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Ask HN: Is it too much to expect a usable browser on OS X?

5 points by wfarr ↗ HN
I'm sure any fellow HN readers who have used OS X to any extent have noticed a couple, fairly obvious things:

1. Safari has little room for extensibility.

2. Firefox integrates terribly.

It might be that I'm being unnecessarily picky or demanding, but I'd like to think otherwise. I continually find myself frustrated as I switch back and forth between WebKit Nightlies and Firefox for the two reasons above. I like the extensibility Firefox offers, but I absolutely abhor all the quirks that it has on OS X[1].

So, is it too much to ask for a browser that both integrates well on OS X, and offers the extensibility many developers and users enjoy?

1: For example, Firefox has trouble opening zip/tar files with the Archive Utility on OS X. After a long while googling, I found a solution that gets most of the way there (On 10.4, there was a service running in the background that could handle this; in 10.5, you need to tell Firefox to open these with /System/Library/CoreServices/Archive Utility.app). The main complaint here is that while Archive Utility does unzip/untar the file in the right directory, Firefox prevents the Finder window in the background from taking focus, so I have to manually Cmd-Tab to the Finder to get at the item I just downloaded.

14 comments

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pclark
define extensibility -- what features are you missing?

on Archive Utility - I really really recommend "The Unarchiver" opens more formats, quicker and nicer usability quirks.

wfarr
In Firefox, I was using a lovely extension which provided me the ability to do regular expression searches with the browser's built-in searching utility.

Additionally, I had as of late been using Stylish, Socialite, and Ubiquity fairly regularly.

In essence, I would love some sort of plug-in architecture aside from the very hack-ish input manager stuff we're currently limited to.

pclark
Have you checked out pimpmysafari.com ?
alnayyir
If you buy me a mac I'll work on the chromium project for you.
wfarr
I would certainly be willing if it were financially feasible.
alnayyir
Pity it's not. I'm unemployed anyway.
dasil003
The part I find so irritating is the it's just the tiniest things that screw up Firefox on the Mac. My pet peeve is that text fields don't recognize up and down arrow to go to the beginning and end of the field like every single other Mac application does. In general Safari just has a nicer UI (tabs, activity window, bookmarks, responsiveness, etc).
zain
The one and only reason why I use Safari is because of the smooth scrolling. I've found that Safari is the only browser that smoothly and responsively scrolls with the 2-finger trackpad scroll. Not even Firefox with smooth scrolling turned on can match it.

So yes, I'd like to put in another vote for a perfect OSX browser.

brand
Hey, I've NEVER met anyone who's as picky as I am about his scrolling on OSX browsers!

I always get blank stares when I try to explain why I abhor OSX Firefox; Count me in for another vote ;)

owkaye
Have you tried the "Smooth Wheel" add-on?
makecheck
I use OmniWeb (WebKit-based) on the Mac, and while it cost a little money, this is one of those cases where I thought it was well worth it.

OmniWeb has extensions of sorts, though I've never needed any because I found the defaults to be really well thought out. YMMV, of course.