So why do you stick with Safari?

[Abazigal]

I was primarily a Chrome user since I purchased my imac last year (coming from a PC, it offered me the best user experience compared with IE and Firefox), and continued to serve me well on a Mac as well.

When 10.8 was released earlier this year, I thought I would finally give Safari a try. Suffice to say, it was a big disappointment. Here are my observations.

1) Cloud tabs are very convenient. I loved being able to read a website on my iphone while walking, then continuing on my ipad or mac when I reach home or at work. Chrome theoretically offers a similar service, but I have not been very impressed with Chrome on IOS, so after a while, I switched back to Safari on my iphone and ipad.

2) On my mac, Chrome seems to lag noticeably when scrolling on image-heavy websites. Safari has no such hangup, though it seems slightly slower in loading webpages in general.

3) Perhaps it is because I am on a 27" imac, but when I load websites on Safari, everything is very small. There is no default option to set the website bigger, and although there is an extension to automatically resize a webpage, it has limitations. After resizing, pages' formatting sometimes appear screwed up. Most notably, images don't center on the page (so I can be seeing only half, the other half disappears offscreen).

Chrome at least automatically remembers my default webpage sizes, and everything is arranged perfectly.

4) Youtube (at least those still using flash) and google docs / mail still don't play well on Safari.

5) I love the cmd+shift+click shortcut on Safari to open new pages in background (convenient when you are reading comics online and want to open multiple thumbnails quickly), but it is ironic that Chrome offers the same boon which is just 2 keys (cmd + click)

So what am I overlooking? What exactly do I have to benefit by staying with Safari, beyond starving google of search data?

 

[colloc]

I was primarily a Chrome user since I purchased my imac last year (coming from a PC, it offered me the best user experience compared with IE and Firefox), and continued to serve me well on a Mac as well.

When 10.8 was released earlier this year, I thought I would finally give Safari a try. Suffice to say, it was a big disappointment. Here are my observations.

1) Cloud tabs are very convenient. I loved being able to read a website on my iphone while walking, then continuing on my ipad or mac when I reach home or at work. Chrome theoretically offers a similar service, but I have not been very impressed with Chrome on IOS, so after a while, I switched back to Safari on my iphone and ipad.

2) On my mac, Chrome seems to lag noticeably when scrolling on image-heavy websites. Safari has no such hangup, though it seems slightly slower in loading webpages in general.

3) Perhaps it is because I am on a 27" imac, but when I load websites on Safari, everything is very small. There is no default option to set the website bigger, and although there is an extension to automatically resize a webpage, it has limitations. After resizing, pages' formatting sometimes appear screwed up. Most notably, images don't center on the page (so I can be seeing only half, the other half disappears offscreen).

Chrome at least automatically remembers my default webpage sizes, and everything is arranged perfectly.

4) Youtube (at least those still using flash) and google docs / mail still don't play well on Safari.

5) I love the cmd+shift+click shortcut on Safari to open new pages in background (convenient when you are reading comics online and want to open multiple thumbnails quickly), but it is ironic that Chrome offers the same boon which is just 2 keys (cmd + click)

So what am I overlooking? What exactly do I have to benefit by staying with Safari, beyond starving google of search data?

2/ How much slower is 'slightly slower'? I doubt any normal user would be able to tell a 0.2s difference in pages load. But they can tell a difference if there are lags in the user interface. Go figure.
3/ You can zoom by pressing Command +/-
4/ I think it depends on the flash plugin, not the browser. If a flash video has problems in Safari, so will Chrome. But I am not a technician.
5/ Safari does open new tab in background with cmd+click. Set it in Preferences.

 

[northernbaldy]

Safari works fine for me and I like having my bookmarks sync'd across all my kit

 

[maflynn]

The answer is simple for me. Safari works, and while I use chrome, I prefer safari. Its basically a personal preference.

 

[colshine]

I used to use Chrome so I could have my bookmarks synced with my home and work computers. In my new job it is impossible to install Chrome so I switched to Safari so I could use cloud tabs on the iPad. I'm happy with this setup.

 

[MasterHowl]

Safari has always worked fine for me, ever since Leopard.

I like having my bookmarks synced across all my devices, reading list is something I use all the time, and the gestures introduced in Lion are awesome.

 

[Abazigal]

2/ How much slower is 'slightly slower'? I doubt any normal user would be able to tell a 0.2s difference in pages load. But they can tell a difference if there are lags in the user interface. Go figure.
3/ You can zoom by pressing Command +/-
4/ I think it depends on the flash plugin, not the browser. If a flash video has problems in Safari, so will Chrome. But I am not a technician.
5/ Safari does open new tab in background with cmd+click. Set it in Preferences.

2) THe difference can be up to a few seconds. The blue loading bar will load very fast at first, then hang at the last part.

3) Doesn't stick, and it is cumbersome to do this for every new tab.

4) The videos are working perfectly in Chrome, just not in Safari.

5) Checked it, I stand corrected.

 

[SR45]

Tried Safari but wanted something better, faster, and went to Chrome, but after a few days, I returned to Safari. Just did not feel as comfortable with Chrome over Safari. Been with Safari a long time now.

 

[Huginnmuninn]

Safari ties with Firefox as my #2 browser, but Chrome is #1 for me.

 

[sjinsjca]

Reader Mode. Essential.

 

[Skoopman]

As a copywriter I absolutely do not like how Chrome renders pages while scrolling, it makes my eyes strain. Safari scrolls a lot smoother and that's what I need, because I sit 12+ hours in front of my MBA and external monitor. Chrome has a better bookmark system though, that is the only thing I miss.

One more thing I love about Safari is the "Reader" function. It helps a lot to read articles without all the unnecessary stuff like pictures and ads.

 

[Huginnmuninn]

Reader Mode. Essential.

Reader mode is great, but you can get equivalents with a Javascript you can put in your bookmarks bar, like this one from Readability (you do not need to use Readability or have an account with them for this to work):

javascriptfunction()%7BreadConvertLinksToFootnotes=false;readStyle='style-novel';readSize='size-small';readMargin='margin-wide';_readability_script=document.createElement('SCRIPT');_readability_script.type='text/javascript';_readability_script.src='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/js/readability.js?x='+(Math.random());document.getElementsByTagName('head')%5B0%5D.appendChild(_readability_script);_readability_css=document.createElement('LINK');_readability_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability.css';_readability_css.type='text/css';_readability_css.media='all';document.getElementsByTagName('head')%5B0%5D.appendChild(_readability_css);_readability_print_css=document.createElement('LINK');_readability_print_css.rel='stylesheet';_readability_print_css.href='http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/css/readability-print.css';_readability_print_css.media='print';_readability_print_css.type='text/css';document.getElementsByTagName('head')%5B0%5D.appendChild(_readability_print_css);%7D)();

 

[colloc]

5) Checked it, I stand corrected.

To those who don't know about the setting:

 

[sidewinder]

I prefer Aurora......by far over both Safari and Chrome.

S-

 

[Abazigal]

Weird. For some reason, I re-tried Safari today, and gmail is working much more smoothly (no issues so far). Surfing experience also seems more fluid recently.

Gonna give it another whirl, and if this holds out for the next couple of days, will jump back to Safari. Oh how I have missed you, icloud tabs.

Thanks all for sharing (especially for the cmd+click trick).

 

[razmarino]

just found an old trick with terminal for speeding up safari and it still works with 6.0.. changes are noticeable,)

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitInitialTimedLayoutDelay 0.25

defaults write com.apple.Safari WebKitResourceTimedLayoutDelay 0.0001

quit safari before applying them and hit enter after each

 

[Buduls]

I personally stick to Safari for cmd+1,2,3,4,5,6 shortcuts to open links in bookmark bar. I always miss them when using chrome/firefox (I never switch to tabs with keyboard and I dont find a need for this functionality).
And another minor thing which irritates me with Chrome is that it does not have permanent status bar at the bottom. I just can't stand the look of the browser that way...

P.S. Safari does not work well with Youtube lately, but I believe that is google's problem (or sabotage) because Safari wasn't updated for ages, but it started acting not that long ago.. (video's freezing and and not possible to resume until page refresh)

 

[sjinsjca]

Reader mode is great, but you can get equivalents with a Javascript you can put in your bookmarks bar, like this one from Readability (you do not need to use Readability or have an account with them for this to work):

Cute! Thanks for that.

But mostly I like (and depend-on heavily) the ability to email nicely formatted articles directly from the browser. Safari, with its Reader Mode, makes that a cinch. No cut-and-paste needed. I share lots of articles and this saves me significant time each day.

Reader mode, as implemented by Apple and integrated with various share options in the latest Safari, is absolutely killer.

 

[Sital]

OP, to answer your question I didn't stick with Safari. I found it too irritating so I switched to Firefox.