Safari for Mac vs Firefox for Mac

Safari for Mac vs Firefox for Mac

Safari? Or Firefox? After you have read this article, I think you can make a decision.

As popular web browser, Safari and Firefox for Mac have its own superiorities and shortages. By comparsions between them, you can choose the one you like as your web browser.

Screenshot of Safar and Firefox for Mac

Comparison between Safari and Firefox

1. Background Window Appearance

Safari starts with Leopard, standard application windows and follows a simple, consistent rule: the frontmost window of the current application gets a medium gray color while all other windows have a lighter, flatter look. The idea is that with several windows visible at once, giving the active one a darker look makes it easier to pick out visually.

Firefox 3 doesn’t do this. Its windows all have the darker “active” look even when in the background. And I believe that its theming mechanism does not allow for it.

2. Text Editing Shortcuts

Firefox 3 still doesn’t support certain standard Mac text editing key bindings. For example, in a one-line text field, the Up and Down Arrow keys should move the insertion point to the beginning and end of the line, respectively. However, Safari for Mac can.

3. Dictionary

 Firefox doesn’t support the system-wide dictionary. In Safari (and most other apps), you can hover the mouse over any word and use Command-Control-D (by default) to display the definition of that word right there in the current window.

4. Tabs

Firefox 3 does let you drag to reorder tabs within a window, and drag tabs between windows, but it doesn’t let you drag a tab out of a window to create a new window with just that tab. Safari 3 does. Safari has a nice tab drag effect.

5. History

Safari’s hierarchical History menu - what Safari does is list the 20 most recently loaded URLs, followed by sub-menus for each of the last seven days.

Firefox only lists the 10 most recent URLs in the History menu. You can get more done right from the menu in Safari, whereas in Firefox you’ve got to open the History window.

In a word, through comparsion between Safari for Mac and Firefox for Mac, you can decide which one is worthy of using.