The Windows based browser war between Firefox and Internet Explorer has had it’s share of the limelight over the last few years. The ‘war’ was given a bit of a poke recently when it was announced that Firefox has a 38.6% market share in Ireland. A few Irish bloggers rolled in with their stats and they each displayed positive numbers for Firefox, for the most part. But what about the Mac’s browser war? How is that fairing?
If a recent poll on boards.ie is anything to go by then all the cool kids are using Firefox on their Macs. 63.79% of the 58 members polled voted with a preference towards Mozilla’s darling browser while Safari claimed a 34.48% share, Camino accounted for 20.69% of the votes. The only other browser worth a mention is Opera which claimed just over 10% of the vote. The remaining browsers on the list, which included IE, Shiira, Flock, OmniWeb and iCab, might as well have not bothered been included on the poll. Between them they only accounted for 7% of the vote. (click to see the poll image)
It’s worth baring in mind that the poll allowed for multiple selections. Some may think that because of that it doesn’t reflect as accurately as it should but I think it was the correct decision because most of us tend to flirt between different browsers on a daily basis.
Here are some of the reasons given by those who voted;
‘I used Safari when I first got my Mac but I’ve moved back to Firefox now. I missed my extensions far too much’ – ‘The Firefox spell-checker drove me crazy. It was always switching to the British dictionary and then refusing to download the Irish one’ – ‘Firefox has grown too fat and bloated. Safari 3 all the way!’ – ‘Certainly rate it (Camino) above FF which tends to hang on me from time to time’
‘With the high performance of Safari 3, I haven’t used anything else since it was launched! – ‘But I reckon, well, I hope, that by Xmas 2007, that Safari will be amazing’ – ‘I really love Safari 3 and i still reckon that in a few months time it will be fecking amazing, even though it is awesome right now’
‘For a start it’s written in Cocoa and is a true mac app as opposed to a port of a Windows app like Firefox’ -’I find it pretty damn stable, certainly more so than Safari which usually crashes several times a day’- ‘I love its integration with the OS, even the latest release 1.5 making use of the built-in Mac OS X spell-checker’ – ‘I am liking Camino more and more. Very fast.’
‘Opera mini FTW!!! Gives me my mobile internets!’ – ‘ Gotta agree with you about Opera mini, great little program. Too bad I never have any credit to use it. – ‘Opera browser all the way! Speedial is great, nice, skin-able and fast. Widgets are handy as you can have video downloader etc. Fullscreen mode and loads of hot keys!’
So there you have it. Even-though Firefox won the poll it came in for quite the slating while Safari Beta 3 and Camino received the most praise.
Opera’s biggest victory seemed to be related to it’s mini version for mobile devices. I haven’t used Opera mini or a mobile device for browsing the web for the matter but I have used Safari Beta 3 and I have to say…’It’s fast, it’s damn fast’.
But that’s not enough for my liking. It’s not aesthetically pleasing to look at. The brushed metal look is horrible. I hope that by the by the time Leopard comes out, Safari gets a face lift. It needs it badly in my opinion.
I echo some of the abuse which Firefox received from the above quotes. It’s a nice all round browser but it doesn’t sit right on the Mac for me. It is very process intensive, suffers from the same well renowned memory leaks on Mac as it did on Windows/Linux , isn’t as stable as it should be and doesn’t block pop-ups as well on Mac as it does on Windows.
My personal browser preference is Camino. It’s a very quick browser, has a nice and tidy interface and rarely crashes or hangs. It’s not too far from being the complete article but I would like to see an improved attempt to facilitate some Firefox extensionability on Camino. They are both Mozilla projects after all!
But what tale do the stats from this blog tell?
I have a stats package by the name of Firestats installed on macBlogger. You may have seen it in use in the comment forms; it displays the poster’s browser and operating system. It’s a nice plugin and the administration page for the plugin displays the accumulated browser/operating system statistics across the entire site, this includes hits and comments. The image below indicates that Firefox is edging Safari once more in relation to popularity.
These stats however don’t differentiate between Mac, Windows and Linux operating systems. Approximately 60% of macBloggers’ visits occur on the OS X platform! While Firefox is the most popular browser, it isn’t the most popular Mac browser on macBlogger. That accolade goes to Safari.
According to Google Analytics, Safari accounts for 54.49% of the hits received on this blog while Firefox has 39.94%. The much loved Camino (for all it’s raving) only has 3% of the share.
To tell you the truth I’m surprised that Safari is such a popular browser. Before I looked at the stats, I expected Firefox to come out on top easily enough.
July 24th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Mmm, for some reason the Camino image is muddling up the alignment in the post. I can’t figure it out and it’s really annoying. Ah well..
July 24th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
If Safari supported Firefox extensions (a tall order I realise and probably with side effects) I’d be using it. It is fast, very fast and a good deal more stable.
In an effort to get my install of Firefox to run faster and be more stable I uninstalled all extensions but it didn’t help much. Not sure if there is leftover files from the uninstalled extensions and a complete install would be better or if Firefox is just that slow these days.
I hope the Firefox guys focus on speed and reliability. Looking at the Firefox 3 roadplan though that doesn’t seem to be the plan. Information broker and all that cool sounding kitchen-sink that was the birth-reason for Firefox out of the bloated monster that was Mozilla browser.
If I was an ordinary Joe surfing the web and not a web-developer jacked into the IV of Firebug, HTML Validator etc. then I’d be using Safari.
July 25th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Hi Paul,
A lot of people are complaining about the bloating of recent Firefox releases but I haven’t noticed too much of a change tbh.
I’m not big into extensions though and I would presume they would be the main culprits in any slowdown.
Have you given Camino a spin? It’s not as feature rich as FF but it does the basics a lot better and is the most stable browser I have used on Mac.
July 25th, 2007 at 1:42 am
The very first program that I installed on my Mac was Firefox, quickly followed by Thunderbird. I’ve been using both on all my Windows machines for quite a while now, and for me they were the natural way to go when I moved to my Mac.
Before using Firefox, I was a huge Opera fan, and still am, though I have found myself using it less and less. I have used Opera Mini on my Wii, and while the Wii interface is not the best for browsing, Opera Mini does a fantastic job on this platform.
My own stats show that most of my visitors are using IE, though that is mainly down to the fact that a lot of my tech articles are Windows related. (I come across a lot more problems on Windows than I do Mac OS X – draw your own conclusions!)
I have to say that I am impressed with the latest Safari Beta, but for me Firefox extensions are the deal maker. While Safari might render a page a couple of hundred milliseconds faster than Firefox, I much prefer the Mozilla product.
One thing that does gladden my heart, is that not only is there a great choice of browsers available, but that more and more people are becoming aware that they have a choice. Long gone are the days when everyone used IE and the only bastion of choice was Netscape. The old browser wars are dead, long live the new browser wars!
July 25th, 2007 at 10:41 am
^
There is a man who is passionate about his web browsing!
I’m using IE6 here in work at the moment and I have to say it’s the most depressing browser in the world ever. It hasn’t changed its appearance in what seems like a decade. It’s an utter disgrace to be honest.
Thank Christ for Firefox and the browser revival it brought. New browsers are popping up nearly every month. Many, such as Flock and Wyzo, are based on the open source Mozilla engine.
And browsers are diversifying into other areas of search. Songbird and Peel facilitate website based music/media search.
Good times.
July 25th, 2007 at 11:21 am
I haven’t used IE in a couple of years. I just don’t trust it. There’s been so many problems with it in the last few years that I honestly believe that integrating IE into the Windows Desktop was one of the biggest mistakes that Microsoft has ever made.
The Internet has become such a large part of our world, I think it’s only fair that browser developers provide the best browsing experience possible, and that includes providing a decent security models as well.
And that’s only browsing, I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of complaints from web developers about how broken the IE rendering engine is and how they have to code pages for different versions of IE. It’s painful to use, and even more painful to code for!
July 26th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Just noticed that Gmail doesn’t support Camino
July 26th, 2007 at 12:09 am
I love that Firestats widget – I just pinched it for my own blog. Ignore the Union Jack though, I’m actually in Ireland!
August 8th, 2007 at 9:13 pm
Ah a great review of my boards poll! I wasn’t really surprised by the results I must say, but I was very happy that people started to give Camino a chance after reading the various opinions from users. I use Camino all the time, and certainly don’t have any GMail issues with it. I only find that Safari is not supported, with the basic html view only.
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:40 am
It’s the other way round for me. Safari displays Gmail in full view but without Google Talk in the left sidebar while Camino only displays the basic Gmail page.
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:23 pm
What I was saying is that Safari only supports the basic html gmail view, ie without chat. I have the advanced view in Camino however, with my chat window displaying.