Generally I use Safari for most web browsing. It was/is the "native" web app on OSX after all. It feels like it "fits in" best. Occasionally, I use Firefox for a couple of web sites that don't work as well with Firefox (like writing this blog).

No more.

I tried the Safari 4 beta preview for about a week now. I hate it. So, I've made the switch.

I don't notice the speed either way. What I do notice is the screwy tab/title bar thing. I do lots of tabs in my browsing. I think the guys over at OSNews got it just about right:

This is where it goes wrong for Safari 4. There, the tabs are the titlebar, leading to a rather schizophrenic UI widget: it has to act as a titlebar and a tab bar, and consequently, does neither of the two very well. Since you have to be able to drag the window via this new tabtitlebar widget, Apple had to create a special and small handle for moving tabs, while making the tabs themselves the place to drag the window. This design decision is something I expect from a 6 year old who writes his fist tabbed text editor - not from a company that prides itself on UI design.

I've noticed this over and over again in the last week. I'll have Skype up and safari up. Safari's in the background. Someone sends me a link in my Skype chat. I click on it. The Safari window is party obscured by the Skype window, but I know that it has dutifully opened a new tab at the end with that content, in fact, I can see part of it loading. So I go to bring the Safari window forward, I don't get the click quite right on Safari window used-to-be-just-a-titlebar-thing and ta-da! instad of just raising the window, it flips to some other tab.

I found this tidbit about Safari vulnerabilities a bit disturbing as well.