It’s been long enough. And, this has been something bugging me of late.

My Week with Safari

Safari 4 was released last week. Finally including proper tab controls and a few other features that really peaked my interest. So, on the Mac, I decided to make it my default browser for a week.

Keep in mind that I have been using Firefox since before it was called Firefox. Plugins, hyper-lever control over the behavior of tabs and a great experience are tough to match. And, for me, Safari doesn’t quite fit the bill.

The new Safari is pretty rockin’, don’t get me wrong. It’s fast, it displays webpages well, has pretty ok tab controls and the new coverflow feature on new tabs is very cool. But, and this is a big but, there are a few issues that are forcing me to switch back to Firefox for full time browser duties.

First up is weird behavior in Gmail. Weirder still is that things happen (or don’t) seemingly at random. For example, in the image above, I was trying to mark that message as spam, but I couldn’t click the Report Spam button. Other times the message window won’t get focus, so when I start to type who knows what’s going to happen with the Google Keyboard Shortcuts kick in.

Next up is Facebook. The same thing happens there as does with Gmail. Buttons not clickable, comment fields don’t grab focus and sometimes, the site won’t load at all (eventhough it will in Firefox).

I was thinking maybe this is a Webkit issue. But, using Google Chrome on the EeePC under Windows is perfect on both of these sites, everytime. I’ve never had an issue.

I’ve had these issues before when I was using Fluid.app for Gmail and Facebook, both on the iMac and the Macbook. As cool as Fluid is, I had to stop using it because it was too unreliable on the 2 sites that I use the most.

Much like Safari is now.