Browser Wars – I’m really digging Safari
I have been an avid Firefox user since 1.0. It started mostly as an excuse to use something other than IE 6.0 and was one of my first forays into the anti-Microsoft movement. Prior to that, I had used Linux for servers, and tinkering but I wasn’t doing it for posterity, just because it appealed to me and was cool. But, I started to get the negative vibe from M$FT about the time Netscape folded so Firefox was a shoe in for me. I use it and encourage everyone I know to use it rather than IE.
On my Macs I’ve been mostly happy with Firefox, but I have to admit that it is slow. When Safari 4 came out I tried the beta and was pretty happy with it and only had a few unexplained crashes and only one of those caused me to lose some work (ironically, I was editing a WordPress entry when it crashed). I found myself using Firefox for the extensions (namely Delicious). Since the official release of Safari 4, it has become my primary browser on my Macs. The reason being speed; it is noticeably faster than Firefox. I even downloaded it on my PC so when I happen to have booted to Windoze, I run Safari.
I recently discovered DeliciousSafari and a few other extensions which work on my mac so I’m moving even further away from Firefox.
If Firefox wants to win me back, it’s got to do something about the speed. I notice it more and more now that I’m used to how fast Safari starts up, renders pages (cover flow, hot sites), etc.
On the anti-Microsoft movement, more recently than what I described in the first paragraph, I’ve tried to ditch Microsoft more and more (even though I am using Apple’s products, I just don’t get the evil vibe from Apple (but it may be coming)). For instance, I have several computers in my office and only run Windoze when necessary. My PCs are running Ubuntu and my Macs are running OS X. I do have to boot to Windoze on my gaming machine to play games, but that’s really the only time I’m running Windoze. I don’t use MS Office as there are alternatives (iWork, OpenOffice, Google Docs) that work well and only open documents in MS Office if I’m concerned that an export for a co-worker or client may have gone amuck.
