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Introduction
I surf the Internet daily, often for hours as part of seeking background materials for the books and articles I write. Okay, some evenings I check our recipes and folk song lyric, chords and music. As the Internet becomes more integral to my daily life, the browser I use is of great importance to software companies too.
That's why, according to Nate Lanxon [1] every major browser developer is working on new versions of their product. I recently upgraded to Firefox 3.03 and to the latest version of Safari (3.1.2). When a Macintosh version of Google’s Chrome browser becomes available, I’ll work with it too.
I use, and have always used, Safari as my default web browser. As Firefox reached version 2.0 and beyond I started to play with it out of curiosity. As glitches in Safari arose, I several times switched my default to Firefox, but at then switched back.
I’m sure the things that continue to bug me about Safari have always been these, but in the last several years my work has become more Internet search dependent, During a standard working day, writing sections of a book on Radiation, I check out a half-hundred or more references; download ones I want to use as references. So these days I stumble (e.g., glitch) more. I’m writing this article with the hope that someone at Apple is listening.
When working in Safari, I too often run into several problems while trying to access websites from within Google Searches or within found references including Wikipedia. This doesn’t happen continuously, just often enough perhaps one in a dozen or so links. Most of my connection problems are almost instantly solved by dragging that problem link either from Safari or Google into Firefox.
These bugs/glitches are the subject of this 3Rs column. I’ve not read of any folks reporting such problems, so here you be. As an aside, if you want to read and learn about the other features in either Safari or Firefox, I’ve attached a bibliography to the end of this article.
Safari Access Gripes – KISS Description
Formatting Issues — Web (Safari) to MS Word 2004
In addition Safari has another bit of strangeness with MS Word. When I copy a Safari opened recipe page, from a blog that also has recipes I don’t need, to a blank MS Word document; the results are often strange. (Drag and drop does not seem to be well supported for this task) At times everything transfers correctly in two copy and paste steps. [One gets the text, the other for each image.]
But all too often, on some sites, the copied recipe’s ingredients are in a run-on paragraph format. The ingredients always look just fine in the browser, so I can’t second-guess the outcome. Each website I work with displays one of these behaviors… never both on the same web page. If there are amounts associated with the ingredients, they also are part of the run-on list.
Bottom Line
Until something better comes along, I stick with Safari as my default browser, but keep Firefox ready in my dock.
Notes and Bibliography
macCompanion is a family oriented Mac’ng around site, so I’m not supposed to be my, at times, profane self. %#@*&$ seem so… Doc.
Safari - Firefox Reviews I’ve Googled
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