Out with Firefox, in with Safari

firefox safari web browser

After my computer scare last month, I decided to check out Firefox, based on reading several reviews comparing it favorably to Safari. I went so far as to make it my default browser.

No longer.

I can understand the appeal of Firefox (especially for Windows users who have few alternatives), and I like the customizations available through extensions, some of which add features that should be standard in any browser, like linky. And the web developer toolbar is awesome. But for day-in day-out browsing, I'll take Safari.

First of all (these are in no particular order by the way), Safari's much more responsive on my machine (1GHz 12" PowerBook G4). Firefox took much longer to launch and I experienced noticable lag when doing simple actions like opening new tabs.

Second, I like being able to close a tab with out switching to it. Firefox provides one 'X' button at the end of the row of tabs which will close your current tab, but Safari provides an 'X' button on each tab so you can close without switching.

Third, I like using cmd-shift-left and cmd-shift-right to cycle between tabs. Similarly, I like being able to use cmd-~ to switch between open windows. Also in the keyboard shortcuts department, I like that I can use cmd-# (where # is a number, like 2) to open links stored in my bookmarks bar. That kind of access to frequently used links is great.

Lastly, I like the aqua-style radio buttons, checkboxes and submit buttons in HTML forms.

I know there are extensions that recreate some of these features in Firefox, but why track them down when I have them all in one package already?