There's an interesting article, The Rise of Firefox, over at Macword that show Firefox usage on the Macworld sites steadily growing over the last two years. "So far this month Safari makes up 39 percent of our traffic, with Firefox at 33 percent and Internet Explorer at roughly 21 percent" says Jason Snell.
I'm pretty much full-time Mac these days and I'm probably more aware then most when it comes to the places that Firefox on Mac just doesn't work as well as Firefox on Windows. And I'm also not clueless about Safari, which I'm using more since I moved over to Mac (as the primary of my three platforms.) Still, I'm not surprised at these numbers from Macword. Firefox seems to have quite a strong following among power users, and web design and development professionals. Those folks make up a big chunk of the Mac usage out there.
One other data point is available at BoingBoing.net, the worlds most popular blog, where 23% of their usage is from Mac but only 11.6% of their usage is coming from Safari. That suggests to me that a lot of their Mac usage is coming from Firefox.
What do you think? Could those Macworld numbers be representative of a larger trend among Mac users?
Posted by: Nick | April 23, 2007 5:02 PM
Safari's fast. It works on pretty much all of the web pages I visit. The primary interface is clean and comfortable.
Nick, there's not really much that I don't like about Safari. It's a fine browser and they have some great people building it. If I wasn't using Firefox, I'd probably be using Safari (presuming I was still on a Mac.)
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | April 23, 2007 5:28 PM
No love for Camino?
Posted by: Jeff Hume | April 23, 2007 6:18 PM
From what I've read from Mac users, Safari has some issues that forces them to Firefox as an alternative. Like Fx users use IE for obscure IE coded pages.
Posted by: Omega X | April 23, 2007 6:34 PM
Safari is a nice, quick browser for Joe Average User. It has a neat interface and a general less-is-more approach. It packs a lot of features (Safari passed the ACID2-Test) and usually does well on the web.
Firefox has the huge advantage that it comes with a ton of add-ons. Safari doesn't. Firefox is definitely the tool for power users. Moreover, it benefits from being cross-platform. The many people who change from Windows to Mac will probably get good ol' Firefox. Being a multiplatform app gives Firefox more market share than a Mac app can ever get, which means few webmasters can afford to ignore it.
Posted by: ADAXL | April 23, 2007 11:04 PM
From just reading the title I thought you were going to plug Colin Barrett's post. He's collecting 'Firefox on Mac gripes': http://iamthewalr.us/blog/2007/04/20/firefox-on-the-mac/
Posted by: Caspar | April 24, 2007 7:36 AM
Hello Asa its nice that you agree on the facts that firefox is still having some probs on the Mac. IMHO Camino is not an alternative - it would be - though without the support of extentions (the real power of firefox)its not . We know that that the firefox project is not having..huge resources but would it be possible to brind forward this matter? We are loyal firefox users though we are having quite often instability, memory usage probs....
please..help improve Firefox on the Mac!
Posted by: Paris Apostolopoulos | April 25, 2007 1:24 AM
How about an option to turn on the favicons in the toolbar? It really bugs me that they are not there, because I often use short names, and then identify the link by it's icon. From this link:
http://www.tuaw.com/2007/04/26/tuaw-tip-bring-favicons-to-firefoxs-bookmarks-bar/
I gather it's just a simple thing that Mozilla need to tweak in their default theme? While you're there, why not do tabs like the pinstripe theme does?:
http://kmgerich.com/2006/09/27/pinstripe-for-firefox-now-with-20-more-macintosh/
Posted by: Russell | April 26, 2007 5:18 PM
I use Firefox because it loads pages faster and works with sites where Safari has some issues (namely eBay and sharepoint sites I use for work).... oh, and let's not forget... adblock!
The only downsides for me are that Firefox doesn't have the mac look (aqua widgets, etc.) and it takes a while to launch. Once this is fixed, it will be the best mac browser hands down.
Posted by: Joe | May 5, 2007 11:30 PM
I realize that you may be biased by your affiliation, however I was curious to hear some comments about Safari, what you like and what you don't. Thanks! Nick.