A couple of weeks ago I downloaded the new Apple Safari browser beta. While there is lots to like about it, it still has a way to go to become the fourth browser I keep open on my computer. Currently I have two SeaMonkey browser windows open, one FireFox browser window and seven IE7 browser windows open.
I tried Safari as a substitute for four of the seven IE windows. It didn't work out.
And here are the six reasons why:
1. I have a four button plus scroll wheel mouse. I use every button and the scroll wheel. The two extra buttons are the "Back" and "Forward" buttons on the browser window so I don't have to move my mouse to those buttons on the browser. In Windows, I have set the default behaviour of my scroll wheel to page through documents instead of scrolling one line at a time. In Safari, none of these things work.
2. There was no way to get a dropdown of the favorites. It showed up on the screen and then I had to drill down through the various favorite folders to get to the page I wanted to go to.
3. Memory hog. Although all browsers are memory hogs, IE7 is the only browser that as you close tabs and windows (opened with CTRL-n) that reduces the memory it takes.
4. Handle hog. One time I only had two Safari browser windows open, with 2 tabs each and the amount of handles it was using was over 2,000!
5. Browser window size. Using CTRL-n to open up another window in any other browser, opens it the same size and spaced a little bit down and over from the original one. Not Safari.
6. Password saving. When I wasn't paying attention to what I typed as a user, and as a touch typist with the right hand one key over, I typed the wrong username and password. And saved the username/password combination. The first character was correct. So when I entered the correct username and password, it saved it too. But whenever I went to enter the username afterwards it always showed the garbled usersname and entered the password. When I select the correct username from the dropdown it would not change the password to the selected username. And because I couldn't delete the garbled username/password combination (another bug), it was like I never saved it.
So I'll wait for it to go out of beta and try again. It did have a way of sending bug reports to Apple, which I did for the first four items, and hopefully they read them and will do something about them.