Don’t forget about a third option for browsing on a Mac - Camino. Camino’s been around for longer than either of these two, and is very well integrated into OS X (unlike Firefox). It also uses the same rendering engine as Firefox, so it can generally display anything Firefox could. Fancy web apps (e.g. Wordpress rich text editor) work fine in it (unlike Safari). It really is a great browser.

Thanks for the comment. There are a good handful of browsers out there I would have like to mention. I was trying to keep it simple, as we move forward, I can add in advanced posts that cater to peoples curiosity.

Camino is nice, there is also OmniWeb, and even some webkit based third party ones as well. For the sake of keeping everyone on the same page, I will stick with Safari for now, but we will for certain cover alternative browsers in a future post.

I also prefer safari over Firefox - but only with addons like Safariblock and Inquisitor. If those were not available I’d use Firefox all the time.

Also - if you do need use FF get the Grapple skin - it makes it look exactly like Safari.

It seems to me that Safari 3 under Leopard is faster than Firefox. Maybe with the new Firefox it will be able to come up to speed.

My advice is to have Firefox loaded even if you usually use Safari. There are a number of sites which don’t work right in Safari. I got a page with obvious buttons, but clicking them in Safari did nothing. I copied the URL from the Safari bar, launched Firefox, paster in the page URL that didn’t work in Safari, and clicked the buttons just fine. No problem having a backup browser…

But why having a back up brownser when one (firefox) can do it all ? I surfed on firefox for two years, i never needed another brownser. I can’t say the same with safari.
also for the look, one can change it and download the safari-like version.
Anyway, tks for your site, it is a GREAT idea
Take care

But why having a back up brownser when one (firefox) can do it all ?

@Bill and @Jean, there is that issue, and you raise a great point. I recall having the same trouble’s at some point in the past, where at times, Safari would just go deaf to my clicking on links. It turns out to he one of two issues.

1) Some obscure bug in Safari, where links just seem to randomly die
2) Using Javascript to activate a link, which Safari has issues with

Sometimes issue #1 was caused by issue #2. At some point, a software update seemed to repair most of issue #1 for me. The second issue, technically, is a Firefox issue, in that it is ignoring the malformed Javascript, and allowing it to run anyway.

If you look at a Javascript debugger, you will see FireFox is in fact throwing an error, it just so happens it recovers from it. I tend to be a little idealistic on this front, and would rather use a browser that will in the long term, benefit all users. If the site gets enough complaints, maybe they will fix it, but the burden should not be on the user to change their browsing habits.

In the end, Safari has a more accurate Javascript and html parser, at least as far as standards are concerned.

Your point, to use the one that works best, most of the time, is extremely valid to a new user. They really do not care about standards and compliance, they just want to get their bank balance, and be done with it. So on that front, I would agree with you.

The main idea here, is that we need to have all people on the same page until we can get into more advanced topics, such as how to install a secondary browser. Raising awareness where some sites do not work, and why that is, especially whose fault that is, is important.

Just ignoring the issue, and using a different browser, does not raise that awareness. I want to teach users the how and why, and how to troubleshoot those issues. As my post articulates, you will need both browsers, if you want to explore certain sites.

Thank you for your comment, you bring up a great point, glad to have another reader.

@Edward, right you are, Safari 3 saw some pretty big performance increases. I think it largely had to do with Javascript tweaks, as Safari is known for beating out benchmarks in that area pretty well.

I am not entirely sure as to all the reasons why, but I can say Apple does a pretty good job at performance enhancements over time, as well as new features.

Hate the steel look of Safari - long overdue for an update in appearance. They change everything else up at Apple why not dead dull boring Safari - it has a total depressing look - I don’t want to look at that! - give me Firefox - immediately strikes you as clean and bright and modern and cheerful.

OK - maybe it’s a girl thing

There are several bugs in the osx 10.4 version of firefox 2.0.0.11. The one that really bugged me was that text would over run the visible screen area. No scroll bars would be shown, so the text would be unavailable. Same thing in text boxes - the text would overrun the boundaries. Problem didn’t exist on windows or linux. Possibly a font substitution problem, but the problem didn’t exist in safari or minefield (the developer version of firefox 3.0).

@J Hall
When I see the buttons in Safari I think of Windows… but of course, you can change the appearance of Firefox. But it still doesn’t feel like a naitive Mac application.

No!
I meant “when I see the buttons in Firefox I think of Windows…”
Safari has nice buttons.

Too stressed out at work to post stuff on the Internet…

@Andrew Howlett
Yes, there, are numerous issues with older browsers on older operating systems. We are trying to get new users to learn how to use Apple’s new applications. If you have issues like that with Safari 3, indeed do post here, as I am sure someone can help you out.

Camino is definitely a very popular browser choice out there, as it is developed and maintained by Mozilla. (The same folks who develop Firefox) The only thing it may “lack” in a non-technical point of view, is the vast amount of available plugins which are available for Firefox. (Camino do have a plugin API, which is Cocoa-ich, which in turn means a little bigger overhead when writing a plugin, but faster execution when used) There are a few plugins available though.

I personally do not like Safari, and use it very little. I have used Firefox on Windows, Linux and Mac, and never experienced any sort of problem. One exception to that, some sites are built with active x controls and require IE. I don’t use any site that does something like this. Wal-mart is a good example (music download).

Too many sites block Safari to make it a viable browser for me. In fact, I would use Camino over Safari.

All IMHO of course.

The only correct answer to this slightly biased article is — BOTH.

Because websites are coded by humans, which themselves have browser preferences, certain javascript or CSS elements will inevitably be geared as more friendly toward one browser or another (hopefully all browsers, but that is asking for several hacks and workarounds).

I have in my toolkit three choices which work for everything I have ever needed in browsing the internet — Safari, Opera and the Mozilla browsers (Firefox and Camino). There’s NOTHING that I need to browse to on the internet that these three won’t handle…or any function in a browser that I want to utilize that these three won’t or cannot do.

I think the more effective course of action is to arm the populace of young/newbie Mac users with tools and let them choose on their own, instead of biasing them toward YOUR favorite browser.

A word to the “wise” is sufficient here.

I felt I needed to make a comment. The site is wonderful and I thank you very much Scott for that!

I’m only 2 weeks with my first Macintosh, iMac.
And can’t stop from being excited every time I sit down at my iMac.
I never been so excited in my 13 years with PCs. I had 4 PCs over the years, but they never excited me.
The reason probably - amount of work involved right from day one using PC. You need to install this and that and this and that…Windows Defender, WinPatrol, Antivirus, anti-spyware, …anti this and anti that. Then there is a huge amount of excellent quality free software, which I liked to try. All this takes time, creates garbage in the system…

I used IE, FF, Opera and all other look-alike browsers.
FireFox is not light weight anymore. It never been.
It’s another IE under different name.
The only browser that stand out in Windows world is Opera.
It’s designed creatively, just like Safari.

Safari is unique and an artistic browser, which is real pleasure to use.
It’s esthetically pleasant, it’s a real Apple.

No Opera anymore for me, and no anything else not related to Apple.
In 13 years I never knew what exactly is Mac.
I wish I knew about Mac 11…5 years ago.
It would have saved me a lot of aggravation, worries and lost time.
It would help me in so many other ways.

I also have no intention of never using windows on Mac.
There is no need for this.

I can see now what type of real geniuses work for Apple.
true, these guys are the most creative people in the computer world. They all have a creative minds and souls.

Thank you Apple!
And thank you all Mac users who are willing to show the world what a Real Computer is and should be.

From a slightly different perspective: Another use for two or more browsers is to have each one set up for different sets of tasks. I use Safari for all my personal browsing and will continue to do so because I like it. However, when I was taking college courses, I also used Netscape (RIP) and had its homepage and bookmarks bar set up for my college classes.

@dewaun.simmons
Thanks for the post. While I was not trying to be biases, I can see how it may come across that way. What everyone needs to understand, is this site is being written in a very step by step process.

We are trying to sit down and think in logical steps, what a user may do on day one, and day two, and onward.

If we can get everyone on the same page, we can start exploring some of the tricks and tips to each application that comes with the OS. Safari happens to be one of those apps.

As we get deeper into the tutorials, we will start on simple 3rd party apps. You would think my post on video the other day would have been a good way to introduce VLC, but we held back.

Adding in VLC, I felt, would confuse users, and will be a separate post at a later time.

One of my main points to this article, was with 90% or better PC users in the world, that means you get 9 out of 10 friends telling Mac users to install FireFox, and I wanted to explain to them that is not the same quality of advice that it would be were it given to a Windows user.

@Deborah
Good point on the different tasks, as a matter of fact, my brother does something like that. He has 2 gmail accounts, and rather than toggle back and forth with logging in and out all the time, he uses Safari for one, and FireFox for the other.

This does not really deal with the issue that gmail should allow more than one login at a time, since so many users have more than one email account these days, but you raise a nice point.

Nobody seemed to mention anywhere in these posts that SAFARI will all of a sudden be painfully slow at page loading. It could be a setting I have set wrong or something. I don’t know what the issue is, but do some simple tests yourself. Open apple.com with safari and open it with firefox. I see 5-10 second difference in page load speed. I don’t like any browser that sits there and shows a bar loading a page and then pops it up 5 seconds later. Firefox is just flat out fast.

@William Betters
I do not think you have a setting wrong. In many cases it can be an issue of perception.

This is great article written by one of the developers of Safari:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/2004_05.html

In the past, I would see Safari get slow, not in version 3 as of yet has it happened to me, and I use it literally 1000’s of times a day to test pages in development.

I find Safari 3 will actually load faster than fireFox, in near all tests, especially those heavy on Javascript. I find it fails badly on poorly written html, in that it is not as forgiving.

I have one site that can continuously crash it, and only sometimes will it crash FireFox.

I really think it is all over the board to be honest

I use Safari but always recommend having a second browser for pages that don’t look right or work well in Safari. Further, if you put this second browser (I like Firefox) in your Dock, here’s a great TIP for quickly viewing your current Safari page in your alternate browser: Just drag the “favicon” (the little icon to the left of the URL in the address field at the top of your browser) onto the Dock icon of your secondary browser, and when that icon darkens, let go and it will open the page in that browser!

Another difference between Safari & Firefox: If you have your browsers set to remember usernames passwords, note that Safari stores these in your Keychain (in the Utilities folder), while Firefox stores them internally (Preferences—>Security—>Show Passwords…).

This feature can save a lot of time logging onto sites, and it’s a great way to retrieve passwords & usernames you’ve forgotten. Neither browser is set to do this by default; you have to activate this in the browser’s Preferences.

In Safari: Preferences—>Autofill—>User names and passwords
In Firefox: Preferences—>Security—>Passwords—>Remember passwords for sites

Do keep in mind that if you can find these passwords on your computer, so can someone else who has access to your computer, so use with discretion.

In windows, highlighting, choosing b/w or color, setting print quality (best, normal, draft, etc.) is soooo simple. New to my IMAC and Safari, I cannot for the life of me locate a way to control print quality when online. Even in Word you have go through a long bunch of selections. How do I select a portion of a page and control print quality when online? Thanks Jdm

@mcgrew
More than likely you have not expanded your print options. Off to the right of your print window, where you see the name of your printer, is a small arrow, if you click that, it will show you more options for your printer.

I have also used these browsers. I prefer FF. Safari does not work well with dot.net sites (the buttons people have spoken of). Why use 2 browsers. One gets comfortable with the bookmarks, quick launch buttons etc. not to want to do that.

Keychain support is a big deal - the ability to manage passwords, certificates, and any other security credentials in a central, universally available, encrypted repository is awesome.

Using Firefox, you would have “2 versions of the truth” - security credentials stored in multiple repositories, never knowing which is up to date.

Camino is the Firefox engine, with Keychain integration. I keep Firefox (or Bon Echo, the highly Mac optimized version of Firefox) on hand for the increasing rare site that will not render in Safari, or even Camino.

On another note: the way Safari implemented RSS is, IMHO, superb!

Hey guys, great site. I’m not a beginner but I’m definitely going to point my Mom to this site!

Also, to any beginners reading this, you’ll find that Safari offers a much quicker browsing experience than Firefox, which is my main reason for not using it as my main browser, it’s just too pokey for everyday use.

MInd you, it’s not necessarily *slow*, but after using Safari, I’ve become accustomed to a great deal more speed.

I have access to a great many machines (I’m a web designer/developer) and it’s always the case. Firefox is the best when it comes to testing a site. Usually if it looks good there, I’ll know it was coded right. Then I’ll go and check the other browsers and fix from there.

My only regret with Safari is that the Safari AdBlock is just not up to par with the Firefox extension Adblock. I sure wish someone could rival that, but oh well. Until then I’ll keep on zipping around the web in Safari.

Another benefit to using Safari is being able to sync two computers with a dotMac account. I am fortunate enough to use a Mac at work and being able to keep my contacts, Safari bookmarks, calendar, keychain and Address Book all in sync is huge. Sure you can use a separate app to sync FireFox bookmarks, but why bother.

The main reason I use FireFox is the add-on Firemarks. This allows me to keep the same bookmarks for multiple computers - including computers that use alternative operating systems. This is automatic, and it is not a separate app. And not all of my computers are Macs.

On the other hand, when I get an e-mail from The Apple Store telling me about the class I scheduled, it includes a link that includes my .ics file. Firefox tries to link to it unsuccessfully. If Safari is my default browser, that appointment goes into my calendar.

I’m a new iMac user and tried Safari. After much time spent trying to find plugins for Safari, I found one and couldn’t figure out how to install it. So I installed Firefox since I’m used to that.

A tutorial on Safari would really help. Also it would be lovely if Safari could put menu item to click on to take you to a plugin repository and also a menu item that will help install them. It’s easy for me to install plugins with Firefox because of this. Some tutorials I found on Safari assumed I already knew how to install the plugiins.

I’m glad I found this site. I love using the Mac but find some things difficult to figure out and google my life away to figure out how do to some things. Example, took me a couple days to figure out how to install that I downloaded. It was super simple once I figured it out. But wasn’t intuitive.

I’m a Windows switcher and would love to find more tutorials for the Mac.

@Donna What type of plug-ins are you looking for, what are you trying to accomplish?

First computer ever, 2 years ago, a G4 Powerbook. Tried Safari, buggy, went to Firefox and have never looked back. Very nice site Scott, Thanks. About the @Deborah post above, of course you know your brother can use all his Gmail accounts at the same in Mail, I do.

I use Safari most of the time, and for a backup browser, I’ve always liked Opera. Opera seems pretty fast and I like its funky layout with the Speed Dial homepage and all of the neat custom skins and colors. Also, Opera seems to handle most all webpages well. I also use Camino occasionally as well. So overall, I like Safari, Opera, and Camino (in that order). I’ve never cared for Firefox. I guess it has a lot of features, but I just think it looks “boring” and “bland” as far as the layout and design goes.

Scott Haneda
I only use a few plugins for Firefox. I use Adblock, eQuake alert, and ForecastFox (mostly only use the radar view).

I found an adblock plugin for Safari but I couldn’t find anywhere that would tell me how to install it. I googled everywhere but found nothing. Maybe my search term was bad, used “Install Safari plugins”. All I found were plugins to install. But how to install?

I really couldn’t find one place for safari plugins. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place.

I would also like to have more than one tab open. If Firefox didn’t automatically open a link in a new tab, I could right-click and select that option. I couldn’t figure out how in Safari. I have a one-button mouse I still getting used to.

I think I just need a tutorial at this point.

@Donna
As we speak, Safari tutorials are in the works, and will be in a proofing stage soon. We are going to cover all the issues you brought up, so just hold tight, and you should get where you need to go.

Thanks for the patience.

I was using Firefox, but there was this documented “feature” that if, while filling in some text box on a webpage, you hit the apostrophe, it would treat it like Cmd-F, and put you into a “find” box. So I can’t use words like don’t, can’t, I’ve, I’m, etc. This is stupid. So I am using Safari and it seems to have some unique/neat features (though I can’t load a picture up to eBay with it).

Geez…I wish I could just use ONE of something.

I just bought my first Mac, a 20″ iMac, and what a wonderful world it is. I’ve been keeping track of my experiences at wordpress.compkeyshosting.com. Safari is by far the fastest browser I have ever used. I have found that some pages don’t work well in Safari, and I miss there being a home page button in the toolbar. I primarily use Firefox for web development because of its web developer toolbar extension. Both browsers work better than they ever did in Windows, but then what doesn’t. I think it’s safe to say that there is no perfect browser but these two cover 99.9% of the deal.

@Mark, you can add a home button by customizing the toolbar, which we will be covering in a post this week.

The latest nightly build of Safari is not only much faster, but has an entire web development inspector that adds real time html/css editing on the fly.

I would agree that Safari is much better than Internet Explorer, but to say Firefox is an inferior browser to Safari is a bit of a stretch. Anyone who has used Safari and found it locking up on some webpages such as Gmail when you’re simply trying to get your username and password fields to show up, or have a content rich webpage crash it just as it loads, or have a site take untold amounts of time to simply load will soon regard Safari as the lesser browser and jump over to Firefox or perhaps Opera. I’m generally a fanboy of Apple but sorry…not in this case. Safari is simply an ugly stepchild to the better more robust browsers out there.

I use safari primarily~it could use a better cookie manager like FF. Never had any real problems with it until the last update and it seemed to have some freeze up problems so I’ve been experimenting more with FF and Camino.

@JimB, Safari 3, to me, has a pretty nice cookie manager. As a developer, I find it does the trick rather well. I am curious, what is it you need to do to your cookies that you need more granular control over them?

I like to be able to have some cookies saved when I flush the pile. With Safari it’s either wade through the pile manually or flush them all and start over. It is 2008 after all :D…my favorite app when I used PC was CCleaner and it had that option of marking particular cookies to be saved. I’ve tried some mac app cookie managers but none have been successful-there was one that worked but it only managed it’s own cookies, not the ones in the browser..”cocoa cookies” it think it was called.

I like to be able to have some cookies saved when I flush the pile. With Safari it’s either wade through the pile manually or flush them all and start over

@Jim, have to ask, just to satisfy mu curiosity. Why are you deleting cookies anyway? I do development, so I can see a need, in that I will want to debug and test, and to do so, I will need to remove cookies. A normal users, 99% of the time, I can not see what the harm in in leaving a cookie. Near all of them only contain a session string, that allows them to know if you have been to the site before. This can auto log you in, or remember a preference etc. There is no way I can think of that it can really be used in a malicious way.

Guess it’s a pc habit?

Just good housekeeping; something I’ve always done…not so much a malware issue as just keeping the system on the lean side. When I was able to automatically keep some cookies I would flush once a week, and had probably a dozen secured so I wouldn’t have to relog into forums etc. Same reason I have “History” set to clear after a week.

@JimB, warning, somewhat advanced here:
What you can do, is clear all your cookies, or clean them to the point you like them. If you clear them, go to all the websites you want to save cookies from. Once you have it just how you want it, navigate to your Library folder, and look for the Cookies folder.

Save that file to another location, a copy of it that is.

Now, next time you want to do cookie cleaning, quit Safari, and replace the old cookie file.

Interesting~I’ll give it a try.

But you can see why a cookie manager like FF has would be a very simple fix.

Unless I am mistaken, Safari 3 manages cookies in a near identical way to Firefox. Safari 3 does not group each cookie by domain, but the search box in Safari 3 performs that. I will concede, the domain grouping is nice. I can see it also being a hinderance at times, as in development, thats a triangle I have to expand a few hundred times a day

The reason I use FF: When I want to see my bookmarks, I want to see them in a side pane… not on a totally separate view where I cannot see web content. I hope this makes sense. When I type CMD B, I LOVE how FF puts my bookmarks down the side of the browser where I can see them while still browsing. As fas as I know, Safari wont do this. Plus I use the FoxMarks add-ons to sync my bookmarks between my work PC and my home iMac.

The choice between browsers may largely come down to personal preferences. Both Safari and Firefox are capable, polished applications. As a web developer I need to test how a page I’m developing will render under the major web rendering engines. With Safari I can test w/ WebKit, with Firefox I can test Gecko. So I have my Mac setup with both FF and Safari, and I’ll remote login to a PC to test with IE/MSIE.

@Jason, great points in favor of FireFox. If your workflow is that that sidebar bookmarks is beneficial to you, by all means, do what works best.

As far as I know, you cannot replicate this in Safari. We will cover bookmark syncing in the future, as that certainly is something Safari can handle.

Thanks again for adding your perspective, we appreciate it.

@Mike O, thanks. Some people are getting the wrong impression, in that I am pro one over the other, which is not the case. I have a personal preference for sure. The main thing is, in making simple tutorials, we need to get everyone on the same page. OS X comes with Safari, so we need to start there.

We have not even written a tutorial on how to download files yet, so my assumption is that many simply do not know how. That being the case, it is most beneficial to start with Safari.

We will cover FireFox in a limited form in the future.

This was a somewhat debated post, and I had no intention for it to go that way. In the end, use what you like, for now, we are working through Safari, and hope most of you will follow along.

Thanks again Mike, appreciate you posting a comment.

I think it should be mentioned that the newest beta version of Firefox tends to void most of your argument. I used Camino along with Safari but since the the FF3 beta dropped I didn’t have to have browsers coexisting anymore.

This post may seem a little out of sync. A while back, an user Ethan posted a comment about FireFox. In the end, Ethan and I both agreed that his comment would lead users to confusion at this time. We both also agreed it would be best served to remove the comment.

When we get around to the FireFox tutorials, Ethan’s comment will come back in an edited form. -Scott Haneda (Admin)

Gee, Ethan. I thought this was a site for new OSX users. I know enough to understand that there are differences in browsers,but I would like to learn how to use Safari, then I can move on and decide for myself if I need Firefox, Opera etc. I would like to thank Scott for taking the time to help us all with OSX.

Bought my first mac a couple of months ago. Used Safari until I discovered there’s no way to sort bookmarks. Lame! Installed Firefox and never looked back.

@frogola, You can sort bookmarks as explained in our Mastering Safari, learning now to manage and tame your bookmarks.

I personally like how they are added in chronological order. Bookmarks for me are a way to get to sites I want to get back to that I can not remember. I can always remember roughly which time I added them, but names of the site often escape me.

You can also open the bookmark manager and search through your bookmarks.

If FireFox bookmark sorting works for you, it is great that you have found a solution that solved your problems.

I am on OSX 10.3.9 and I ran into a conflict problem with Safari and my dial-up accelerator. So, I removed the Safari and the problem cleared up. Now I am on a cable connection and would like to re-install Safari. Can I simply download and install it? Any advice would be appreciated.

@S.Z. I am not sure you can just download Safari, you may have to install it from the CD’s again, or easiest, may be to find a kind person on 10.3.9 to send you a copy.

Thanks Scott—Perhaps someone out there can rescue me by sending me a copy of Safari for OS X 10.3.9.
Incidentally, I add that the trouble I had was an inability for Safari to connect me to the server of any URL that I typed in, yet I could do it with Firefox (?)

Hi - I’m a switcher, I just bought a refurb iMac and have had it for a little less than a month. I find I’m overwhelmed with trying to figure it out since I’ve become comfortable with PCs from 10 years in the workforce and bugging tech support at work every time something came up.
One of the first things I did when I started up my iMac was check my Gmail account in Safari but found I couldn’t just click on addresses in the “to” field. V annoying. So I downloaded Firefox and problem solved. Except that downloading Acrobat Reader through FF wasn’t working right, so back to Safari for that one. And FF would do some weird things to web pages when refreshing or surfing.
At some point in all this, my Apple menu stopped working so the only thing I could do was put the computer to sleep. Apple tech support had me turn the computer off and back on via the power button and it seemed problem solved. They seemed to think the Firefox issues could have messed that up. Anyways, I’m now reading this site in Safari.
Sorry this post seems to be going on too long, but I wanted to ask: could the browser issue have affected the Apple menu?
Also, why don’t the “home” and “end” keys take me to the start and end of text in places like this little box I’m writing in (like they do in Windows)? If that’s not their purpose, then what is?
Thanks for this site, I’m so glad to have stumbled upon it. I’m sure I’ll have more questions as I become comfortable with the iMac.

@akc, I seriosujly doubt that Safari would interfere with the Apple menu. I would even wager a bet on it

What iMac do you have?

In general, if you buy a used machine, the very first thing you should do, is wipe the drive and start over with a new OS install.

If you are not on 10.5 Leopard, I would suggest you buy it, and install that. Anyone should be able to install it, it is very simple.

Make sure you backup any data you may need before you do the install, and perform what is called a “clean installation”.

Used machines have all sorts of other peoples applications and crud on them, it will never work how it should until you start from scratch.

I should have mentioned that I bought this iMac through Apple online. According to the packing slip, it’s a: Refurb iMac 24/2.16/1G/250/SD/ASYST.
While I loved the look of the new ones, I learned that the matte screen of the previous generation was better for photography work. Which I will be starting on as soon as I get more comfortable with this thing!
Since I bought it through Apple, that’s why I called their tech support but wasn’t really happy with their answer. They seemed to think that since it’s all fine after a restart, it’s all fine.
I also realize now this system has 10.4.11 (Tiger?) so some of the Leopard features you mention are not on it but for the most part, your tutorials are so helpful.I’ll think about the Leopard upgrade. Thanks.

@akc, I wholly agree with you on the matte screens, I hate the gloss, people like it as it ads more contrast and makes things look richer. It is fake richness, and not true to the real image. Too bad they charge more for it.

Do not get too bummed, sometimes a restart does indeed fix things. Programs can have memory leaks, restarting clears them, it is just part of how complex applications are these days, there are always small bugs.

Leopard is a really nice update, it will run marginally faster than 10.4 for you as well. Most of what we cover here will be pretty universal and still be helpful to you, however, I do think you will be a lot happier in the land of the Leopard.

Thanks for writing in.

Wait… did you just say that most Windows users use Firefox??? Not even close. Wishful thinking.

Beyond that — you appear to be placing Safari above Firefox on a purely aesthetic basis, which is odd (and not useful). Firefox has these things called “Themes”, you know….

I use both Firefox and Safari. On Windows i use Firefox with the IETab extension installed for that occasional “IE-only” site.

On my Mac, I use Safari when I want speed. That difference comes mainly from the fact that my Firefox is laden with plugins, which add usability but slow things down. But those plugins are the reason i use Firefox instead of Safari in the first place. Can’t do without my “Nuke Anything” when printing!

I own a MacBook and i was using the latest version of firefox for a while because everyone told me it worked great… it was a piece of crap! it kept closing unexpectedly and took too long to display pages… i used it on a pc and it definitely works better than internet explorer but Safari is the best browser. at least for Macs, idk whether it works as good on pcs because i hate using pcs and never want to have to use one again so long as i live. if you’re a mac user keep safari, if you’re a pc user, get safari or firefox but do not use IE… using internet explorer is like telling your computer to eat shit and die! get Safari 3!!!