My friend Andrew pointed out in my post on FireFox 3.0b5 that it was too late to get him to try it, since he’d just given up on FireFox, switched to Safari, and wasn’t looking back. I’ve just made the switch too, after finding FireFox 3.0b5 both just as unstable as 2.0.0.14 and subject to some annoying rendering bugs and random thunks. I can’t just abandon FireFox — the web developer and FireBug extensions are just too damn useful — but it’s not going to be my daily browser for the foreseeable future.
For a long time, Safari has had the distinction of being producing the best looking web pages, and running JavaScript really fast (whether it’s the fastest is a matter of debate, but it sure feels quick). It has a better feature set than Internet Explorer (canvas support, anyone?), and supports a bunch of CSS extensions, such as shadows under text, that no-one else does.
And, frankly, it has the cleanest and most attractive user interface.
Most importantly for me, Safari’s Develop menu (which used to be its Debug menu) offers something of an alternative to the Web Developer plugin for FireFox. Although Drosera (the Safari JavaScript debugger) has been around for some time, it’s not yet part of the Safari release, and getting it is something of a chore. You need to download the Nightly Build (source code) and then “attach” Drosera to either Safari or WebKit (the open source version of Safari). Even if I could be bothered, Safari still lacks a few of the Web Developer plugin’s best features, such as the ability to see the generated HTML you’re looking at.
But, as a basic, daily browser — I’m afraid Safari has FireFox beat for now.
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