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-------------------------------------------------------------- This story was printed from ZDNet Australia. --------------------------------------------------------------
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Browser wars on the Mac August 12, 2003 URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/software/internet/soa/Browser-wars-on-the-Mac/0,139023437,120277122,00.htm
PC users always say they have more apps than Mac users. But that's not true of browsers. We review five.If you work or play on a Mac, you've never had more Web browsers to choose from--at last count, there were 10, if you include the integrated browsers of MSN and AOL. The competition has resulted in a browser renaissance for Mac users, with hot new features and new levels of performance. We took a look at the top five standalone Web browsers, three of which are available only for Mac OS X. At the top of the Web browser heap are Apple's Safari and the open-source Camino (formerly known as Chimera), which have both surpassed Internet Explorer in performance and in features such as tabbed browsing. In response, Microsoft has given up the ghost, announcing that version 5.2.3 is the last new version of Internet Explorer for Mac. However, in our informal testing, we still found IE indispensable for some tasks. At the bottom of the browser list, at least among the five we evaluated, sit OmniWeb and Opera, which have some innovations and strong points but are marred by some omissions and drawbacks. For instance, OmniWeb and Opera both had more JavaScript errors than the others. Read our reviews and minireviews of the five Mac browsers to determine which is the one for you.
Apple Safari 1.0
If you're only after speed, try Safari but keep your other browser, too. Security buffs should skip Safari for now. Can Safari fill Internet Explorer's shoes? That's the question on everyone's lips since Microsoft dropped out of the OS X browser arena in June. Apple released Safari 1.0 Beta in January, and is now offering shipping version 1.0, which fixes rendering problems that dogged both betas. The OS X-only browser shares its open-source foundations with Konqueror, a standalone browser and the file manager for the Linux KDE Desktop Environment. Apple says it improved on the tiny Konqueror kernel to meet its goal -- the fastest Mac Web browser. We think Safari meets this claim, and in informal testing, it's faster than both Internet Explorer and Camino. Safari lacks Camino's ease of use and the advanced customisation or security features of Internet Explorer for Mac or Opera. Try Safari if you're really sick of Internet Explorer -- it's free, after all. But if secure browsing is your concern, you should hold off or consider Camino. You can update the Safari beta to 1.0 using Mac OS X's Software Update to automatically update -- the beta versions did not have built-in auto-updating. If you don't already have Safari, it's a 6.2MB download. A drive image automatically mounts on the desktop and launches the Installer program. When you first open the browser, it automatically imports your IE favourites and some settings, including the home page, but Safari also sets itself as your default browser without asking. How rude! The browser's spartan toolbar features only forward, back, home and refresh buttons, as well as a plus-sign button that adds the current URL to your bookmarks or acts as a stop button while a page is loading. Apple integrates a Google search field into the Safari toolbar (a nice feature since Google's own toolbar isn't compatible with IE for Mac), but you can search only Google from that field. We prefer Opera's drop-down menu of search choices. However, Safari's search field does offer a drop-down menu listing recent searches that provides quick access to previous Google search results. Bookmarks live in the Bookmarks menu, while a select few are in a tiny toolbar below the address bar, and that's all you'll find -- Safari really maximises page real estate. If you add more bookmarks than can fit on the bar, a double arrow appears indicating a pop-up menu for the rest, just like the Finder's toolbar. Safari's best interface feature arrived in Beta 2: tabbed browsing. If you've used the tabs in other browsers (such as Camino or Netscape) or at Apple's own Web site, Safari's tabs may appear to be upside-down and cause some confusion. However, they do let you open multiple Web pages without cluttering your screen, and the tabs automatically adjust in size to accommodate multiple Web sites, and feature handy close-window X's in the corners. There's even a new preference menu just for tabs. To open a new tab, press Command+T (or click File > New Tab), or Command-click to open a link in a tab. Command+W closed the tab. There´s also a series of keyboard commands for opening and selecting a tab, opening a link in a new window and selecting it, or opening a link in a new window behind the current window. Unfortunately, unlike Camino, Safari doesn't provide a key command for switching between tabs -- Command+tilde switches between actual Safari windows and all other open windows in a specific application, but it doesn't work on the tabs. Apple says Safari's speed is its premier feature -- and indeed, this browser offers few additional tools. Most notably, Safari lacks any advanced security settings. You can block third-party cookies and some Web scripts, but you can't, say, enter specific Web sites from which to accept or reject cookies, as you can with both Opera for Mac and IE. You also won't find any controls for passwords, certificate authentication or encryption (beyond asking for a prompt when you're sending an insecure form). Those are standard security and privacy features in IE, Camino, Opera and almost any other browser for Mac or PC. Safari Beta 2 added an advanced settings toolbar, which gives us hope for the future. For now, though, it lets you only choose a style sheet and change your proxy settings. One thing we're extremely happy to see: the preferences menu adds an autofill menu -- autofill is a tool that remembers previously typed information, such as your name, address or address-bar URLs. The autofill tool integrates with Apple's Address Book, not the Keychain password manager. Safari does, thankfully, include a pop-up blocker that, like all such browser tools, stops ads as well as some legitimate pop-ups (most notably, ZDNet´s video pop-ups). Happily, Safari makes it incredibly easy to toggle the feature on and off; simply press Command+K or click the Safari menu and choose ‘Block pop-up windows´. Possibly Safari's only true innovation is the SnapBack button found in both the address bar and the Google toolbar. When you surf deeply into a Web site or search results, the orange button appears at the right of the search or URL field. Click it, and you'll pop back to the last URL you typed or to your list of Google search results. It's handy but not life-changing; IE lets you click and hold the back button to bring up a short history of visited sites, with much the same effect. Safari does simplify bookmark management, however. You can drag a bookmark onto the Safari bookmarks bar, as in IE, but Safari lets you rename the Web page so that it's easier for you to remember. The 1.0 version adds syncing of bookmarks between Safari installed on multiple Macs using iSync -- handy for PowerBook or iBook users who also have desktop Macs. You can also click the plus button next to the address bar to add a bookmark. A book-shaped button opens a new page where you can easily drag, drop and rearrange your bookmarks, and even access your address book. Annoyingly, this page always opens over your current Web page. We'd much prefer a bookmarks sidebar drawer like that of Camino or OmniWeb, or even a new window. As for Apple's claims of cheetah-like speed, we found Safari occasionally blazingly fast but inconsistent. Our informal tests showed that Safari loaded most graphics-heavy pages (such as Shockwave.com or even Apple.com) far quicker than Internet Explorer for Mac. Safari is also faster than Camino, although by less of a margin. We also found Safari's launch time to be faster than with IE and only slightly faster than Camino (the free version of Opera for Mac forces you to view a start-up dialogue, delaying its overall launch time). The browser never crashed in our tests and can now render pages that the beta version had trouble with. We also didn't see the stalling of the beta versions. We encountered only minor bugs, usually related to JavaScript errors, although less so than the beta versions. Overall, Safari performed well. Apple doesn't offer any formal support for Safari -- that is, you won't get free telephone or email support (not unusual for free and beta software). But we did find a fair amount of helpful information in Apple's online knowledge base. Version 1.0 installs nearly five dozen Safari articles in the Mac OS X Help system.
Apple Safari 1.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2.3 for Mac
Other Mac browsers offer more features and better performance, but keep IE around to access troublesome sites.Before Microsoft announced that Internet Explorer 5.2.3 would be the last OS X version, the venerable winner of 1990's browser war was already showing its age. Microsoft hasn't produced a major upgrade in years, and IE now lacks must-have features that are common in other browsers. For instance, IE is the only Mac browser without the capability to block pop-up windows. It also doesn't support tabbed browsing, the ability to have multiple Web pages open in a single window. IE has also fallen behind in its support of Mac OS X features. (Microsoft says it hasn't gotten sufficient access to the OS itself over the years.) For instance, IE uses its own (perfectly adequate) security settings instead of using Mac OS X's Keychain feature as Camino and Safari do. (The Keychain Access utility is a handy single location for editing all passwords used on the Mac, including user logins, local servers, and Web sites.) We like IE's high degree of configurability, but finding what you need in the confusing Preferences dialog is mostly a matter of trial and error. IE has also fallen behind on the performance curve. Safari, Camino, and even Opera are all faster in rendering pages and more responsive with resizing screens. But don't trash your copy of Internet Explorer just yet. If you're having problems accessing some aspect of a Web page with another browser or a plug-in isn't working, there's a good chance IE will do the job. For instance, IE and Camino were the only browsers that successfully played music at Live365.com; the others failed to execute the JavaScript properly. Internet Explorer often works with plug-ins where other sites have problems. The issue is compatibility; because IE is the number one browser worldwide, most Web sites take the time to make sure it will work. IE is still a free download from Microsoft, and it's well supported. The browser includes extensive online help, and Microsoft provides online tips and FAQs.
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2.3 for Mac
Camino
Although technically a prerelease, Camino is a compelling alternative to Safari, and it's faster and more feature-filled than IE.Camino (formerly known as Chimera), is an open-source, OS X-only browser from Mozilla.org. Though still technically a prerelease (beta), Camino is one of the more popular and appealing Mac Web browsers, sporting a well-crafted Cocoa interface. Camino also offers the best implementation of tabbed browsing, one that is elegant and more straightforward than Safari's. (Safari's tabs appear to be upside down, and the color scheme makes it hard to tell which is the active tab.) We also love Camino's tab sets, which load multiple tabs simultaneously with the single click of an icon in the Bookmarks toolbar. Camino offers superior bookmark handling: click the sidebar button to display a tray with bookmarks and histories. This is a much more compact display than Safari's full-page bookmark mode, and it's easier to use than IE's sidebar. Camino also features versatile cookie handling. In the dialog that asks you to accept a cookie, Camino presents the option of remembering your decision. When you accept the cookie with remembering turned on, Camino will always accept the cookie from this site, not bothering you again with the dialog. If you decline the cookie with the Remember box checked, Camino will automatically decline cookies from this site the next time you go to it. You're not stuck with your decisions; you can go to Preferences and reset the cookie handling for individual sites. Based on the open-source Gecko browsing engine, Camino is almost as fast as Safari at rendering and resizing pages and at scrolling. Camino's performance certainly blows away Internet Explorer, Opera, and OmniWeb. In our tests, Camino was also better at executing JavaScript than Safari and most other browsers, and it was on a par with Internet Explorer in that regard. For a piece of software that's only version 0.7, Camino is very stable; it crashed only once every few weeks in daily use. Camino is still missing the autofilling of address forms, but it does support autofilling of usernames and passwords, storing them in Mac OS X's Keychain. Unfortunately, since the software is only in beta, support is somewhat limited, and documentation is meager.
Camino
Omniweb
OmniWeb offers some unique and useful features, but its poor performance is frustrating.OmniWeb offers a stunning interface and good rendering, along with a unique collection of features. For instance, you can set OmniWeb to automatically update bookmarks periodically or to run as a batch, and you can delete any dead links the browser finds. OmniWeb's Dock icon tells you how many bookmarks were updated. We also like the way OmniWeb can search for keywords in the History panel. If you remember reading a news story about Hawaii, just type it in the search field of the History drawer; OmniWeb returns a list of the past pages you've viewed about Hawaii. Webmasters will like OmniWeb's built-in HTML editor. If you see something wrong with a page you've built, select View in Source Editor from the Browser menu; there you can edit your code and view the result of your changes. The Save command saves any Web page, modified or not. OmniWeb also includes popular features such as pop-up blocking and autofilling of forms, but there is no tabbed browsing, a glaring omission in the Mac browser field. We love the degree to which you can configure OmniWeb. OmniWeb offers more settings than Safari, and preferences are organized more intelligently than they are in IE and Opera. As with Camino, you can move around any of the buttons on the toolbar by Command-dragging them--just like in the Finder toolbar. You can also drag any icon from the Preferences dialog to the toolbar for easy access to a particular configuration window. The biggest drawback to OmniWeb is its performance. Its rendering speed is slower than that of any other browser we tested. OmniWeb also returned more JavaScript errors than the others, which further hindered the browser's usefulness. The Omni Group has included good built-in and online help and FAQs, and it even offers a support mailing list. For an optional payment of US$30, you can send tech-support messages through OmniWeb's Help menu. You can get e-mail tech support for free, but your problems will be a lower priority than paying customers'.
Omniweb
Opera 6.0
Opera is a bit faster than Internet Explorer, and it offers solid features, but it's slower than both Safari and Camino.After Apple produced a Safari beta, Opera Software threatened to abandon the Mac platform. It eventually withdrew the threat and produced Opera 6.0, a good effort in some respects, although problems with the interface, rendering, and JavaScript mar the browsing experience. There are also banner ads in the toolbar unless you cough up US$39 for an ad-free version. Nevertheless, we like several of Opera's interface goodies, such as the Google search field with a pull-down menu that lets you select other search engines. We also like search fields specifically for Amazon and eBay. A handy zoom field in the toolbar lets you instantly enlarge or shrink the display of the Web page. Like Safari, Opera lets you easily turn pop-up blocking on and off (because you may need to allow pop-ups on certain Web sites). Opera also offers user customization similar to the levels found in Internet Explorer, and it includes good security features, including a cookie manager. Opera supports tabbed browsing, but unfortunately, when you Control+click a Web link, you can't open it in a new tab, as you can in other browsers; you only get to open a new window. The free version of Opera includes a banner ad in the toolbar, but it also has a handy zoom menu and search fields for Google, eBay, and Amazon. On Mac OS X, Opera is definitely not the "fastest browser on earth," as the company claims. In our informal testing, it rendered pages slightly faster than Internet Explorer (though it took longer to launch), but it couldn't touch the speed of Safari and Camino. Opera 6.0.2 is also not as good at executing JavaScript as Camino or Internet Explorer. We were disappointed with the poor rendering job of some Web pages, which produced overlapping elements, columns that were too narrow, and too much empty space at the edges. If you have version 6.0, it's worth upgrading to 6.0.2, which fixed our problems with Opera crashing. You won't find much Mac-specific help for Opera--the Help menu commands take you to Web-based support, which we found thin and PC-centric. You can get e-mail support if you register.
Opera 6.0
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