I am sorry I left you for almost a week, Firefox

Yes, I gave up on Safari. Two days ahead of time I am switching back to Firefox to get some real work done, faster.

Even though Safari is the faster browser, I work faster with firefox. The bookmark handling, the awesome bar and other features are just so much better. Firefox even has better drag and drop functionality, which really is a bit surprising given how Apple promotes that feature in it’s applications.

Here are the things I want Firefox to adopt from Safari:

• Speed
• Smart page for new tab (I like Opera’s speed dial even better)

Short list, I know, but Firefox really is ahead on most of the features I use. What I really would love though, is a browser that uses the WebKit rendering engine, but is compatible with Firefox extensions. That would be awesome.

Now I will probably stay with Firefox until Chrome is released for Mac, unless I decide to try Camino first. I am open to new browsers, but I feel like I will stay with Firefox for a long time, maybe until someone can match or beat the awesome bar.

safari logo

No, I am not going traveling again. I am going to try Safari as my default browser at home for a week. I’ve used Firefox since version 1.5, and I feel like I want to try something new. The main reasons I went for Safari is speed and Mac integration. Safari 4 on Snow Leopard is insanely fast.

I will post how it goes in about a weeks time. Will I miss flashblock, or all my other extensions? I know the one thing that will bring me back to firefox occasionally is firebug, but I am not an active web developer for the time being, so it won’t be that often.

What I miss already:
While I wrote this article I found some things I already miss:

• The awesome bar (searching directly from it and smart-searching my history and bookmarks)
• Google Gears (really Google? No support for Safari on Snow Leopard? Shame on you!)

Wish me luck.