live mail faster.
I entered the address on Safari and then firefox (well actually Gran Paradiso).
Firefox took less than a minute to let me read and delete the mail.
And Safari took 7 minutes to do the same.
Winner: Firefox.
Doug-at-large » Blog Archive » Safari 3 vs Firefox on the Mac
September 1st, 2007 at 1:23 pm
[...] http://www.mostofmymac.com/articles/safari-3-faces-off-against-firefox/ [...]
Alper
October 20th, 2007 at 9:12 am
I definitely prefer firefox over all others, not just safari. But If I make a list, especially for usability
1. Firefox
2. Opera
3. Camino
4. Internet Explorer (mac)
5. Safari
Safari is not a bad browser (none of the above is).
But it needs much much higher flexibility for an advanced web user. If a safari user wants many of the firefox’s options (not to mention countless add-ons)
he or she needs some commercial add-ons. What a pity!
Mark SoftWare Top » Safari 3 VS Firefox 2
November 1st, 2007 at 11:42 am
[...] read more | digg story [...]
Nathaniel
December 11th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
Well, I do believe some of this article is correct, but if you get one the firefox plugins, it will look exactly like safari, so interface is really a neutral.
Also, when running on a windows machine, safari kind of . . .crashes. A lot.
thanks
January 5th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I for one appreciated your review. Thanks for taking the time to post.
ValleyBoy
February 24th, 2008 at 1:48 am
I’m disappointed with this review. I agree with another poster that the review was biased against Firefox from the beginning. I was hoping this review would help me understand and characterize the performance of each browser. It did, but just a little.
1) The benchmarks are from Apple. They are not independent numbers. So, the data is useless. As others have noted, Safari “cheats” on the benchmarks, so the numbers are suspect.
2) The reviewer is fundamentally ignorant of the features of Firefox, which includes the extensions. The excuse that the comparisons were “right out the box” doesn’t make much sense. People pick and chose which extensions they use so that the core product won’t be loaded down with all the other useless crap they don’t need. That’s the entire point of the extensions: keep the core product small and fast. This is the same principle as the Mach kernal, the heart of Max OS X.
3) Safari’s restriction of searching using only Google is almost unforgivable. In the June 2007 PCWorld review, 3 of the 4 Yahoo search properties beat Google for text search. So, Safari restricts you to using an INFERIOR search engine.
Also, the search completion feature mentioned as a part of Safari is actually part of the Google search, and both Yahoo and Google have that as part of Safari.
4) Safari’s exclusion of the keyboard shortcut for making all tabs into a bookmark is really ackward for me. Apple actually *removed* the existing Firefox shortcut for this. Why ? The function is still there, just the shortcut is gone.
Finally, As I understand, Safari *IS* Firefox with a different rendering engine. Therfore, the claims made in the comments that Firefox copies Safari are uninformed. In any case, I’m assuming as decent engineers that take the best features and incorporate that into their own product.
5) I’m still looking for a Safari extension like FireFox Flashblock. With my old PC, with about 15 tabs or so, Flash ads took over the CPU (97% or so). Even though I have 8 CPU’s on my new machine, that is a tremendous waste of time that Safari imposes on my machine.
I wish this review had been more helpful. It was in a small way, but it leaves out a whole lot, and I’m definitely not a browser/web expert.
And yeah, my new Mac Pro *ROCKS*