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Safari 3 Faces Off Against Firefox July 10, 2007

Vinzy

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.

So where should we start? If you’ve been the Apple website, then you know where they want to start: the speed. Apple claims that Safari 3 is the fastest browser running on any platform - promising from only a beta version. 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.
speed

(From the Apple website)
On a side note, if you have ever used Opera, you would understand that Safari is much faster.
Speed Winner - Safari

Next we come upon tabbed browsing. Both browsers look nearly the exactly the same when it comes to this. Both have the options of opening and reloading tabs as well as saving them as bookmarks. When clicking and dragging to change the order, Safari does look nicer and allows you to see exactly where its going (below)
drag tabs safari

whereas Firefox just shows a green arrow (shown below). fire drag

Both allow you to save the tabbed pages as bookmarks, with Safari allowing you to save all of them together as one whereas Firefox makes a folder. The coolest feature of the tabs on Safari is that if you drag a tab out of the bar and into the window, you will see a thumbnail of the shot as you hold your mouse down. Simply let go and the page in that tab will then open in a new window or you can drag the tab into another window to open it in that window(shown below).
drag tabs

Tabbed Browsing Winner - Safari

How about looks/interface? Once again they are nearly identical although my opinion is that Safari looks a little more sleek. When it comes to the bookmarks bar the Apple advantage is that there is a small book to click on to open the bookmarks, whereas Firefox does not have that and you must click on bookmarks in the menu. This is a tough call as there isn’t much difference between the interface of the two. I will go with Safari because everything looks uniform - that being it is all white-black and every shade in between.
Interface Winner - Safari

Next we look at searching. I will admit that Firefox has Safari beat when it comes to web searches as Firefox allows you to choose between Google and Yahoo! as well as Amazon, Ebay, Answers.com and Creative Commons. So far, Safari only allows you to search using Google. Also another thing that Firefox does well is that it helps finish your searches for you once you start typing a few letters. This is also available if you have the Google Toolbar in Windows but for some reason the Google search on Safari does not have this feature yet.

(from Firefox)
Search Winner - Firefox

Now we get to actual browsing experience, which of course includes speed. One of the coolest features that Apple points out is the resizable text boxes - simply clicking the bottom right corner of the box and dragging it can save you from having to scroll and allow you to see more of your typing. Check it out below:

(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.
private

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.
Restore Session in Firefox

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.
Reopen Windows from Last Session in Safari

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.

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