Technology Perspective
September 23rd, 2004
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September 23rd, 2004
The Mac Skeptic: More Mac Browsers
Senior Ed. Rebecca Freed
Last month, I tried out three major browsers for the Mac, Apple's
Safari 1.2, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.2, and Mozilla's Navigator
1.7.2:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/755343/0/
I declared that Safari would keep its place of honor in my Dock. This
month I examined three less-well-known browsers. Camino 0.8.1 and
Firefox 0.9.3 are both from the Mozilla open-source group. Both are
prerelease software, and both are free to use. OmniWeb 5.0.1, from the
Omni Group, costs $29 but can be tried for free for 30 days. Follow
these links for downloads and information:
Mozilla's Camino page
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/737140/0/
Firefox, in PC World's Downloads library
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/755344/0/
Mozilla's Firefox page
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/755345/0/
Omni Group's OmniWeb page
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/737141/0/
In my informal speed tests, Camino came out on top, loading the Nike
Running USA page in just 10 seconds; Firefox took 12 seconds; OmniWeb
took 16 seconds. The fastest browser from my big three, Safari, took
13 seconds to load the page in this Internet session.
Interface
One of Camino's nice features is the option to prevent sites from
changing the appearance of your browser. It also has a Send Link
command that opens your e-mail client and puts the link to the Web
page you're looking at into the message body. Another nifty trick of
Camino's is "Find as You Type," which lets you search a page for a
word or phrase, just by clicking on the page (not the URL bar), typing
a forward slash, then typing the text you want to see.
Camino was written for OS X, but has features very similar to those in
Firefox. Both are good-looking, easy-to-use browsers that have it all
over Internet Explorer and compare favorably to Safari. And the
features of both can be extended with plug-ins. But they don't offer
anything that you can't get in a Windows browser.
OmniWeb, a Mac-only browser, has lots of cool features, such as a
built-in spelling checker, bookmarks that you can filter, and
bookmarks for RSS news feeds. One of my favorites is the small set of
icons in the status bar that give you one-click access to tools for
the page, such as viewing all the cookies sent by that site, viewing a
pop-up you want to see (assuming you've blocked all pop-ups), or using
AutoFill. My other favorite is the Site Preferences button, which is
front and center on the menu bar. It lets you set security,
appearance, and other preferences for sites individually as you're
browsing. This is much more convenient than drilling down into the
Preferences menu, especially since less savvy users probably don't
realize that they can customize how individual sites behave. I have
yet to see a Windows browser with either of these interface
enhancements.
Privacy and Security
All three browsers block pop-ups, and all three let you "whitelist"
sites--meaning that you can allow specific sites to deliver pop-ups.
With Camino, the first time you encounter a pop-up, a dialog box gives
you the option to block all of them. You can change your choice
through the Preferences menu.
On the downside, Camino hides the history- and cache-clearing buttons
on a sub-submenu within Preferences--and they're within the Navigation
menu, not Security or Privacy, as you might guess. I couldn't find any
command that let me cover my browsing tracks with a quick click.
OmniWeb has a Flush Cache command in the OmniWeb menu that's similar
to Safari's Reset Safari command. While you do have to dig down into
Preferences to clear the History, it has its own submenu--no digging
needed.
Annoyingly, even when I requested that Firefox not warn me about
moving from an encrypted to an unencrypted page, it continued to pop
up the dialog box.
Tabbed Browsing/Navigation
Camino and Firefox have the same kind of tabbed interface that Safari
and Navigator do; that is, when you Cmd-click a link, a new page
opens, and your other open page appears as a tab in a narrow
horizontal bar at the top of the window. Firefox handled this
predictably, with no glitches, but Camino was persnickety. It opened a
slew of windows for me, but didn't display the tab bar consistently.
In OmniWeb, tabbed browsing takes form of a slide-out subwindow (or
drawer) that holds browsable thumbnails of your pages, which can also
be reordered. I'm not a big fan of drawers, but they do let you
quickly scan all the items they hold. And the vertical drawer would
hold many more links than a horizontal tab bar--I'm sure that's
helpful to multitasking fanatics. Given that drawers are an
increasingly common UI device on the Mac, I suppose I'd better get
used to them. One thing I wanted to do in OmniWeb was to type an
address into the URL bar and have the resulting page open in a new
tab, but I couldn't figure out how to do this in a few minutes of
fiddling.
Still the Winner?
The Omni Group has been creative in developing ways to make Web
browsing more secure and convenient. I'm pretty enamored of OmniWeb,
so I think I'll let it coexist with Safari for awhile. I have a
feeling it will earn a permanent spot on the Dock.
For more browser reviews, and the latest developments, go to PC
World's Web site:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/755346/0/
* IMac News *
You may know by now that Apple announced two new IMac models at the
end of August; read "Apple Unwraps New IMac G5s" for details:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/755347/0/
Not only do the new IMacs have Motorola G5 processors inside, but they
have also been radically redesigned again. This time, the entire
computer is concealed behind an LCD monitor, the whole package
resembling Apple's new LCD monitors. The new 17- and 20-inch
all-in-ones are slated to be on sale in mid-September; look for a
complete PC World review in the near future.
My first impression (based on photos alone), is that Apple has traded
in the ability to customize the display height for a sleeker, more
conventional look:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/755348/0/
This may sell more systems, but it ultimately doesn't serve users'
ergonomic needs. There's only a $600 difference in price between the
$1899 20-inch IMac and the $1299, 20-inch Cinema Display. Does this
mean the whole computer part of the IMac costs only $600? Does the
IMac use a less-expensive and lower-grade LCD than the Cinema Display?
It would be interesting to look at the two side by side and compare
the image quality.
Have a question or comment? Write to Rebecca Freed:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Read Rebecca Freed's regularly published "Mac Skeptic" columns:
http://pcwnl.pcworld.com/t/229142/21421687/364479/0/
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