MacNoob

I have always admired the speed of Safari but the lure of Firefox’s add-ons kept me from switching to Apple’s browser…until now. When I switched to a Mac some 18 months ago, one of the first things I downloaded was Firefox. I’d been using it on Windows since version 0.9 and on my new Mac it was an island of familiarity in the ocean of new(to me) operating system. Frankly, the then current Safari 2 seemed a little feature-poor by comparison. When I learned about Webkit, I began downloading the nightly build every now and then just to see if its speed could wow me enough to make me switch. While it was very fast, I always found myself missing FEBE and Better G-Mail. FEBE (Firefox Environment Backup Extension) enables me to save all my add-ons, bookmarks and preferences automatically and is an absolute necessity when moving between and adding computers as often as I do. The Better G-Mail add-on adds features and visual appeal to the normally bland Google app. I spend so much time with GMail I really need it to look and feel more like a desktop app.
When the Safari 4 beta was released I was immediately attracted to its speed and new features.  Also, a couple of recent developments have lessened my dependence on my favorite Firefox add-ons. First, Google has dramatically enhanced GMail’s feature set. With a multitude of new themes and its recent addition of off-line capability there is little need for third-party embellishment. Second, the new Foxmarks web service provides web synchronization of bookmarks and login data between Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer.
I really wanted to give Safari 4 a good shakedown so I immediately set it as the default browser on my Macbook Pro, the machine I use 90% of the time. The first couple of days were a bit uncomfortable just because of the normal learning curve. Different button and tab placement along with some slight rendering differences kept me a little off-balance, but I was determined not to fall back into my comfort zone for comfort alone. After just two or three days using Safari 4 I found I had gotten quite used to it and I still haven’t run into any real show-stoppers. The sites I frequent all work well and the JavaScript-rich ones certainly render much faster. I really thought Apple’s claims of speed were just so much hype, but Firefox now seems almost sluggish on sites like GMail or Google Maps.
Is Safari perfect? Of course not. Are there things I wish Safari did better? Sure. Is this new version good enough to lure me away from Firefox? Time will tell, but it is still the default browser on all my systems after a week and that’s about five days longer than any of its predecessors.

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