Note: This page is severely outdated. I am keeping it available for historical reference. If you would like to improve on this document, please see the licensing information at the bottom of the page.
Mac OS X Browser Comparison
This document is a yes/no feature comparison of the graphical Web
browsers that run natively on Mac OS X. It does not cover browsers that
run on the Classic VM or
require an implementation of the X11 windowing system.
What was not Tested?
I have not done quantitative testing on the time it takes to render pages,
networking performance or the stability of the browsers. Network
performance is hard to test reliably. Stability is also hard to
quantify properly.
Lynx and Links work on an out-of-the-box installation of Mac OS X
but are not included in the result table, which is GUI-oriented. Lynx
2.8.3rel.1doesn’t fully support any of the standards mentioned in the
table. However, it supports HTML 4.01 very well except for tables and
the title attribute. Links 0.96 does a good job with HTML 4.01
including tables. Emacs-W3 isn’t included in the table, either.
Emacs-W3 is a browser that runs inside Emacs. However, it doesn’t
display the page at all if it encounters Unicode characters it
doesn’t like. (Please email me, if you know
a way around this.) Links, Lynx and Emacs-W3 all support <link>
navigation.
Mozilla is also available as a Mach-O version know as FizzillaMach.
FizzillaMach isn’t yet the main Mozilla version for Mac OS X, and
FizzillaMach is not included in the table at this time. There are three
additional Gecko-based browsers that aren’t included. Phoenix for OS X
is still very experimental. Beonex for OS X is also experimental and
(on OS X) not as polished as Mozilla and Netscape. wKiosk is designed for kiosk use, so it doesn’t make sense to compare it with normal browsers.
Can be set to accept cookies but discard them
after session
N
N*
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
Y
Link drag from page
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
Text drag from page
N
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
Y
Y
Dragging image to Finder saves
image
Y
Y
N
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Form fields are text drop targets
Y
N
N
N
N
N
Y
N
Translucent drag&drop
Y
N
N
N
Y
Y
N
Y
Can drop URLs as text (from a text editor) onto browser window
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Live window resizing
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
N
Y
Mouse wheel scrolling
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Works as a single Finder item
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
Y
Y
Y
Can be set to always open new windows behind the
current one
N
Y
N
N
N
N
N
Y
Has a modifier key for opening
link in a window behind the current one
Y
Y
N
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
Can display more than one page in one window
using tabs
N
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
N
N
Full screen mode
N
N
N
N
Y
N
Y
N
Can disable GIF animation
N
N*
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Notes
HTML 4 support means support for features added since HTML 3.2.
OmniWeb makes an attempt to support some CSS1 properties.
However, the result is not proper CSS1 support.
iCab also makes an attempt to support some CSS1 properties.
However, in practice iCab tends to break CSS-based layouts.
Safari has overlapping issues with horizontal padding on inline
boxes.
Safari doesn’t implement small-caps properly. It
display them as all caps.
Safari uses black as the darker color for groove, ridge, inset
and outset border styles instead of generating both the lighter and the
darker color from the border color like Gecko and Opera.
DOM support indicates DOM support using ECMAScript. Even though
Safari, Gecko-based browsers and IE have a “Y” in the table, they
nonetheless fail some tests.
Sometimes loading XHTML stalls in Opera. Clicking the Stop button
helps.
IE has some XML + CSS support. The display property
can’t be set, however, making the feature mostly useless. (Everything
appears as display: inline;.)
I haven’t yet thoroughly assessed the extent of XSLT support in
Mozilla and Netscape.
”Works as a single Finder item” means that the application Finder
item (whether a bundle or not) works alone. iCab is not a bundle but
the application file works alone. Opera is a bundle, but for example
help files aren’t inside the bundle as they should be. Mozilla and
Netscape are bundles but come with two extra files for invoking the
profile mananger. However, these two extra files are necessary only
during initial multiprofile setup, so in practice Mozilla and Netscape can be placed directly in the Applications folder as single
double-clickable items.
Opera’s <link> navigation toolbar supports the
basic link types such as back, forward and copyright. Links to sections
and chapters are available only via the “Links” submenu of the
“Navigation” menu.
SVG in <object> support requires Adobe SVG
Viewer.
Mozilla and Netscape were tested with the Modern theme. Other
themes can offer button modes that are not available in the Modern
theme.
Some features are listed as “N” because by default there is no
user interface for getting to the features. The toolbars of Mozilla,
Opera and Netscape can be customized by editing the XML descriptions of
the toolbars. In Mozilla and Netscape the toolbars can also be altered
by applying another theme or by editing the “userChrome.css” file
inside the user profile folder.
Safari pretends to support XHTML 1.0 sent as text/xml. However,
it cheats and in a blatant violation of the XML well-formedness rules
uses the tag soup parser! This is a very bad thing to
do, because a failure to enforce the XML well-formedness rules could
lead to XML degenerating into tag soup.
Safari doesn’t render the <legend> element of
HTML 4.
In Chimera when multiple tabs are used, dialogs that would need
to be modal to one tab aren’t sheets.
In Safari, some toolbar buttons are enabled/disabled as pairs.
Chimera loads Java applets, but keyboard input to applets is
broken making applets of the more useful kind useless.
Opera doesn’t support letter-spacing.
Most Mozilla preferences also exist in Chimera and can be set
using a text editor.
Quick High and Lowlights
Safari
Why
Looks and feels like an OS X app
Simple
Fast
Uses the Quartz font rasterizer throughout
Why not
Engine not up to Gecko’s capabilities
Too simple for some tastes
No tabbed browsing
Chimera (the author’s choice)
Why
Engine second only to the latest Mozilla
Looks and feels like an OS X app
Fast
Simple if you want to use it in a simple way. However, Mozilla’s
preference repertoire is available via a text editor.
Tabbed browsing with native tabs that appear only when needed
Nightly builds are publicly available
Public, searchable bug database—can be used as documentation and
you can track the issues that are important to you
Full source code available
Why not
Ugly rendering of Greek, Cyrillic and non-MacRoman Latin
characters
QuickDraw rasterization of non-MacRoman
Note: The version of Flash Player that shipped with the OS crashes Chimera. A new fixed version of the plug-in is available.
Mozilla
Why
The most advanced engine
MathML
DOM inspector for people who need to analyze what is going on
with the document tree and the styles
Nightly builds are publicly available
Public, searchable bug database—can be used as documentation and
you can track the issues that are important to you
Full source code available
Why not
Clunky non-native user interface
Toolbar icons remind of Netscape 4.x (can be alleviated with
themes)
Mail&News and IRC components entangled in the same process
and behind the same Dock icon with the browser
QuickDraw rasterization of non-MacRoman
Netscape
Why
Engine second only to the latest Mozilla
Netscape brand value
Mozilla 1.0 branch quality assurance
Why not
Doesn’t look and feel like a Mac OS X app (can be alleviated to
some extent—but not fully—with themes)
Mail&News and Instant Messenger components entangled in the
same process and behind the same Dock icon with the browser
Opening a new window is slow
Ugly rendering of Greek, Cyrillic and non-MacRoman Latin
characters
QuickDraw rasterization of non-MacRoman
Opera
Why
Easy to deal with Web annoyances using the user style sheet mode toggle and
Quick Preferences
Uses Quartz font rasterization throughout
Indic script support
Why not
Advertisement in the UI / price
Engine not up to Gecko’s capabilities
Can’t modify document tree via the DOM (coming up in Opera 7)
Cluttered UI by default (can be cleaned up)
Tabbed browsing either on or off—tabs don’t appear on demand
Internet Explorer
Why
Page holder helps with going through link lists
Scrapbook is useful for storing local copies of pages
Auction addicts might find the auction manager useful
Why not
Engine not up to Gecko’s capabilities
Doesn’t quite look and feel like an OS X app
No pop-up blocker
Rather useless for people who need more than MacRoman and CJK
support
No tabbed browsing
Not up to Safari’s and Chimera’s speed
Becomes unresponsive with multi-window browsing style
iCab
Why
Built-in HTML linter
Why not
CSS support badly broken
Doesn’t support UTF-8
Doesn’t look and feel like an OS X app
No tabbed browsing
OmniWeb
Why
Uses Quartz font rasterization throughout (but so do Opera and
Safari)
Can check the bookmark list for “dead” bookmarks
Why not
Doesn’t support HTML 4 and CSS1!
Can’t drop URLs from text editors onto the browser window!
No tabbed browsing
Price / nag screens
Screenshots
These screenshots show each browser rendering the famous Box
Acid Test.
SSL/TLS isn’t included in the table, because I don’t have reliable
test cases with specific SSL/TLS versions. So far, I have only
conducted an ad hoc test: I have tested the browsers with the Solo service of Nordea’s Finnish
branch.
All the eight GUI browsers worked. The SSL-enabled
versions of Links and Lynx worked, too.
If they don’t work with your bank, chances are that the bank is to
blame—not the browser. Some banks have been reported to block browsers
that they don’t recognize. Other banks have been reported to block some
browsers, because they think the browsers might allow the user to store
the login password on the computer. (Banks that use a one-time pad of
passwords like some [all?] Finnish banks are not affected.) Also, your
bank might be using JavaScript needlessly in an incompatible way.
To Do
16 bits/channel PNG testing
Dividing CSS2 into reasonable subcategories and testing
Character display and encoding test results
Testing DOM Level 2 support
Better XSLT testing
Better SSL/TLS testing
Feature table for text-based browsers (Links, Lynx and Emacs-W3)
W3C CSS1 Test Suite
(Note: The current version requires support for HTML in <object>
which is not supported in Safari. The April 2001 version allows CSS1 to
be tested without requiring this HTML feature.)
