I'm giving up on Firefox on the Mac. I'm using it for the extensions and since they seem to crash it, it's back to Safari.
2 years, 6 months ago.
54 comments so far
It took you that long? I figured that out long ago. Safari for primary browsing, and a few bookmarks on Firefox for the Safari-hostile sites (like vox.com, sadly).
wow..I couldn't live without my Firefox on mac. I have Firefox for main browsing, Camino for bills, and Safari for apple site. I just never really have like Safari from day one. It always seems so slow. My Firefox rarely crashes.
Really? It struggles on the Mac? I haven't had problems with the Windows version... And when I had an iBook (before it blew up), Firefox worked for me at the time. I didn't use a ton of extensions though, so that could be it.
Firefox is rock solid for me on Linux but I know a lot of people have trouble with it on all platforms. I dunno if it's just skill or blind luck on my part..... I'd like to say skill though :)
Omniweb Leo!! It has all the goodness of Webkit and added features like thumbnail tabs, multi-engine search configurable with shortcuts to use in the address bar and it does .Mac syncinig of bookmarks with your other computers too.
Do you think maybe Mozilla should have an approved extension testing process, so that everyone can still make extensions but if you get an approved extension it's been tested and okayed by someone at Mozilla to ensure it's not a crash merchant? Wow that was a long sentance... and breath ;)
Leo, I have been using Safari with an extention called "saft". Its cheap and very useful. It gives you a lot of the firefox extensions can give you such as stored sessions, crash recovery, add banner blockers, changing to the aqua interface, and a really great feature that puts your download into dated folders so you can keep track of what you downloaded when.
Yeah, I normally use Safari and whenever I need to edit my Vox, I use Camino or Firefox. I'm convinced that Safari is the best overall browser for OS X.
I used Safari when I first went back to a Mac but found it to be a bit of a memory hog. Then I heard Scott Bourne recommend Camino on MBW and like it a lot. Safari does seem to handle java sites better but that could just be my perception.
The link for saft is here: http://haoli.dnsalias.com/Saft/index.html This extention is 10 dollars, but when you look at all it does its worth it. I know you're gonna say that firefox extensions are free but there's something to be said to have it all in one package and to be able to use it in safari.
I've found Firefox to be rock solid on my mac - and I've found Safari to be the flake. Many sites I run into don't like how Safari handles things, and to avoid frustration, I just use Firefox. Although, I miss the extension that makes FF look like Safari as it doesn't work anymore after 2.0.
I've never really had problems, but I keep my f'fox as lean as possible...I use only about four extensions on a regular basis. Too many and it slows down too far, even if f'fox did stay stable.
The newest version of Firefox is really slow to start up, but once it comes up it's fine. I guess I should try disabling the add-ons one at time and see if they're the culprits. I use safari for bank ing because of the private browsing feature. I'm always forgetting to empty the cache on the other browsers.
It could be your extensions. I've only been using Firefox 1.5 on my Mac mini. I have Tabbrowser Extensions, SessionSaver and Adblock. On my MacBook, I have Firefox 2.0 with TabMix, Session Manager and Adblock Plus. Both rarely crash.
@seagoon - "I'm always forgetting to empty the cache" I use an extension called Distrust which allows me to effectively do private browsing, you can just toggle it on and off with the little icon in the statusbar. I don't know how it runs on Mac though sorry. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1559
Safari is a joke. I'll stick with Firefox - it never crashes for me and the extensions are vital as far as I'm concerned. I used to use camino back on PPC days but Firefox is better now.
I think I'm the only mac user at my office (out of a dozen or so) that uses Firefox. It very rarely crashes on me, but I think Mozilla can do a lot to make extensions better (especially in memory usage)
I like Safari, but it seems to choke a lot on dynamically rendered content. Firefox freezes up on my Mac and Linux boxes, but I use plenty of extensions. If the problem is the extensions, is Safari more stable than Firefox without extensions? It doesn't seem to be.
I love all the functionality of Firefox with the add-on's and all. But, it hogs about 25% of my cpu just sitting there doing nothing. All the other browsers suck way less (pun intended).
"Do you know how stupid you made yourself, Safari is an Apple Browser and it uses the same rendering engine as Firefox." - hold a mirror up. What you just said is wrong. Safari uses KHTML. Camino and Firefox use the Gecko engine.
I love firefox, but it has been very unstable on both of my macs. I've deleted all extensions I don't use constantly and it still crashes all the time. :(
I have very few FF extensions (that I don't use and which will be disabled when I restart FF, which I never do) and it acts fairly well ... hasn't crashed in a couple of weeks. I have 12 tabs open currently. on Mac OS X 10.4.8 with 2 GB RAM.
In a development environment, Firefox with FireBug and the Web Developer toolbar is an incredible tool. If it crashes occasionally, FF's ability to restore the session balances it to the point that it's the best solution for me right now. For someone like Leo, where speed and reliability are more important, FF might not be ideal. To each his/her own, I guess.
firefox used to run just fine on my mac, but lately it seams to be freezing a lot. Still have to figure out what the problem is, maybe some extension of sort. Coudn't live without it though.
@composit - "To each his/her own, I guess." Well said, I totally agree.
I think thats the bottom line here. Everyone has their own set of requirements and priorities, software is rarely a one size fits all commodity... like so many other things in life really ;)
@SU182 Duuuude. You better check your facts before you go calling someone stupid. Safari DOES NOT use the same engine as FireFox. FireFox uses the Mozilla projects Gecko rendering engine. Safari uses WebKit which is based on the KHTML rendering engine from the KDE project.
I'm going to start removing extensions until it gets reliable again. But 2.0 just never seemed all that stable to me in the first place. Here are the extensions I was using:
I have all of the extensions you mentioned Leo except for Stumbleupon and Firefox seems to be very stable. I have a few more extensions on top of that too. Are you sure it's extensions?
I actually highly recommend Shiira. I've been using the 2.0 for the past month or so and I really love it. I use Camino as a back up for websites that refuse to work with the browser, but I much prefer the pleasing look of Shiira as a browser. The full screen mode (which I use for cooking), for instance, is absolutely stunning.
I think it's probably a combination of overloading Firefox with extensions and bugs in some of them. I have StumbleUpon, Distrust & NoScript on mine and it's rock solid (touch wood), only ever crashed once or twice in 6 months and I can forgive it that. I'm on Ubuntu Linux though I don't know if thats relevant ;)
We all love playing around with the latest and greatest extensions but I very rarely find ones that I will use regularly. I think it's a good idea to remove any extensions that you don't really use or at least disable them. Some extensions are more power hungry than others and having too many just bloats the browser to death I think. It's kinda weird because you would think "I should be able to have as many extensions as I want" and ideally you should but you should also be able to run as many programs as you want at once with no problems, in reality there are always limits imposed by the hardware.
I've got four extensions running on my Windows Firefox: del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Google Notebook, and AdBlock (if you people haven't downloaded AdBlock, do it now. Greatest extension ever), and it works great.
Leo, try either Googling or Stumbling through the Firefox option for Firefox Fixes. There's a list of options that you can tweek in Firefox to improve performance, and reduce the amount of memory it eats up. (I do realize that giving Tech advice to you is like giving tips to Jesus on what kind of bread goes with the wine). So if you haven't done that, maybe that will fix what ails you.
If you have, then I'll go back to listening to the podcasts and leave the dispensing of knowledge to you and others.
The problem with Safari is that it doesn't render the colors in photos accurately. I am heavily into digital photography so this is a serious problem for me personally. Reference here if you aren't familiar with what I am referring to:
twalker: I thought Safari was profile savvy but firefox assumed everything is in sRGB? That's why I use sRGB when I post to flickr 'cause you never know what browser someone will use to view your photos...
@roderashe -- Safari is profile aware. It's when there isn't a profile that the problem arises. In that case, Firefox assigns sRGB which is usually at least close if not correct. Safari however assigns the monitor profile to these images which in some cases can be pretty far off and give you funky colors.
2.0 is what made me go back to Safari. It seemed like 2.0 was crashing all the time, even when I turned off all of my extensions. Now I only use Firefox if necessary, otherwise it is Safari and Camino for me, with some Flock and Opera mixed in occasionally.
54 comments so far
It took you that long? I figured that out long ago. Safari for primary browsing, and a few bookmarks on Firefox for the Safari-hostile sites (like vox.com, sadly).
2 years, 6 months ago by merlyn
Camino doesn't offer any of the advantages of either Safari or FIrefox. It's not compatible with Firefox extensions, and it's not enough like Safari.
2 years, 6 months ago by merlyn
Is that ma clover, or mac lover? :)
2 years, 6 months ago by merlyn
wow..I couldn't live without my Firefox on mac. I have Firefox for main browsing, Camino for bills, and Safari for apple site. I just never really have like Safari from day one. It always seems so slow. My Firefox rarely crashes.
2 years, 6 months ago by computerwheelie
Really? It struggles on the Mac? I haven't had problems with the Windows version... And when I had an iBook (before it blew up), Firefox worked for me at the time. I didn't use a ton of extensions though, so that could be it.
2 years, 6 months ago by mcconnell
Camino all the way! I've been using Camino ever since I got a Mac.
2 years, 6 months ago by shooby
Firefox is rock solid for me on Linux but I know a lot of people have trouble with it on all platforms. I dunno if it's just skill or blind luck on my part..... I'd like to say skill though :)
2 years, 6 months ago by dantheman
Omniweb Leo!! It has all the goodness of Webkit and added features like thumbnail tabs, multi-engine search configurable with shortcuts to use in the address bar and it does .Mac syncinig of bookmarks with your other computers too.
Gecko is teh suk anyway. :D
2 years, 6 months ago by troubledwine
I didn't know it was unstable on a mac platform.
2 years, 6 months ago by SU182
Do you think maybe Mozilla should have an approved extension testing process, so that everyone can still make extensions but if you get an approved extension it's been tested and okayed by someone at Mozilla to ensure it's not a crash merchant? Wow that was a long sentance... and breath ;)
2 years, 6 months ago by dantheman
Camino was my main browser before Firefox. I just love Firefox. Can't live without it. Thunderbird rocks too.
2 years, 6 months ago by computerwheelie
Leo, I have been using Safari with an extention called "saft". Its cheap and very useful. It gives you a lot of the firefox extensions can give you such as stored sessions, crash recovery, add banner blockers, changing to the aqua interface, and a really great feature that puts your download into dated folders so you can keep track of what you downloaded when.
2 years, 6 months ago by Gizmo8500
Yeah, I normally use Safari and whenever I need to edit my Vox, I use Camino or Firefox. I'm convinced that Safari is the best overall browser for OS X.
2 years, 6 months ago by corsairstw
I dont know how I would deal with not being able to use all my firefox extensions, damn I have too many
2 years, 6 months ago by charholly9
Hey Gizmo8500, what's the url for "Saft" extension? Thanks in advance....
2 years, 6 months ago by grizzleduser
I used Safari when I first went back to a Mac but found it to be a bit of a memory hog. Then I heard Scott Bourne recommend Camino on MBW and like it a lot. Safari does seem to handle java sites better but that could just be my perception.
2 years, 6 months ago by dann
The link for saft is here: http://haoli.dnsalias.com/Saft/index.html This extention is 10 dollars, but when you look at all it does its worth it. I know you're gonna say that firefox extensions are free but there's something to be said to have it all in one package and to be able to use it in safari.
2 years, 6 months ago by Gizmo8500
I've found Firefox to be rock solid on my mac - and I've found Safari to be the flake. Many sites I run into don't like how Safari handles things, and to avoid frustration, I just use Firefox. Although, I miss the extension that makes FF look like Safari as it doesn't work anymore after 2.0.
2 years, 6 months ago by digitalvision
I've never really had problems, but I keep my f'fox as lean as possible...I use only about four extensions on a regular basis. Too many and it slows down too far, even if f'fox did stay stable.
2 years, 6 months ago by johnhoffoss
The newest version of Firefox is really slow to start up, but once it comes up it's fine. I guess I should try disabling the add-ons one at time and see if they're the culprits. I use safari for bank ing because of the private browsing feature. I'm always forgetting to empty the cache on the other browsers.
2 years, 6 months ago by seagoon
It could be your extensions. I've only been using Firefox 1.5 on my Mac mini. I have Tabbrowser Extensions, SessionSaver and Adblock. On my MacBook, I have Firefox 2.0 with TabMix, Session Manager and Adblock Plus. Both rarely crash.
2 years, 6 months ago by mjedi
@seagoon - "I'm always forgetting to empty the cache" I use an extension called Distrust which allows me to effectively do private browsing, you can just toggle it on and off with the little icon in the statusbar. I don't know how it runs on Mac though sorry. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1559
2 years, 6 months ago by dantheman
I second the motion... I dragged Firefox off of my dock a few months ago. Safari is best, except when something needs Firefox to render or whatnot.
2 years, 6 months ago by Vermyndax
Safari is a joke. I'll stick with Firefox - it never crashes for me and the extensions are vital as far as I'm concerned. I used to use camino back on PPC days but Firefox is better now.
2 years, 6 months ago by danhendricks
I think I'm the only mac user at my office (out of a dozen or so) that uses Firefox. It very rarely crashes on me, but I think Mozilla can do a lot to make extensions better (especially in memory usage)
2 years, 6 months ago by airen
I like Safari, but it seems to choke a lot on dynamically rendered content. Firefox freezes up on my Mac and Linux boxes, but I use plenty of extensions. If the problem is the extensions, is Safari more stable than Firefox without extensions? It doesn't seem to be.
2 years, 6 months ago by composit
I've found Firefox to be a tad flaky on my G4 @ work, but I wouldn't dream of switching to Safari.
2 years, 6 months ago by dharmapunk
@dantheman Thanks for the tip ,Cheers!
2 years, 6 months ago by seagoon
I love all the functionality of Firefox with the add-on's and all. But, it hogs about 25% of my cpu just sitting there doing nothing. All the other browsers suck way less (pun intended).
2 years, 6 months ago by roderashe
"Do you know how stupid you made yourself, Safari is an Apple Browser and it uses the same rendering engine as Firefox." - hold a mirror up. What you just said is wrong. Safari uses KHTML. Camino and Firefox use the Gecko engine.
2 years, 6 months ago by merlyn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisonofweb_browsers @SU182
2 years, 6 months ago by merlyn
I love firefox, but it has been very unstable on both of my macs. I've deleted all extensions I don't use constantly and it still crashes all the time. :(
2 years, 6 months ago by jimmy
Count me in for Camino. I love it. Not as bloated as Firefox, but the same Mozilla engine.
2 years, 6 months ago by willbost
I have very few FF extensions (that I don't use and which will be disabled when I restart FF, which I never do) and it acts fairly well ... hasn't crashed in a couple of weeks. I have 12 tabs open currently. on Mac OS X 10.4.8 with 2 GB RAM.
2 years, 6 months ago by cbee
@sheryl4321 - only for the things that I know. :)
2 years, 6 months ago by merlyn
In a development environment, Firefox with FireBug and the Web Developer toolbar is an incredible tool. If it crashes occasionally, FF's ability to restore the session balances it to the point that it's the best solution for me right now. For someone like Leo, where speed and reliability are more important, FF might not be ideal. To each his/her own, I guess.
2 years, 6 months ago by composit
firefox used to run just fine on my mac, but lately it seams to be freezing a lot. Still have to figure out what the problem is, maybe some extension of sort. Coudn't live without it though.
2 years, 6 months ago by wilmegape
@composit - "To each his/her own, I guess." Well said, I totally agree.
I think thats the bottom line here. Everyone has their own set of requirements and priorities, software is rarely a one size fits all commodity... like so many other things in life really ;)
2 years, 6 months ago by dantheman
@SU182 Duuuude. You better check your facts before you go calling someone stupid. Safari DOES NOT use the same engine as FireFox. FireFox uses the Mozilla projects Gecko rendering engine. Safari uses WebKit which is based on the KHTML rendering engine from the KDE project.
WebKit browsers: Safari, OmniWeb, Shirra Gecko browsers: Firefox, Netscape, Camino
2 years, 6 months ago by troubledwine
I'm going to start removing extensions until it gets reliable again. But 2.0 just never seemed all that stable to me in the first place. Here are the extensions I was using:
1Passwd 2.4 BETA-4 CoLT 2.2.1 CustomizeGoogle deli.cio.us bookmarks 1.5.29 Google Browser Sync 1.3.2 SumbleUpon
I cleared my cache and turned off Stumbleupon. Still beachballed within 20 minutes. Turning off del.icio.us and Google Browser sync now.
2 years, 6 months ago by ChiefTWiT
I have all of the extensions you mentioned Leo except for Stumbleupon and Firefox seems to be very stable. I have a few more extensions on top of that too. Are you sure it's extensions?
2 years, 6 months ago by ktvyeow
Probably just a poorly written extension(s) causing the problem.
2 years, 6 months ago by Randysouth
I'm going to ask the obvious. Did you update Firefox to 2.0.0.3?
2 years, 6 months ago by mjedi
I actually highly recommend Shiira. I've been using the 2.0 for the past month or so and I really love it. I use Camino as a back up for websites that refuse to work with the browser, but I much prefer the pleasing look of Shiira as a browser. The full screen mode (which I use for cooking), for instance, is absolutely stunning.
2 years, 6 months ago by dagneyandleo
I think it's probably a combination of overloading Firefox with extensions and bugs in some of them. I have StumbleUpon, Distrust & NoScript on mine and it's rock solid (touch wood), only ever crashed once or twice in 6 months and I can forgive it that. I'm on Ubuntu Linux though I don't know if thats relevant ;)
We all love playing around with the latest and greatest extensions but I very rarely find ones that I will use regularly. I think it's a good idea to remove any extensions that you don't really use or at least disable them. Some extensions are more power hungry than others and having too many just bloats the browser to death I think. It's kinda weird because you would think "I should be able to have as many extensions as I want" and ideally you should but you should also be able to run as many programs as you want at once with no problems, in reality there are always limits imposed by the hardware.
2 years, 6 months ago by dantheman
Wow that comment didn't sound as long winded in my head, sorry folks :)
2 years, 6 months ago by dantheman
I've got four extensions running on my Windows Firefox: del.icio.us, Stumbleupon, Google Notebook, and AdBlock (if you people haven't downloaded AdBlock, do it now. Greatest extension ever), and it works great.
Leo, try either Googling or Stumbling through the Firefox option for Firefox Fixes. There's a list of options that you can tweek in Firefox to improve performance, and reduce the amount of memory it eats up. (I do realize that giving Tech advice to you is like giving tips to Jesus on what kind of bread goes with the wine). So if you haven't done that, maybe that will fix what ails you.
If you have, then I'll go back to listening to the podcasts and leave the dispensing of knowledge to you and others.
vanishes
2 years, 6 months ago by jason
The problem with Safari is that it doesn't render the colors in photos accurately. I am heavily into digital photography so this is a serious problem for me personally. Reference here if you aren't familiar with what I am referring to:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/safari/topic2922.html
2 years, 6 months ago by twalker294
twalker: I thought Safari was profile savvy but firefox assumed everything is in sRGB? That's why I use sRGB when I post to flickr 'cause you never know what browser someone will use to view your photos...
2 years, 6 months ago by roderashe
@twalker294 there's a lot more to that discussion http://urltea.com/j5z
2 years, 6 months ago by troubledwine
@roderashe -- Safari is profile aware. It's when there isn't a profile that the problem arises. In that case, Firefox assigns sRGB which is usually at least close if not correct. Safari however assigns the monitor profile to these images which in some cases can be pretty far off and give you funky colors.
2 years, 6 months ago by twalker294
WOW is 63 comments a record?
2 years, 6 months ago by seagoon
I guess now it's 65.. :P
2 years, 6 months ago by ktvyeow
2.0 is what made me go back to Safari. It seemed like 2.0 was crashing all the time, even when I turned off all of my extensions. Now I only use Firefox if necessary, otherwise it is Safari and Camino for me, with some Flock and Opera mixed in occasionally.
2 years, 6 months ago by Zoltak