Well, my two week descent into unusability and lack of functionality that is Safari, is finally over.
About two weeks ago I undertook to stick to Safari all the time, 24 hours a day/7 days a week, while at home. Thank goodness I had an oasis of sanity every weekday when I went in to work. As slow as my office computer is (P4 with 384M of ram) it was a relief to be able to drag my mouse backwards to return to the previous page.
I’ve been a Firefox user for a few years now, since it came out really, and I love it. It’s a great browser and the extensions can turn it into anything you want it to be, from an FTP client to a multiplayer pong game.
I’ve been using a Mac for a little over a year now and while I’ve opened Safari a few times for fun, I’ve never used Apple’s built-in browser for any real length of time. I decided a few days ago to see — just for the heck of it — whether I could use Safari exclusively at home for two weeks. While I certainly do miss Firefox and all it’s great, useful extensions, the challenge is made a little easier because of Safari’s speed. I haven’t done any scientific experimentation, but it is my impression that Safari is faster than Firefox.