Macintosh Browser Smackdown
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For the first year to year-and-a-half of OS X's existence, one common complaint was the poor performance of available OS X browsers relative to other platforms. Most complaints were along the lines of poor rendering times and incompatibilities with some web sites, but the overarching theme was that despite having a modern OS for the first time in memory, Mac users were still second-class citizens when it came to surfing the web. There was OmniWeb 4.0 which had a beautiful rendering engine, but was slow, and Internet Explorer 5.1 which was rendered most pages accurately, but was slow. Soon, Mozilla joined the crowd. It was a large application with its own rendering engine, and it was . . . slow. Mac users had several slow web browsers to go with their slow OS.
Times have changed. Two-and-a-half years after the launch of OS X 10.0, Macs still ship with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2 installed and configured as the default browser. However, Mac users need not suffer with its shortcomings, as there are a plethora of web browsers for the discriminating surfer to choose from. Safari is fast becoming the most popular browser for the Macintosh, and it's overall usage share has nearly doubled since its introduction. According to the Ars Technica site log for June 2003, Safari users accounted for 7.4% of all visits to arstechnica.com compared to 8.7% for all other Mac web browsers. Of course, that other 8.7% could be any of 8 other browsers for OS X.
That's right. There are nine browsers to choose from. Which of the teeming multitude is the best? Ars rounded up the contenders, threw a few web pages at them, and took note of the results. In this browser smackdown, we wanted to look at three aspects of the browsing experience: user experience, compatibility, and speed. First, how is the interface? Does it fit well with the OS X GUI? Does it feel like a port? Does it follow common usage conventions (e.g., delete = return to previously viewed page)? Can I manage cookies easily?
Second, how compatible is the browser? Does it "break the Internet?" Can it properly render complex sites? What about complex sites that follow standards pretty closely? How about the sites that are an absolute mess, or are coded assuming everyone in the world uses Internet Explorer 6? The ideal browser (if it exists) will be fully standards-compliant, but will still be able to accurately render as many sites as possible. The final criterion is self-explanatory: how fast are the browsers?
The applications reviewed can be grouped into 3 types based on their rendering engines: Gecko, WebCore, or proprietary. Gecko, of course, is the rendering engine developed for Mozilla.
Gecko is the revolutionary next-generation browser engine designed to support open Internet standards such as HTML 4.0, CSS 1/2, the W3C Document Object Model, XML 1.0, RDF, and JavaScript. Gecko also includes a set of complementary browser components that work alongside the layout engine to form the founding platform for the Mozilla browser and for products from commercial vendors such as Netscape 6, the AOL-Gateway browsing appliance, and others. Gecko is continuously under development at mozilla.org.
WebCore (and the corresponding JavaScriptCore) are used by two of the browsers under review: Safari and OmniWeb. From Apple's Developer page (which does not render properly in Safari):
WebCore is a framework for Mac OS X that takes the cross-platform KHTML library (part of the KDE project) and combines it with an adapter library specific to WebCore called KWQ that makes it work with Mac OS X technologies. KHTML is written in C++ and KWQ is written in Objective C++, but WebCore presents an Objective C programming interface. WebCore requires the JavaScriptCore framework. The current version of WebCore is based on the KHTML library from KDE 3.0.2.
The third group consists of browsers with their own rendering engines: iCab, Opera, and Internet Explorer. Let's meet our contestants. First, from the proprietary camp:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.2.3. IE has mirrored the up-and-down relationship between Microsoft and Apple. Internet Explorer 4.0 and 4.5 were horrible on the Mac, but not long after Microsoft and Apple signed their 5-year truce, Internet Explorer 5.0 shipped for the Mac, and it was quickly (and deservedly) recognized as the premier browser for the Macintosh. However, while IE for Windows has seen two major revisions (5.5 and 6.0), the Mac version has been limited to minor updates and security fixes. IE 5.1 was one of the first two browsers ported to OS X, and is still included in OS X installs. It is a Carbon port of the Classic Mac OS version. Microsoft has recently announced the end of IE development for the Mac (as well as a standalone application for Windows). MSIE 5.2.3 is a free application.
Opera Software's Opera 6.0.3. Version 6 shipped Fall of 2002. Opera was a late entrant to the Mac market, and there was some question as to whether they would pursue a version for OS X. 6.0.3 runs on any Mac running OS 8.6-OS X 10.2 and will run on Panther when it ships. It can also be embedded from both Carbon and Cocoa applications and offers a kiosk mode. Currently a version behind Windows, version 7 is slated for release by the end of the year. Just in case anyone doubts their commitment to the Mac platform, Mac users are greeted at their site with the headline "Opera committed to the Mac." Opera 6.0.3 is US$39.00 and includes a free upgrade to Opera 7.0 when it is released, although it can be run as free adware.
iCab 2.9.5 is an OS X port of the venerable Classic Mac browser. iCab was the first browser to compete with Internet Explorer and Netscape when the first preview release hit the market in 1998. At the time, it touted its small size and memory footprint as well as support for HTML standards as advantages over the Big 2, features that are not as important for most OS X users. It was also the first Mac browser to support ad blocking. After 5 years of development, it is still in the "preview release" stage, and as such is still a free download. iCab Pro, when released, will go for US$29.00
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