Web Browsers for Mac OS X

Posted on May 22, 2009 by admin

Safari

Firefox

Opera

Camino

Camino is the browser based on Mozilla engine, its interface reminds me of a product, from which Mozilla derived – Netscape Navigator. In my opinion current version of Camino offers almost exactly the same features as Firefox. However, there is no plug-ins as much as the flagship product of Mozilla.

You can get Camino at: http://caminobrowser.org

Flock

Flock, the browser based on the same engine as Firefox, with extensive social networking features for multiple sites as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Flickr, Digg, MySpace, Wordpress.com, Blogger and many others. The application has a very powerful interface facilitates the use of multiple services at once. Flock is also equipped with a simple blog editor.

You can get Flock at: http://flock.com/

Stainless

Stainless is an interesting browser that allows multisession in tabs. that is, using one browser, and two or more of the open tabs can be simultaneously logged into different accounts. Typically, for this purpose I use in tandem Firefox and Safari. The interface of the program reflects prevailing trends, so the tabs are placed at the top of the interface, above the toolbar. Interesting, but in my opinion not very functional, is quick bookmarks bar, placed vertically on the left side of the application window. Sites are represented only by their favicons Unfortunately the latest beta version of the browser is very unstable (at least in my case).

You can get Stainless at: http://stainlessapp.com/

Chromium

Chromium is in very early stage of development so the application is rather for testing purposes only or as a preview of a future Google Chrome for Mac OS X. The browser is very fast – leaving far behind the competitive products. however, at this stage, Chromium does not support a number of basic features, including the display of multimedia Flash files.

The latest build of Chromium can be obtained from http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/

Cruz

Cruz is a sister application Fluid, application in charge of creating a tailor-made independent sitespecific web browsers. Cruz, as well as Fluid allows you to divide the screen into several independent browsers, which allows their simultaneous preview. It offers a preview of the history or bookmarks in Cover Flow view, unfortunately, every time I Install this application, the extension is not working. Cruz, like Fluid is based on the current WebKit engine installed with the latest version of Safari browser and, like Apple, it has problems with the AJAX pop up windows in a Wordpress administration panel.

You can get Cruz at: http://cruzapp.com/

Wyzo

Arora

Shiira

OmniWeb

OmniWeb, the browser produced by Omnigroup, has been released for free recently. It is fast, convenient, but its interface – I think – again, is associated with an old veteran – Netscape Navigator. Among the interesting features worth mentioning is OmniWeb replacement for open tabs bar, a drawer that presents the thumbnails of open pages. It has also an interesting feature called workspaces, and individual add blocking and page display preferences for each website – in my opinion revolutionary.

you can get OmniWeb at: http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/download/

Flare

Flare is a small and fast browser, with the Safari reminding interface, which offers interesting features, like Expose all open tabs, and Multitouch support in the new MacBooks. There is also function of previewing websites in a pop up cloud after moving the arrow over the tab and the possibility of zooming in or zooming out pages with a convenient slider in the bottom of the screen. The author also mentioned the possibility of browsing the bookmarks in the ScreenFlow, but in the version I installed, this feature was not activated.

Yo can get Flare at: http://code.google.com/p/flarebrowser/

Researcher

Researcher is a relatively fast browser with interface which recalls an earlier versions of Safari or Firefox. Among the variety of solutions it is worth mentioning because of the rapid tabs menu. Researcher unfortunately has no way to go multiple pages in tabs. Like the old Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator you can view only one page per one open window.

You can get it at: http://writeitstudios.com/new/wordpress/?page_id=172

Playground

Playground is a ligh weight and minimalist browser designed to test websites that are exists already or being created. Its standard and main feature is the Web Inspector, which can have an insight into the service code, scripts, style sheets, databases and similar things. The toolbar is an excellent example of the minimalism, it contains only the url address field.

You can get Playground at: http://awt.github.com/playground/

Element Browser

Element Browser is a very simple and relatively fast web browser with an interface that mixes Safari and IE style and Windows Vista colors scheme. Mac OS X Version has many limitations in its functionality – Flash does not work, there is no addresses parsing function, so you have to remember to type “http://”.

You can get it at: http://www.elementsoftware.co.uk/products/#ElementBrowser

UPDATE:

Sunrise

I have just remembered that I have forgot about very interesting web browser for Mac – Sunrise. It provides couple of more or less useful features as snapshot of entire pages and visual bookmarks panel.

Detailed review of Sunrise: http://www.mackozer.com/2009/05/23/sunrise-for-mac-os-x-supplement-for-web-browsers-for-mac-os-x/