So yeah, I played with Camino 1.5 for a week before I went crawling back to Firefox. And I've been off-and-on with Safari 3.0 beta all day. It's frustrating because all three of these browsers come very close to what I want in a browser but none of them pegs it perfectly.
Thus, my review of the current state of OS X browserdom and which pieces would make the Perfect OS X Browser.
Firefox 2.0.0.4
The best thing about Firefox: extensions. The second: cross-platform consistency. If I can make a site work in Firefox on the Mac, I know it'll look just dandy on the PC. Safari has matched that feature now, of course, but the extensions in FF are what bring me back. That, and the Undo The Tab I Just Closed By Accident command... it has saved me countless times.
However, it's a stupid memory hog. I don't care if it's the browser or the extensions I'm running... it's a mess. I hate the spinning beachball. The interface, even with GrApple, is still kind of a mess.
Camino 1.5
Love it. Great, great stride forward. Feels fast and zippy. Fits in to OS X very well. Feels leaner than Firefox. I appreciate that it's the same rendering engine, too... no having to worry about CSS breaking a beautiful layout.
But I can't move tabs? And I can still only store one username/password per domain name? And it's nice that there's a Flash blocker included, as well as an ad blocker, but (like Safari) that's not too useful if I can't whitelist sites.
I really do like Camino, but those little things just bug me a lot. Maybe 1.6 will fix 'em.
Safari 3 beta
Boy, does this look weird on a PC. I couldn't test it with a work app, which required an authenticated login - it crashed. On the Mac, it's very fast. Being able to move tabs? Great. The ability to move tabs off the tab bar into their own windows? Great! I still like the streamlined, clean interface. It's better at typography than Firefox and Camino.
But the new search? It kicks ass. It is easily the best search implementation I've seen in an app since Coda. They're tied, in my mind. Safari will actually highlight all the matches on a page and pop them up a bit. Once you've tried it, you'll think every other browser needs it too.
The cons? Uhm... hm. Other than what I've grown used to with Firefox... there... aren't... any really. It's a beta. Oh, that's one! It's a beta.
I'm going to stick it out with Safari 3 for a little while. But those Firefox extensions might be too much for me to miss.
The Perfect OS X Browser
It really is too bad that not any single browser has nailed everything perfectly. Firefox has a sucky UI; Camino's latest version just got outpaced by Safari; Safari's lacking expandability (to some degree.)
So for me, the perfect browser would include:
That's it. As you can see, things aren't too far off. Truly if Camino had extension support - the real deal - I think that would be the winner.
In any case I give Apple credit for their power play today, in making Safari the uber-platform for iPhone, Mac, and Windows web development. Well done!
I'm sticking with Camino as my main browser for the time being. But oh, that shortcut to the search tool... I'm so used to Firefox's Command-K that I want it to be the same in Camino.
No problem.
Called up System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse. Added Camino to the list of apps. Entered the menu item I wanted ("Search the Web..."), the keycombo I wanted, and restarted Camino. Done.
Fantastic. That's how it should be on any OS.
So far, this is a pretty sweet upgrade. About the only thing I miss, right off the bat, is the ability to move tabs around. But everything else I like in the Godzilla FoxFire appears to be here! Not shabby.
]]>So I switched back to Safari last week after using Firefox forever. I just can't seem to settle on a good browser on the Mac - I haven't been able to in a long time. I'll probably go back to Firefox though.
There I was, opening a file in TextWrangler - which had just updated itself - when the window opOMG WHAT IS THAT IN MY WINDOW?!?
Update: Be sure to read this entry too, which is making me reconsider my use of Cyberduck.
When you work on web sites, there are a few tools you get to become buddy-buddy with. Your text editor. Your photo editor. Your browsers. Your FTP program.
Of course, your FTP program. Where would you be without it? You'd be up a creek without a paddle, that's where you'd be!
When I switched to the Mac six years ago, I first used InterArchy. It worked, but not too pleasantly for my tastes. I then switched to Fetch, whose website looks the same as it did in 2000. Fetch did everything I needed it to do, and did it without complaint. In time I became a beta tester for the 5.0 release and thought it was a solid improvement.
But no relationship is without its idiosyncracies, and the little Fetch dog occasionally made me growl. Like, for instance, when I was editing a file on the server with TextWrangler. Let's say I edit a file, and in the Fetch window navigate to another folder. I then go do something (gee, upload a file?) and head back to TextWrangler. I hit save. But wait! I navigated to another folder, right? Fetch took care of that. It helpfully navigated to where the open file was saved, and saved it.
Then when I needed to upload another file to that folder I navigated to earlier, I'd just drag it onto Fetch's window. But... you guessed it... the window had been pointing to where the TextWrangler file lived. Meaning I just uploaded it to the wrong folder, because Fetch "forgot" where I was. Oops.
I am a creature of habit, as are you, but I still toyed with the idea of switching FTP clients - particularly, Transmit. Transmit is, in a word, fantastic. It's beautiful (much prettier than Fetch if you ask me), it's useful, it is tightly integrated with TextWrangler or whatever text editor you'd like to use, and it costs money. $30, to be specific.
$30 is not a lot of money for an FTP program. But you know, I'd rather buy a pair of shoes for that $30.
I recall trying out an open-source FTP program called Cyberduck a year or so ago and thinking it really sucked. It did. It was awful. The interface sucked, the everything sucked. The icon? Well, I'm not a fan of too much cutesy-ness in my Dock. But a duck? Okay. Whatever. Say hi to Adium.
(I don't really use Adium; I don't really IM on the Mac.)
I totally forgot about InterArchy until Gruber mentioned it, and I will admit the interface looks absolutely fantastic. Its ability to look just like Finder has been a strength - or weakness - since its early days. But InterArchy, too, costs the money.
Something got in my noggin about 3 weeks ago, however, and Cyberduck was referenced in some forum or blog I was reading. I thought, "Why not give it a shot?" So for the past three weeks, the dog and the duck have been sitting side by side in my dock. (Fetch is to the left, so he can't see the Cyberduck; he's just fetching the floppy disk to the giant TextWrangler logo in front of him.)
I plunged into Cyberduck the same way I did RSS: wholeheartedly. I set up shortcuts for the FTP sites I used the most and saved them so I could use QuickSilver to access them. But a thought: "Gee, that display is fugly." I really thought that: "fugly". Vertical lines. No alternating row lines. No horizontal lines. Egads, it's 1987.
But wait! A preference? Yes! A preference for it. So I can make Cyberduck have pretty alternating row columns and no stupid horizontal or vertical lines, the way I like it. Great!
And I can make a double-click equal "Edit in TextWrangler" instead of "Put the file on the desktop" like Fetch - one of the most annoying things ever? Yes!
And it has a Transfers window! And a drawer for Bookmarks! Swell! Lovely!
And somehow, I got sold on this once ugly duckling. The little Fetch dog has been without his companion, Running Triangle, underneath him. He's been kind of nonresponsive, just sitting there mid-jump with his floppy.
There is one flaw with the Duck, though: I can't rename files like I do in Finder, by clicking the filename once. The first time I encountered this, I actually said, "Ooooooh," in a bad way. Instead I have to open an info window and edit it there. No preference for that, at least none I've found. (Note: after R'ingTFM I learned that I could click a filename and then press Return and then edit it. Lame.) The plus side is that I was able to submit a ticket for this, which is great.
Is it a deal-breaker? Time will tell. But my instinct says no. I'll trade the awkward renaming mechanism for the multiple little problems I had with Fetch, which all added up to a dull headache.
I will admit I'm pleased there are more than a couple of great FTP clients out there for the Mac. All I've mentioned in this post are great in their own ways but, for me, the Cyberduck wins.