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Five things Safari could learn from Firefox

Apple Safari is by far the best web browsers I’ve ever used. It’s fast, clean and stable. It renders type impeccably and better than any other browser on any platform. I love the way screen real estate is used. The tabs are narrow and there is no border around the browser window. Overall I love it. But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t use some improvement. Here are a few things that Apple could learn from one other capable Mac web browser.

1. Movable tabs.

I spend most of my day developing websites. This means that there are at least 10 tabs open at any given time of the day. Sometimes more when I need to do personal things like Banking. If I open up a banking tab and then get back to work, I’m left with a tab I need to go around all day long.

What’s Firefox’s answer? Movable tabs. In Firefox for the Mac, you can easily drag the tab over to a new location. This makes putting my work in order very easy. With Safari, I’d need to close all the tabs and open them in the correct order.

2. Memory footprint.

Holy crap is Safari bloated. I don’t think my web browser should use up more RAM than Photoshop. I have clocked Safari at well over 600 megs of RAM. This is just not cool. Ram costs money and we all need it for more intensive applications. Besides, my laptop is already maxed out at two gigs. Firefox rarely if ever goes over 300 megs.

3. On-page Find

Pushing Command (apple) plus the F key in Safari brings up a separate little window for typing in your search term. For some reason, Apple thought it would be a good idea to default this to the last location it appeared. So if I move the web browser to my second monitor, the search tab appears on the first one where it was the last time and vice versa. Since there are any number of windows open at any given time, it’s sometimes a pain in the ass to find. It’s not a big deal but it’s one of those little things that gets on a person’s nerves.

Once again Firefox does it right. Hitting the same key combination in Firefox brings up a little tab at the bottom with a search field. As you type in the search word, it is dynamically highlighted on the page. Very slick and certainly something Apple should implement. This is a much better way of searching and it keep the window in context.

4. Plugins

I know this is not going to happen but it would be nice if Firefox plugins would work in Safari. I’ve become slightly addicted to this Firefox plugin: StumbleUpon.

Well maybe not addicted but it sure helps when I’m trying to procrastinate from doing any kind of meaningful work. Google toolbar would be nice too. Mostly for the page rank since I’m in web development but I’m not complaining about that.

5. Colour Source View

This is one of those things that would only be of interest to web developers or designers. Safari’s code view is straight black and white. It’s a bit of a pain to find code. Especially late at night when I’m tired and have been working all day.

Firefox has full colour code view which makes everything easy to find and scan. I wish Apple would implement this as well. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that much trouble for them.

That’s all. Keep up the good work Apple but there is room for improvement.