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Macworld Holds Battle of the Browsers

Posted by pudge on from the i-vote-for-telnet-slashdot.org-http dept.

dumbArtMajor writes "Macworld has an article breaking down most of the available browsers for Mac OS X and evaluates speed, rendering, etc. Did your app of choice kick the other guy's ass?" I don't want to know which one kicked which other one, or where they kicked them. I just want one browser that works.

17 of 167 comments (clear)

  1. Make AppleScript Work For You by pudge · · Score: 5, Informative
    The story includes this:
    Launch the Script Editor application (located in the Applications: AppleScript folder) and type the following:
    try
    tell application "Internet Explorer"
    GetURL "http://apple.slashdot.org/"
    Activate
    end tell
    on error
    end try
    To use a browser other than Internet Explorer, enter its name within the quotation marks after tell application. To open more sites in separate windows, add new GetURL commands with the other pages' addresses.
    Bleah. You shouldn't need to know the browser name, or what events are understood by the app, or what arguments it accepts. Just use this:
    open location "http://apple.slashdot.org/"
    It uses your default http handler, and should work fine with all the browsers (and if not, send in a bug report to the maker of browser you're using).
    1. Re:Make AppleScript Work For You by kwerle · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oh, crap - I should have previewed!

      echo '<html><head><META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" content="0;URL=http://www.apple.com"></head></html >' > temp.html ; open temp.html; rm temp.html

      And here is the shell script:
      --- openurl ---
      #!/bin/sh
      TEMPURLFILENAME=$LOGNAME.temp.html
      echo '<html>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '<head>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo " <META HTTP-EQUIV=REFRESH CONTENT=\"0;URL=$1\">" >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFI
      LENAME
      echo '<title>Not Here</title>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '</head>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '<body>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '<h1>Hang on!!!</h1>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '</body>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo '</html>' >> /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      open /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      sleep 10
      rm /tmp/$TEMPURLFILENAME
      echo bye
      ---

  2. iCab... by singularity · · Score: 5, Informative

    I am disappointed the article did not mention more about iCab's unique abilities. It does have some problems supporting CSS, and it is HTML compliant to a fault (although being "compliant to a fault" with HML could be argues as impossible), but some features it does offer are only now being integrated into other browsers.

    iCab's Filter Manager is one of the most powerful things I have ever seen in a web browser. You can filter almost anything (cookies, JavaScript, images) based on domain, link, or another other thing.

    Mozilla's coders could learn a lot by studying iCabs Filter Manager.

    Do you want to turn off JavaScript except for your online banking (that requires it), and allow all cookies but those coming from DoubleClick? Done. Want to accept Slashdot cookies forever, but Yahoo cookies only until the end of the session? Done. Do you want to not load images that are 480x60 pixels big and not accept any images that come from */ad-bin/*? Done.

    iCab (along with some other browsers) also supports "Open in Background Window", which is something I cannot imagine being without while surfing.

    Another great thing? You can set it to only send a Referrer: header inside the same domain (or set it to not be sent at all)

    Unfortunately the article forgot to mention iCab's ad filtering (which is much more powerful than simply rejecting all images not from the original server and its ability to block pop-ups without seeing them.

    --
    - (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
  3. Problems with Article by WatertonMan · · Score: 4, Informative
    There is something wrong with this article. For one it says all the browsers pretty much rendered ESPN right. However Omniweb, my favorite browser, does NOT render ESPN right. The speeds seem slightly off from what I see on my system as well. Right now Chimera renders about as fast as my PC while the others are far slower.

    I really don't think it is a terribly good article. It isn't very specific in problems. They also didn't do what I think is applicable: a bank test. Most problems Mac browsers have are with banks. Chimera handles most of them as well as IE. Omniweb doesn't.

    I should add that the browser scene is changing quickly. The latest releases of Chimera really have improved a lot. Although its still a beta, it is a beta far more usable than many iApps. Omniweb is falling behind, but version 5.0 is just around the corner. It'll have an entirely new rendering engine and should remove all the problems it has with CSS and tables.

  4. Netscape 7.0... by Alan+Partridge · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...according to this idiotic article DOESN'T support tabbed browsing. Since it certainly DOES, the rest of the article isn't worth the pixels it's rendered with.

    Oh yeah - my choice? Omniweb 4.1, Chimera 0.6, Netscape 7.0 IN THAT ORDER.

    --
    That was classic intercourse!
    1. Re:Netscape 7.0... by TiMac · · Score: 4, Informative
      I'd say that my order is: Chimera, Mozilla, IE, OmniWeb.

      Why would anyone use a browser that obviously pauses for each character I enter into a text field?

      How slow is your Mac? Or how the hell fast can you type? Because I type ~65-70 words a minute (fairly fast) and I'm typing this on Chimera 0.60 and I'm not seeing any "pauses" between characters. IE is fast. Mozilla is slow. But Chimera is definitely miles ahead of Mozilla. There really isn't significant delay. Maybe you were using an older version of Chimera?

      Expecting me to use stuff like Chimera, which offers a "Cocoa" interface with all non-Cocoa widets for interaction, is also insulting.

      What are you talking about non-Cocoa widgets? Are you high? All of Chimera's widgets are Cocoa...or rather, they are "Aqua," which is the proper name. The close, minimize and whatever-the-official-name-for-the-green-button-is buttons are all Aqua. The scroll bars and arrows are Aqua. The tabs are Aqua. You can test these by going to the "General" System Preferences and selecting the Graphite theme. Chimera's widgets turn graphite! They are real.

      The button bar is true Aqua. You can test this by Command-clicking the White button. The buttons rotate through configurations as Aqua does. The Sidebar is Aqua--it's actually called a "Drawer." Its alerts are real--they are "Sheets." Even form elements (buttons, etc) are Aqua-sized.

      So yeah...Chimera is definitely Cocoa, and definitely Aqua. And it's fast and renders perfectly (in my experience). I never use another browser anymore. Mozilla used to be my browser but it was way too slow.

      --

    2. Re:Netscape 7.0... by Matthew+Weigel · · Score: 3, Informative

      TiMac wrote:

      How slow is your Mac? Or how the hell fast can you type? Because I type ~65-70 words a minute (fairly fast) and I'm typing this on Chimera 0.60 and I'm not seeing any "pauses" between characters.

      500MHz G3. Is that not fast enough to run a frickin' web browser? I remember running (an admittedly much less capable version of) OmniWeb on a 25MHz NeXTStation. How much more processing power does Chimera require? Chimera pauses for each character entered, and it is definitely not a Cocoa text field.

      The text field, where OS X actually innovated a lot - actually improved usability over other systems a lot - isn't native. Things like reasonably complete emacs bindings for cursor movement, interface to the spell checker, and so on are things I've come to expect in OmniWeb. Redrawing the entire text box every time I enter a character is not what I expect.

      --
      --Matthew
  5. Re:chimera wins by WatertonMan · · Score: 3, Informative
    The problem only really occurs with some fonts that the Carbon anti-aliases handles differently than the Cocoa anti-aliasing. I've complained about browsing the MacNN Forums with Chimera, for instance. They use bold Geneva which anti-aliases horribly with Chimera. There was a discussion of this in the MacNN Forums. Basically there isn't much of a work around. That is more Apple's fault than anyone elses though.

    You are right that text input fields still use the Gecko code which is oriented towards crossplatform abilities. Supposedly that will be changed, but because of the difficulty will be one of the last things finished. Hopefully by then Apple will have made more Cocoa features available to the Carbon API.

  6. Customizing Chimera by megabulk3000 · · Score: 2, Informative

    This article explains how to bookmark groups of tabs in Chimera. And this one tells you how to block images selectively by server. The more I use Chimera, the more I like it-- it's fast and stable, and it's nice to know that folks can expand upon its functionality easily. It seems like every day I learn about a new way to trick out Chimera.

  7. Make _Terminal_ Work For You by ChrisDolan · · Score: 4, Informative

    Try this on the command line:

    bilbo% open "http://apple.slashdot.org/"

    It uses you Internet prefs to decide which browser to launch.

    But do you want to see something really bizarre? My prefs are set to use IE as the default browser (yeah, I know, sorry). But If I explicitly try to launch an url with mozilla, it launches in IE instead. That is, the following command launches IE:
    open /Applications/Mozilla.app "http://apple.slashdot.org/"

    *shrug*

    1. Re:Make _Terminal_ Work For You by pudge · · Score: 3, Informative

      open didn't even open http URLs before 10.2 ...

    2. Re:Make _Terminal_ Work For You by Onan · · Score: 3, Informative


      I'm afraid that doesn't explicitly ask to use mozilla; you need to use -a to specify an opening application.

      open -a /Applications/Mozilla.app "http://apple.slashdot.org/"

    3. Re:Make _Terminal_ Work For You by dubstop · · Score: 2, Informative

      Something similar was annoying me. In the finder, I'd set *.html files to be opened by my browser choice and it worked fine, but when I opened a site from (for example) mail, it always brought it up in IE. I finally discovered that the browser preference also has to be set in the System Preferences - Network panel.

  8. IE Fast??? by Fished · · Score: 3, Informative

    Okay, I don't know what anyone else's experience is, but my primary reason for switching to Netscape 7.0 (then to Chimera starting with 0.6) was that IE was so incredibly slow and unreliable, prash-crone and sluggish. I almost wonder if they are using the same IE I am to call it faster and more reliable.

    --
    "He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
  9. Re:I wouldn't surf without... by BandwidthHog · · Score: 3, Informative
    Chimera is a fast lightweight (unlike Mozilla) browser using Gecko layout engine and Cocoa user interface. Links on the otherhand is an excellent text browser. Sadly neither one was in the review.
    Uhh, yeah it was. That's what Navigator 0.5 is, Chimera.

    But other than that, you're right about it. It's lightweight, and *fast* as hell. It also now renders pages almost as beautifully as OmniWeb, but I'll admit I haven't tried that lately. Speaking of which, didn't the article say Omni is free? Wasn't last I knew.

    Oh well, it's MacWorld. They served us well in their day, now, well... What are ya gonna do?
    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  10. Path of Least Resistance by eshine · · Score: 2, Informative
    ...points to Chimera. It just works, with very little fuss.

    There aren't a ton of rational reasons. It's all feel. IE for Mac feels like Microsoft's operating systems; that is, like junk food. Omniweb gives the impression that is thinking oh so hard about how to construct a page.. iCab made more sense in OS 9, and Opera is easy to forget about after it crashes. That said, I've gone back to the Chimera .5 formulation; .6 appears unsteady.

    And yeah, I like tabbed browsing. Wow. My desktop's already a mess, might as well not add to it.

  11. About OmniWeb's Speed, an informal test by TheCouchPotatoFamine · · Score: 2, Informative

    my box:
    867Mhz Quicksilver G4, 2Meg L3
    640 Megs Ram,
    Many Open Applications, with Uptime > 2 days.
    There is sufficient free memory to avoid any
    swapping.

    i'm using DIALUP avg 4.0 Kb/sec for both tests.

    opening ESPN (what they liked to test in the article), it takes:

    OmniWeb
    1:32 Seconds.

    Mozilla
    1:11 Seconds.

    BUT, considering that it's dial-up and not highspeed, I think the render-time proportions between the two would shrink to a factor where OmniWeb's other merits become a factor to appreciate.

    Observe, I ran them consecutively. They don't share caches so they both loaded from scratch. Being 4:00am on a college dialup means there aren't many fluctuations in network availability.
    if we imagine then that everything was the same, but run 16 times faster (like a dsl can easily achieve), then the rendering times come out to be

    5.75 second for OmniWeb,
    4.4375 for Mozilla.

    That is not a large difference. Someone up on the thread mentioned that it's really hard to get objective speeds with browsers, but this is a unbiased as i can get. Especially when, did i mention, i'm a 56K warrior.

    I think Omni caught up.

    Now feel free to blow my little science fair project away...

    regards, jamesr.

    --
    CS majors know the time/space tradeoff, but they never get taught the 3rd, crucial, tradeoff of the set: comprehension!