Firefox vs. Safari: In Response

I just read Bryan's post about which browser he uses and why, and then also read Kenton's post about the same topic that inspired Bryan's post. So that, in turn, inspired me to write about my thoughts on the matter.

I am a PC user, have been for my whole life, and that means I've been a Windows user for just as long. I don't want to get into the whole Mac vs. PC argument, but that's just how it's been for me. I have also, like the other two, been using Firefox for a substantial amount of time, and have grown to absolutely love it. I have tried other browsers in the past, but nothing has compared to the usability and functionality of Firefox.

There was a time, however, when I did seriously look around for another browser because Firefox was just becoming this ridiculous memory hog. It was almost as bad as iTunes. With the additional memory usage did not come any noticeable performance increases, so it was time to change.

Right around that time, Safari released a version for Windows, so I decided to check that out. It was a very light program, which initially satisfied my (only) requirement, so I started using it primarily. Now, Safari touts its speed vs. every other browser, which I noticed on a few pages, but not with everything. Some things actually seemed to take longer to load. Safari is much better with colors than all other browsers, but that's not really a priority of mine. Colors all look different on different monitors anyway. Another thing I didn't like was the lack of optional password saving that I utilized so much with Firefox. It may be the Windows version, or I may just be an idiot, but it didn't seem to have that feature. Maybe because Safari is so security focused, but I rely on that feature to remember passwords so I don't have to. The last major factor that irked me was the way Safari displayed some web pages. Some looked odd because they were clearly built on other browsers, and others had some compatibility issues, but that's an old complaint.

I have installed all the updates since its release and still have it on my computer, but rarely use it. I actually opened it today, and it seemed a lot slower than I was used to.

So, Firefox is still my main browser. I have Firefox 3 Beta and like it very much. It's a lot less of a memory hog (actually less than Safari, as I'll show in a second), has all the features I need when browsing, and is improvable with any number of add-ons I may want (which do bog it down, but really, for things like Lifehacker's go-to Greasemonkey, it's normally worth it for the functionality).

So, like I said, I opened Safari today with Firefox already open, and they ran side by side for a while. Then, when going to write this post, I checked the memory usage, and found something I didn't expect. First is a picture of my screen with both of them running side by side (with my task manager also), and the second is of the energy usage of each from the task manager's processes pane:

So, as you'll notice, Safari has only one window open (my blog, which is quite the hog itself), and Firefox has 4 windows open, including my blog and my blog editor, and Firefox is still running on less CPU power. This was a single screen shot, and it fluctuated, but Safari was generally using more energy.

Since upgrading to Firefox 3 Beta, I have noticed a performance increase, and then recently I installed Vista Service Pack 1, and noticed an overall system speed increase. It wasn't much of a service pack relative to others (like both XP's), but it said it may increase performance, which it has. It seems to have made all the bulky Vista system operations that normally bog the OS down run smoothly and unobtrusively, which means a faster computer for me. Thankfully I now have an OS that runs like it should, or at least moved in that direction. And I can look forward to the final release of Ff3.

So, after a long post that most of you probably don't care about, I will conclude by saying, on the Windows side, Firefox is still my #1 browser, and until Safari either develops a stronger browser for Windows or Firefox starts sucking again, it looks like it's going to stay that way. At least, as long as I'm still a Windows user...