Browser Wars

A while back I downloaded a browser called Flock.  I had looked at it before but thought it needed some work, with version 1.1 it got pretty good and was very fun to use.  Then, just days later Safari came out with a new update that was incredibly fast, and days after that Firefox came out with version 3 im beta, also very fast.

And then there is AOL Desktop for Mac which seems to be Firefox with a special interface for using AOL to make navigation better.  Then there are other problems like the fact that Gmail does not work in Mac Mail so I tried Thunderbird where it did work pretty well.  Flock is supposed to have support for Gmail and works OK.

All of these are very cool in some ways but after a few weeks of use it comes down to the fact that Safari is by far the fastest and most stable of them all.  AOL, Gmail and everything else still works faster in Safari than the special programs build just for them.  But it has one drawback, I can't do blogging on Blogger with it so I need Flock for that.

It sure would be nice to have one browser for everything, I don't like having 4 or 5 applications open to handle the internet.  For now I'll make Safari my main browser with Mail for all email except Gmail, then just open Flock to do blog entries.  Maybe when Firefox 3 comes out of beta and Flock does an upgrade based on it that will do the job.

Battling Browsers

About a month ago I did a post on Flock and how much I liked it and that I was going to try it as my main browser. Just days after doing this Apple came out with a new Safari update that made it incredibly fast and suddenly I'm torn. Then days later Firefox comes out with version 3 in beta so I give that a try and boy, is it fast too.

So now I'm really confused as to which one I want to use. Safari is still fastest and is closely integrated with Leopard but I still can't make posts to Blogger in it so I have to use Firefox or Flock.

I've made Safari my main browser with Flock as secondary mainly for Blogger posts, but I find I keep coming back to Flock more and more, it's just so much more fun to use and some sites just don't work with Safari. Firefox 3 was very fast but a bit unstable, Safari is faster and more stable and Flock is more fun and more stable.

In a recent MacWorld they did a review on browsers and both Safari and Flock got the best ratings at 4.5 mice but they didn't say too much about Flock and gave no real reason why they gave it so many stars. They also said Safari was good in Blogger but that's absurd, Safari has never been good for creating posts in Blogger, all kinds of weird things happen if I try and use it and it's never been one of Blogger's supported browsers, and it's never been able to work with any of Google apps except Gmail. Odd. So I still have Safari as my main browser so when I click on a link in Mail or elsewhere I get Safari's speed, but most of the time I spend web surfing I use Flock, as well as for Gmail and Blogger.

The Flock people say when Firefox 3 gets out of beta they will upgrade Flock to it which should add some speed and then I will be able to settle on a single browser. I hope.