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Mac Forum / Applications / Mac Applications / March 2005Giving up on Safari: Camino, Firefox, or Omniweb?
Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I spend staring at the spinning beachball. I am not talking about loading complex pages, it is for the simplest tasks. I paid for a good computer with modern OS, yet it practically freezes all the time, like old days, only much more frequently. I pay for a DSL connection, and yet my web expereince is no better than what it used to be with he dialup modem. All thanks to Safari. I have tried to solve the problem. Read all the hints here as well as at mac sites. Finally, it is good bye Safari. I would be most grateful for your comparative thoughts on Camino, Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I > spend staring at the spinning beachball. I am not talking about loading > complex pages, it is for the simplest tasks. I have found FireFox to be the fastest Mac browser, with Camino second. > I paid for a good computer with modern OS, yet it practically freezes > all the time, like old days, only much more frequently. I pay for a DSL > connection, and yet my web expereince is no better than what it used to > be with he dialup modem. All thanks to Safari. I have tried to solve > the problem. Read all the hints here as well as at mac sites. Finally, > it is good bye Safari. Your Mac should not be freezing, no matter what browser you use. This indicates to me there is some other problem with your computer - bad memory, or some misbehaving application. OS X just does not freeze up under 'normal' conditions. > I would be most grateful for your comparative thoughts on Camino, > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. > I have found FireFox to be the fastest Mac browser, with Camino second. Thanks. > Your Mac should not be freezing, no matter what browser you use. This > indicates to me there is some other problem with your computer - bad > memory, or some misbehaving application. OS X just does not freeze up > under 'normal' conditions. Perhaps, but I don't encounter this except when that ball is spinning in Safari. Maybe "freezing" wasn't the best description, but the computer does not respond to mouse clicks until the ball is finished spinning. So it feels frozen, from a few seconds to a few minues. If it happens often enough it gets annoying. Anyway, I will be done with Safari soon enough, as soon as I select a browser and transfer the bookmarks, so this is a non-issue now. I don't have any such problem in any other situation. > > I have found FireFox to be the fastest Mac browser, with Camino second. > [quoted text clipped - 12 lines] > feels frozen, from a few seconds to a few minues. If it happens often > enough it gets annoying. No doubt. But I'll echo the prior poster's comment that this isn't normal. It's possible that Safari is exercising some part of the system that nothing else does routinely and there's some sort of corruption there. G  SignatureChange account to gw when responding by mail. >>> I have found FireFox to be the fastest Mac browser, with Camino second. >> [quoted text clipped - 17 lines] > there. > G More likely there's a connection problem. Safari's off on some blocked i/o task, not trying to render pages. I rarely get blocked, even on a dialup. Even money it's timing out, over and over again. Check the logs. Signature"It's beyond my ken... and my Barbie, and all of my action figures." Another vote for Firefox. Only problems have been pages that self-update a lot - FF gets confused after a while. Then again, I crash Safari a lot as well, so no loss. :) - J > More likely there's a connection problem. Safari's off on some blocked > i/o task, not trying to render pages. I rarely get blocked, even on a > dialup. Even money it's timing out, over and over again. Check the logs. Where are the logs kept? > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > the problem. Read all the hints here as well as at mac sites. Finally, > it is good bye Safari. Hmm interesting. I'm a bit of a browser slut (pardon the french) but it's true. There are things i lie about just about all of the browsers i've tried. First of all i think your "problem with safari" is unrelated to safari... The problems you speak of should not be happening with any browser really. Here are my thoughts on the browsers i've tried. Opera Far to 'heavy' cluttered and not all that fast - don't really like it Camino ehh... it's ok. really nothing stands out to me about this browser. OmniWeb I like this browser the GUI is not so nice IMO but other then that it's got a bunch of nice features and a great password/field feature. On a side not, I find it slower then others. Shirra Mean lean and clean - though a safari clone really. It's stripped down. Firefox The fastest but somewhat non native GUI I like the "roundness" of mac progams... this app is not "round" FWIW I use Sarfari 90% and firefox 10% > Opera > Far to 'heavy' cluttered and not all that fast - don't really like it You can customise the GUI of Opera almost anyway you want. You don't need to use the GUI exactly as delivered. I have configured the GUI of the new Opera 8 preview so it is less cluttered, but with more functionality, than Safari. The Opera version 8.0 preview with the new rendering engine is also much faster than the previous Opera versions and any other browser I have tested on the Mac. SignatureGöran Larsson http://www.mitt-eget.com/ > First of all i think your "problem with safari" is > unrelated to safari... I wonder why you think so. There are so many complaints about the "spinning beachball" problem in Safari. Thanks for the following reviews. > Opera > Far to 'heavy' cluttered and not all that fast - don't really like it [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > FWIW I use Sarfari 90% and firefox 10% > > First of all i think your "problem with safari" is > > unrelated to safari... > > I wonder why you think so. There are so many complaints about the > "spinning beachball" problem in Safari. What is this problem? I occasionally get the "spinning disk" (it's not a "beachball"), but never in Safari. Mike > > > First of all i think your "problem with safari" is > > > unrelated to safari... [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > What is this problem? I occasionally get the "spinning disk" (it's not > a "beachball"), but never in Safari. Spinning pizza, beachball, disk (it was originally a spinning disk from NeXTSTEP days), the same thing. The problem is the occasion when Safari shows a 'spinning cursor' and remains unresponsive (except for perhaps window dragging, which is really the work of the underlying Window Manager) for several minutes. It's frustrating, and there's nothing you can do except click on some other application and do something else until Safari becomes responsive again. I first discovered this happening back in OSX 10.3.2 (and Safari 1.1, I think) while flitting through multiple tabs during an eBay auction, which made the delays all the more maddening. The behavior is very reminiscent of the long delays in Netscape 3.x in MacOS 7/8/9 while it was cleaning its cache. Not quite frozen, but it effectively locked up your computer while it took its damn sweet time. Van SignatureVan Bagnol / n p c o m p l e t e at bagnol dot com / c r l at bagnol dot com ...enjoys Theatre / Windsurfing / Skydiving / Mountain Biking ...feels "parang lumalakad ako soo loob ng panaginip" ...thinks "An Error is Not a Mistake ... Unless You Refuse to Correct It" > > > > First of all i think your "problem with safari" is > > > > unrelated to safari... [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > Spinning pizza, beachball, disk (it was originally a spinning disk from > NeXTSTEP days), the same thing. True, but it really is a disk. What does a pizza or a beachball have to do with computers? :-) > The behavior is very reminiscent of the long delays in Netscape 3.x in > MacOS 7/8/9 while it was cleaning its cache. Not quite frozen, but it > effectively locked up your computer while it took its damn sweet time. I must be lucky or something. I've never seen this, and I'm running a lowly B&W G4/500 with 512 megs RAM. When I'm tracking eBay auctions that I'm *really* interested in, I tend to use 2 machines - 1 for bidding, 1 for watching! Mike >> > > > First of all i think your "problem with safari" is >> > > > unrelated to safari... [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > True, but it really is a disk. What does a pizza or a beachball have > to do with computers? :-) Ever been to Apple's headquarters? (I'm trying hard here not to make a drug reference). Beachballs and pizza fit right in. > > True, but it really is a disk. What does a pizza or a beachball have > > to do with computers? :-) > > Ever been to Apple's headquarters? (I'm trying hard here not to make > a drug reference). Beachballs and pizza fit right in. Maybe, but they're still irrelevant to computers. Besides, it was always a spinning disk in the MacOS 7, 8 and 9 days. No one called it a beachball. The NextStep thing was also a spinning disk. The last time I saw a pizza that looked like that I was on acid! It *is*, in fact, a spinning disk. It means the system is waiting on something. In the old days, it was usually waiting on something from the disk! These days, it's more likely waiting on something from the network. IAC, it's not a big deal. Call it whatever you like. Just be aware that it is supposed to be a disk. Mike >> > True, but it really is a disk. What does a pizza or a beachball have >> > to do with computers? :-) [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > it a beachball. The NextStep thing was also a spinning disk. The > last time I saw a pizza that looked like that I was on acid! Ever seen a beachball? > It *is*, in fact, a spinning disk. It means the system is waiting on > something. In the old days, it was usually waiting on something from > the disk! These days, it's more likely waiting on something from the > network. OK. > IAC, it's not a big deal. Call it whatever you like. Just be aware > that it is supposed to be a disk. Looks like the revolving eye of omniscience to me, but I didn't want to say anything about that. > > > True, but it really is a disk. What does a pizza or a beachball have > > > to do with computers? :-) [quoted text clipped - 6 lines] > it a beachball. The NextStep thing was also a spinning disk. The > last time I saw a pizza that looked like that I was on acid! I recall seeing it called and calling it a beachball. I still run Mac OS 7 on an old, but still useful, Quadra 630. > It *is*, in fact, a spinning disk. It means the system is waiting on > something. In the old days, it was usually waiting on something from > the disk! These days, it's more likely waiting on something from the > network. Actually, the whatever-it-is doesn't spin; it resets after a partial revolution. > IAC, it's not a big deal. Call it whatever you like. Just be aware > that it is supposed to be a disk. > > Mike SignatureTom Stiller PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF > Actually, the whatever-it-is doesn't spin; it resets after a partial > revolution. The shading spins, the colors don't. > > Actually, the whatever-it-is doesn't spin; it resets after a partial > > revolution. > > The shading spins, the colors don't. ??? SignatureTom Stiller PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3 7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF > > > > I wonder why you think so. There are so many complaints about the > > > > "spinning beachball" problem in Safari. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > True, but it really is a disk. What does a pizza or a beachball have > to do with computers? :-) I know, it's supposed to be a disk. But in the Mac System 6 (and earlier?) days which predated NeXTSTEP, the black&white circle that resembled the center-of-gravity drafting symbol _did_ resemble a beach ball, and it rotated slowly enough that you could make it out. The spinning pizza description probably came from the fact that a spinning disk with multi-colored stuff on it resembled a pizza. (Though technically, pizza parlors spin the pie dough _before_ they put the toppings on.) :-) > > The behavior is very reminiscent of the long delays in Netscape 3.x in > > MacOS 7/8/9 while it was cleaning its cache. Not quite frozen, but it > > effectively locked up your computer while it took its damn sweet time. > > I must be lucky or something. I've never seen this, and I'm running a > lowly B&W G4/500 with 512 megs RAM. Oh, I still get it on my Power Mac 7100/66 running System 7.5.3. I think it has 64MB RAM. But so few sites nowadays are compatible with Netscape 2.1. :-( Van SignatureVan Bagnol / n p c o m p l e t e at bagnol dot com / c r l at bagnol dot com ...enjoys Theatre / Windsurfing / Skydiving / Mountain Biking ...feels "parang lumalakad ako soo loob ng panaginip" ...thinks "An Error is Not a Mistake ... Unless You Refuse to Correct It" >> First of all i think your "problem with safari" is unrelated to safari... > > I wonder why you think so. There are so many complaints about the > "spinning beachball" problem in Safari. This is true -- but like i said i ~think~ your problem may lay elsewhere. I'm not sure Safari has ever "beach balled me" Though i do use firefox alot. > This is true -- but like i said i ~think~ your problem may lay > elsewhere. I'm not sure Safari has ever "beach balled me" Though i do I'll back the original poster up on this one. Safari follows the EXACT behavior he described for me as well. Long time up, several tabs open (more like 10 for me), click back and forth between a couple and ZAP, spinning icon for a LONG time. I believe it is VERY much a Safari problem. The behavior is very specific and isolated to Safari. All other programs running at the same time respond normally. I wonder if it could be related to whatever causes the Bookmark menu to delay when it is first opened after a Safari launch. That has also been discussed on various groups with no real resolution. It always feels like Safari is slowly re-parsing the bookmarks file to build the menu. Also, I agree with several posters that Firefox is the next best option. Just my $0.02. iMac 800MHz OS 10.3.7 1GB memory Safari 1.2.4 Spencer Signature-------------------------------- Spencer Swift (swift@sgi.com) 4306 Woodcrest Ln. Dallas, TX 75206 WK: (214) 823-6157 FAX (214) 823-6157 -------------------------------- > I wonder if it could be related to whatever causes the Bookmark menu > to delay when it is first opened after a Safari launch. That has also > been discussed on various groups with no real resolution. It always > feels like Safari is slowly re-parsing the bookmarks file to build the > menu. That has always been an annoyance with Safari. What started out as a good alternative to the OSX version of Internet Explorer slowly turns itself into a sluggish nightmare after a few weeks of use. > Also, I agree with several posters that Firefox is the next best > option. I love FF on the PC, but for some reason the Mac version is buggy as hell. After the first install and run, it's fine. If I quit and go back in, I find my home page has been changed, any web site I go to displays a blank screen, and all those little custom icons next to bookmarks are garbled. I've deleted EVERYTHING on my hard drive that says firefox or mozilla and re-installed and get the same problem every time. > I love FF on the PC, but for some reason the Mac version is buggy as > hell. After the first install and run, it's fine. If I quit and go [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > says firefox or mozilla and re-installed and get the same problem every > time. You might re-download a new copy of FF. SignaturePanta Rei > I believe it is VERY much a Safari problem. The behavior is very > specific and isolated to Safari. All other programs running at the > same time respond normally. Safari has more problems. Occasionally it will refuse to load any page at all. No beachball, just looks like it's continuing to load except that nothing happens. I've asked about that here, and got a few responses along the lines of "happened to me too; eventually it went away". And Safari is badly coded, considering that we have a multi-tasking, multi-threaded OS. Go to a page with an mp3 link, click it. It uses the Quicktime plugin to play that file in the web page. Now start loading more Safari tabs/windows. The mp3 file will hiccup like crazy, and there's no reason for that. If you download the mp3 file, iTunes will not interrupt at all. V. Signatureemail: lastname at cs utk edu homepage: www cs utk edu tilde lastname It's cool that you dabble in so many different browsers, but doesn't that slow you down in terms of book marks and such? (Then again, maybe I'm being to anal and pack-rattish about all that. Maybe the free & simple hitchhiker's attitude is the best way to travel the web...?) > I would be most grateful for your comparative thoughts on Camino, > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. I find myself using Firefox and iCab the most. But I had some strange thing going on with downloads -- I was unable to download a bunch of things with either of them, but they came in just fine with both Safari and (gak!) Internet Exploder. So I keep them all around just in case, cuz (as Joaquin Andujar said) "I can answer that in one word: you never know!" Signaturesoupnuts / Eric Bear Albrecht xxxxx \ at / W5VZB roastbusters / Echolink 118451 d-o-t----o-r-g / San Antonio NM > I find myself using Firefox and iCab the most. But I had some strange > thing going on with downloads -- I was unable to download a bunch of > things with either of them, but they came in just fine with both Safari > and (gak!) Internet Exploder. So I keep them all around just in case, > cuz (as Joaquin Andujar said) "I can answer that in one word: you never > know!" Now the discussion finally strays into a subject I know something about. That wasn't Joaquin Andujar's quote. It was most recently said by Luis Tiant who stole the line from Juan Marichal of the San Fran Giants in the '60s, who said, "the single most important word in baseball is: you-never-know." -- Josh (who happens to find FFox 1.0 to work nearly flawlessly) > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. I'm pretty happy with Firefox. I also keep iCab, Safari and IE around in case the need should arise, but lately it almost never does. > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. We switched to Firefox and have no regrets. Free and fast and will open some sites that Safari will not. But, be sure to also get Safari Bookmarks Exporter so you can painlessly move your bookmarks to the new browser. Also, you will have to re-open Safari and use it to choose Firefox (of what ever you decided upon) to be your default browser. Apple has set up Safari to be as difficult as possible to get away from. And, do not dump IE or Safari as some day you may need them to download something that Firefox will not. SignaturePanta Rei > your default browser. Apple has set up Safari to be as difficult as > possible to get away from. > And, do not dump IE or Safari as some day you may need them to > download something that Firefox will not. I dumped IE over a year ago... I havn't needed it since. Firefox opens just about anything really ~j I'm not a browser expert and haven't tried any of the others mentioned, but I'm curious as to why none of the multiple responses to this thread have included Netscape 7.0 among the sizable list of other browsers discussed. I continue to use Netscape only because that's what I grew up with; but it seems to work reliably, have a reasonable interface and feature set, and be fast enough to at least keep up with my admittedly quite slow DSL connection. IE has been gone off my Mac for years. Safari is on it but I don't use it much. Camino is my browser of choice. YMMV. >IE has been gone off my Mac for years. Safari is on it but I don't >use it much. Camino is my browser of choice. YMMV. Mine too. The only thing I don't use Camino for is pages requiring Flash - for some reason Flash animations are really slow on Camino, so I use Safari for those. The Camino developers mailed me to say they were aware of the Flash performance problems, so hopefully they'll fix it eventually. Tim >> IE has been gone off my Mac for years. Safari is on it but I don't >> use it much. Camino is my browser of choice. YMMV. [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > > Tim Camino also has an issue with Blogger when you click on the "Preview" tab. > I'm not a browser expert and haven't tried any of the others mentioned, > but I'm curious as to why none of the multiple responses to this thread [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > and be fast enough to at least keep up with my admittedly quite slow DSL > connection. I've been using Mozilla mostly, although I think it's somewhat limited for printing. It seems to be the fastest to me, and gets things right for the most part. (Tried Firefox for a little while, but it seemed just a bit more sluggish. Recall Netscape being somewhat sluggish also.) For printing I sometimes save off the page and use Explorer to get it right; usually it does. (Minimally, "right" means you can turn off the headers and footers.) Safari doesn't get much use for the same reason you mentioned: just kind of sits there sometimes, can't tell if it's ever gonna finish with whatever it thinks its doing. > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. Try all the browsers and decide for yourself. As for Safari, you don't say which OS or Safari version you are using. My experience with Safari and OS X is different than yours. I use OS X and Safari on three different Macs for several hours a day, every day and I rarely have any problems with Safari, or OS X in general. I am using the latest versions of OS X and Safari. Perhaps if you described exactly what kind of problems you have, along with your hardware configuration, a solution can be found. > which OS or Safari version you are using. OSX 10.3.7; Safari 1.2.4 (v125.12) 667 MHz PB G4; 1 MB L3 cache; 768 MB SDRAM Just as a thought - - The browser section of Netscape 7.2 is very stable, is relatively fast, and I haven't had a crash or "spinning beach balls" with it for months. If you're using Firefox, you're using separate mail and newsgroups applications; ergo, the mail / other sections of Netscape won't be needed. You just use the browser section as you would Firefox and Camino. SignatureI know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. -- Robert McCloskey, State Department spokesman (attributed) > > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > and I rarely have any problems with Safari, or OS X in general. I am > using the latest versions of OS X and Safari. I find Safari starting to exhibit the beach ball with painfully long delays under two or more of the following circumstances: 1) long uptime (several days in Safari) 2) lots of tabbed windows (16+ tabs, 3+ windows) 3) lots of window thrashing, i.e., starting tabs for tons of links and bouncing back and forth between them 4) frequent refreshing, especially of eBay pages Activity Monitor shows scant free memory on my system. My solution has been to quit and relaunch Safari. Free memory goes up considerably and Safari is once again responsive. (BTW, Safari 1.2.4, OSX 10.3.6, iMac G4/1.25Mhz with 256MB RAM) Van SignatureVan Bagnol / n p c o m p l e t e at bagnol dot com / c r l at bagnol dot com ...enjoys Theatre / Windsurfing / Skydiving / Mountain Biking ...feels "parang lumalakad ako soo loob ng panaginip" ...thinks "An Error is Not a Mistake ... Unless You Refuse to Correct It" > I find Safari starting to exhibit the beach ball with painfully long > delays under two or more of the following circumstances: [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > links and bouncing back and forth between them > 4) frequent refreshing, especially of eBay pages Hi Van, if you have other browsers with tab feature installed (firefox, camino, omniweb, etc), could you try to duplicate the situation and see of one of them copes better than the rest with such "stresses" environment? > Activity Monitor shows scant free memory on my system. My solution has > been to quit and relaunch Safari. Free memory goes up considerably and > Safari is once again responsive. BTW, in AM, what is the difference between "free" and "inactive" (blue)? I would have thought anything inactive is free but obviously not. :) > > I find Safari starting to exhibit the beach ball with painfully long > > delays under two or more of the following circumstances: [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > of one of them copes better than the rest with such "stresses" > environment? I've got recent downloads of FireFox, Camino, and OmniWeb. I'll be trying them out although it's not a high priority at the moment. > > Activity Monitor shows scant free memory on my system. My solution has > > been to quit and relaunch Safari. Free memory goes up considerably and > > Safari is once again responsive. > > BTW, in AM, what is the difference between "free" and "inactive" (blue)? > I would have thought anything inactive is free but obviously not. :) Free memory is not used by the system. Inactive memory is memory once used by the system but not currently in use; its contents are still kept around just in case. Van SignatureVan Bagnol / n p c o m p l e t e at bagnol dot com / c r l at bagnol dot com ...enjoys Theatre / Windsurfing / Skydiving / Mountain Biking ...feels "parang lumalakad ako soo loob ng panaginip" ...thinks "An Error is Not a Mistake ... Unless You Refuse to Correct It" > I've got recent downloads of FireFox, Camino, and OmniWeb. I'll be > trying them out although it's not a high priority at the moment. I understand this is not an urgency. I would be happy to hear your experience whenever you are able to post it. I also downloaded them today and will what I find when I understand what is going on. > I find Safari starting to exhibit the beach ball with painfully long > delays under two or more of the following circumstances: [quoted text clipped - 7 lines] > been to quit and relaunch Safari. Free memory goes up considerably and > Safari is once again responsive. Sounds like Safari has a memory leak. I've not seen it myself, but then I don't use the tabs. I *do* have several windows open (as many as 8) and over many days, or until I have to re-boot for whatever reason (software update or such). I haven't seen the spinning rainbow disk in Safari yet. Mike Alex, > I would be most grateful for your comparative thoughts on Camino, > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. I've used Firefox on the PC, not the Mac. But it seems that all web browser eat memory like crazy. I have no complaints with Safari, but I've got a 2Gb Mac G4. My old PC was only 96Mb, and that was certainly slow. Sorry, you might need to get more RAM. Doug > I've used Firefox on the PC, not the Mac. But it seems that all web browser > eat memory like crazy. I have no complaints with Safari, but I've got a 2Gb > Mac G4. My old PC was only 96Mb, and that was certainly slow. > > Sorry, you might need to get more RAM. I have 768 MB. However you have given me an idea. I will keep an "Activity Monitor" window open, set to monitor system memory, and see how if it correlates with the spinning beachball in Safari. > > I've used Firefox on the PC, not the Mac. But it seems that all web browser > > eat memory like crazy. I have no complaints with Safari, but I've got a 2Gb [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > "Activity Monitor" window open, set to monitor system memory, and see > how if it correlates with the spinning beachball in Safari. How does one "do" an Activity Monitor?" Fred > How does one "do" an Activity Monitor?" It is a nice and free Apple utility in /Applications/Utilities. Once it is running, Right-click or control-click its dock icon, select Monitors -> Show Activity Monitor. It can any of the following statistics: CPU usage, memory, disk activity, disk usage, network activity. I like this window enough that I alway keep it minimized in the dock. There are a few useful filters at the top, unless you have reasons to do otherwise, just choose My Processes. (The dock icon can also display one of those statistics independently. I have set it to Network Activity.) I wrote: > Once it [Application Monitor] is running, Right-click or control-click its > dock icon, select Monitors -> Show Activity Monitor... Clarification: This is how I am used to doing things. You can also work from the menu bar, just as easily. > I wrote: > [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > Clarification: This is how I am used to doing things. You can also work > from the menu bar, just as easily. I guess I am just dense. I still don't know where to find Activity Monitor. Fred > > I wrote: > > [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > > Fred Well, I finally went to Mac help and got the answer. It's called CPU monitor. Thanks Fred > Well, I finally went to Mac help and got the answer. It's called > CPU monitor. In another post you said you have OSX 10.2.8? They must have changed the name since then because it is now called Activity Monitor (10.3.7). Of course, they could have changed other things too, so plase take my description with a grain of salt. > > How does one "do" an Activity Monitor?" > [quoted text clipped - 8 lines] > one of those statistics independently. I have set it to Network > Activity.) Thank you for the detailed info. It seems I don't have anything in my Utilities called "Activity Monitor." I am running OS 10.2.8 Fred > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 10 lines] > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. I am not saying this will fix your problem, but I ran Disk Warrior and it seems to have cut my beachball down to a couple of keystrokes in Safari after optimizing. I sometimes get the Beach Ball in Safari after something as simple as typing into a google search field (on a Google page, not on the Safari Google box). When running "top -F" in the terminal to the side of my screen, and then I would use Safari to search around a bit, it was the window manager that would spike to 90% processor use when Safari would beach ball. But after optimizing my disk it only does it for a couple seconds and not as often, but still does it. > I am not saying this will fix your problem, but I ran Disk Warrior and > it seems to have cut my beachball down to a couple of keystrokes in [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > ball. But after optimizing my disk it only does it for a couple seconds > and not as often, but still does it. Never too late to learn. I thought Panther keeps your disks optimized and there is no need to do all of that anyomore. Is there a free/sw solution for optimizing? > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. Define experience. As an amateur webmaster, I keep several browsers around to check for problems. All of them are OK, but I still prefer Safari. Well, maybe not ALL. I did NOT like iCab. But that was a long time ago, and maybe it's much better now. I have very few problems with any browser, but I think I have slightly fewer with Safari. SignatureWes Groleau He that is good for making excuses, is seldom good for anything else. -- Benjamin Franklin i reckon safari works fine. your problem must have other roots (network settings? memory? background tasks?) just to clearify: saying safarui works fine doesn't mean there are no flaws (pdf integration, rss, etc), however your issues seem to be very fundamenteal an not solvable by another browser. btw: i use safari, camino and ie on mac, and firefox and ie on windows. olli > Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] > Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good > browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. >> Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A >> good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 11 lines] >> Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good >> browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. Have you tested your connection at DSL reports (dslreports.com)? -Stephen SignatureSpace Age Cybernomad Stephen Adams malchus842SP@AMgmail.com (remove SPAM to reply) > >> Lately I have been dreading any time at the computer I love so much. A > >> good part of it involves the use of a browser, and much of that time I [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] > > -Stephen A slow connection is no excuse for a spinning beachball. I'm using OmniWeb and it doesn't beachball very often. I have noticed that Finder and random apps constantly beachball when remote volumes are mounted 10.3.8. It was absurdly slow in 10.3.5 and now it mostly doesn't work. There's no packet loss and latency is normal. > I have noticed that Finder and random apps constantly beachball when > remote volumes are mounted 10.3.8. It was absurdly slow in 10.3.5 and > now it mostly doesn't work. There's no packet loss and latency is Mounted how? I have had FreeBSD 4.9 partitions booted constantly in 10.1.2 - 10.1.5 and 10.3.0 - 10-3-8 with no such problems. Part of that time, I also had FAT-32 partitions and AppleShare volumes mounted, also with no such problems. SignatureWes Groleau Expert, n.: Someone who comes from out of town and shows slides. Firefox is awesome...the cool thing about firefox is all the extentions u can get for it...a lot of stuff thats really useful for web design. Like a built-in HTML validator, mark all links as visited or unvisited, replace all images with alt attributes, outline all tables, or resize the window to the size of a particular resolution. And tons of other stuff. Safari doesn't have enough features, but it is fast, and fairly stable. I can't remember whether it's iCab or Camino, but one of them basically just gives you a garbled mess for any site that isn't COMPLETELY valid HTML 4.1 or XHTML. Thats kinda useless...maybe a good testing tool, but no use as a general browser. IE sux!! No Micro$oft!! sorry just had to get that out of my system... :-D > Firefox is awesome...the cool thing about firefox is all the extentions > u can get for it...a lot of stuff thats really useful for web design. [quoted text clipped - 9 lines] > IE sux!! No Micro$oft!! sorry just had to get that out of my system... > :-D iCab does choke on an occasional site for me but not many. I do like fast Firefox with several exceptions: (1) I don't like the way it archives. iCab will just archive the entire page as is and it will load whether you are on the net or not. Like IE, Firefox saves a bunch of separate files. (2) I have yet to find a way to control Firefox's image handling. For instance, the user can't block or limit animations. (3) I've been getting this blank page thing in Firefox--- even with only one page open. For instance, I will open a single page in Firefox, switch over to another app and then, when I switch back to Firefox, the page will be blank. This is happening when there is no apparent shortage of graphic memory and only started with the more recent version. > (2) I have yet to find a way to control Firefox's image handling. For > instance, the user can't block or limit animations. Get AdBlock. http://adblock.mozdev.org/ SignaturePlain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed. No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow? http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting > > (2) I have yet to find a way to control Firefox's image handling. For > > instance, the user can't block or limit animations. > > Get AdBlock. http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Thanks, I'll give that a shot. > > (2) I have yet to find a way to control Firefox's image handling. For > > instance, the user can't block or limit animations. > > Get AdBlock. http://adblock.mozdev.org/ I don't understand what it is exactly or how it is installed. If it is part of the application, then why don't they just provide it with Firefox? >> > (2) I have yet to find a way to control Firefox's image handling. For >> > instance, the user can't block or limit animations. [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > part of the application, then why don't they just provide it with > Firefox? Because there's no reason to include every option for everyone, when you can make it easy for people to add it if they want. No reason to bloat the install. Madwen <invalid@nospam.com> writes: > (2) I have yet to find a way to control Firefox's image handling. For > instance, the user can't block or limit animations. Yes you can. There is a way to limit animated gifs on FF. There are a bunch of settings you access through url <about:config> google it to find out more. m-m > i reckon safari works fine. your problem must have other roots (network > settings? memory? background tasks?) [quoted text clipped - 22 lines] >>Firefox, and Omniweb. I don't mind paying a few dollars for a good >>browser. All experienced based opinions greatly appreciated. To answer the original question: I recommend Camino. ( http://www.mozilla.org/products/camino/ ) It's a simple Gecko-based browser with enough features in my opinion, and it's free (part of the Mozilla family). It's written in Cocoa, which gives it the OS X look and feel (no brushed metal, thank god) and makes it integrate nicely with OS X services like Keychain. In my experience it's much faster at page rendering than Safari. Development is not very active, but there is a lively user community over at the Mozilla forums, with many useful hints and tricks. ( http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewforum.php?f=12 ) One more thing: if you should visit sites with Java applets that require the browser to work with the Java 1.4.x Virtual Machine, then you whould install the Java Embedding Plugin ( http://javaplugin.sourceforge.net/ ), which makes third party browsers work with that particular version of the JVM. Well Alex, in answer to your original question, the best browser I have found is Mozilla's Navigator, the browser component of the Mozilla suite. It's a free download at http://www.mozilla.org/. Mozilla Navigator is a very mature application. It's the state-of-the-art in the Mozilla code base pedigree that goes all the way back through Netscape 4.x, and back to Mosaic. It's less encumbered than Netscape Navigator. I should mention that I have been a user of the Netscape/Mozilla suite of applications since 1998, and I admit to being spoiled by the rich interoperability of a well-integrated suite of web apps. Mozilla Navigator/Mail/Composer is indispensable for my purposes. I won't post a list of all the features in Mozilla Navigator - features that do not exist in other browsers - because there are simply too many of them to list. My best advice is to download the Mozilla suite and check it out for yourself. I should also mention that I have the following browsers installed on all my Macs [I own five: G5 DP 2.5, iMac G4 17", G4-400 (used as a server), PowerBook G4, and PowerBook G3 (Lombard)]: · Mozilla · Firefox · Safari · Camino · MS Internet Explorer 5.2.3 · Netscape 7.2 I have used all of them, but I keep coming back to Mozilla as my browser of choice. If speed is the most important thing to you, you might do a bit better with Firefox or Camino (or Safari, for that matter - if you can solve the problem you're currently having with it), but if you want interoperability with your mail app, the ability to e-mail any web page with a simple menu command, bookmarking an entire group of tabs, calling up any web page in a web page editor (Composer does that - it's invaluable for annotating web pages and saving them if you're doing research), and a host of other features, you can't beat the Mozilla suite of web applications. One last note: Safari is a very fast browser, and it gets better with each new version. As others have advised you in this thread, it's unlikely that Safari itself is the culprit in your spinning BB problem. Something is tying it up, or the app has been corrupted, or there's a renegade plug-in... but whatever it is, it's something peculiar to the installation of Safari on your PowerBook, not an intrinsic limitation of the application itself. You can demonstrate that for yourself if you have another partition available. (I always split my PowerBooks' hard drives up into two bootable partitions of equal size, less the space for an eDrive on one of them for my TechTool Pro 4 installation.) Start with a clean partition, and do a clean install of OS X. Don't install anything else - just the standard installation from your original system disks for this test. Then launch Safari and run it. I believe you'll find that it is very fast. (If not, you've got a serious bandwidth problem with your Internet connection.) True, that's not a real-world test, and it doesn't solve the specific problem you're experiencing; but at least you'll convince yourself that there's nothing intrinsically deficient about Safari's functionality as an eminently capable browser. Something that I find annoying about FireFox - which otherwise I love! - is that it doesn't seem to be able to start from an external trigger unless a FF window is already open. For example, if FF is running without an open window and I click on a url in a mail messgae, FF won't show that page; but if I give FF a new page, the link WILL load. Sometimes following selection of a url with a new FF page will work, and sometimes it won't; but a link will always get triggered if FF is running in the background with an page showing. However, I too used to get too many Safari beachballs - a thing of the past since the move to FireFox... - duncan > Something that I find annoying about FireFox - which otherwise I love! - is > that it doesn't seem to be able to start from an external trigger unless a > FF window is already open. Are you _sure_ you don't have only a minimized window open, or that no browser window but the download window is open? If so, this will happen. It is definitely a bug IMHO, but at least if you know it's there you can act to avoid it. To be clear: - If FF has the download window _only_ open, nothing will trig a new browser (not even selecting File-New window). - If FF has a browser window open, but it's minimized (in the dock), the link get passed to that window and you won't see anything has happened before you remember to maximize the window again. It will have updated, but you most likely didn't see it happening down there in the Dock. I'm not sure this is your problem at all, just thought we might get it out of the way, so to speak. :-) Signature/Z :Something that I find annoying about FireFox - which otherwise I love! - is :that it doesn't seem to be able to start from an external trigger unless a :FF window is already open. I've just noticed an annoyance with FF: when you're using the "back" drop-down menu, it sometimes tears off and just sits there, and the only way I've found to get rid of it is to click on one of the links, which is not what I want to do, because usually I've already navigated back to the page I want. Of course, I might, as usual, be missing something. I just got my Win2k machine to talk to the USB Epson printer attached to the G4. There indeed is an exercise in following instructions. SignatureLooks like more of Texas to Me |
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