Everybody knows about Safari, and most people agree that it’s good. It’s fast, it’s stable, it’s sexy — and everybody knows about other popular web browsers like Firefox and Chrome. But there are several other lesser known web browsers that offer cool features that Safari lacks.
Although you don’t need to use them all the time, unless you want to, they’re nice to have around to utilize every once in a while. Whether you’re wanting social integration or parallel sessions, it’s a good idea to have them there.
Let’s take a look at a selection of Safari alternatives!
Camino
Camino
Camino is a browser built on Mozilla’s Gecko rendering engine, it’s latest update to version 2.0 has seen it gain loads of new features, including phishing & malware protection as well as ‘Annoyance Blocking’; blocking pop-ups, ads, and Flash animations on demand.
The beautiful native interface has also gained a great new feature called ‘Tab Overview’ allowing you to see all your open tabs visually at a glance. For fans of Growl, Camino now also supports download notifications utilizing it.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Developer: The Camino Project
Cruz
Cruz
From the developer behind the much loved app Fluid, Cruz is a beautiful browser that integrates well with the web, allowing you to view your Twitter timeline in a split pane while browsing other sites.
You can also browse sites like Digg and WordPress in Cover Flow fashion. Along with the amazing web integration, Cruz also includes a full-screen mode and complete session restore.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Developer: Todd Ditchendorf
Fake
Fake
Another web browser from the developer behind Fluid. Fake is a new browser that makes web automation simple. You just have to drag simple browser actions into a graphical Workflow that can be run again and again.
Though some people won’t even know what web automation is, just think of it as “Automator for the web”; an invaluable tool for web designers and developers that makes life quicker and easier.
Price: $29.95 (Free trial available)
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Developer: Todd Ditchendorf
Flock
Flock
Flock, the ‘social web browser’, has undergone a recent facelift and now uses Chromium rather than Mozilla. However it still has full integration with popular websites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, and many more using the unique ‘Flock sidebar’ as well as instant one-click sharing. The only thing changed is that now it looks a whole lot more beautiful!
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.
Developer: Flock
OmniWeb
OmniWeb
OmniWeb has a beautiful intuitive interface which incorporates visual tabs, allowing you to view all your tabs at a glance. OmniWeb also allows you to create ‘workspaces’ for different browsing tasks, saving information like which web pages you have in your open tabs, your history, and even the location of the windows on your screen so you can easily pick up where you left off.
The browser also supports advanced preferences for ad-blocking and can handle all your RSS news feeds.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4.8 or later.
Developer: The Omni Group
RockMelt
Rockmelt
Another ‘social web browser’ which is in beta and set to give Flock a run for its money. RockMelt is built on Chromium and uses ‘sidebars’ allowing you to pin your favorite friends, social networks (Facebook, Twitter etc.) and blogs for instant updates as and when they happen.
RockMelt also supports instant sharing with Facebook and Twitter. If you have a friend pinned to your sidebar you can see their news feed or talk to them using Facebook Chat. Genius.
Price: In Beta, apply for an invitation.
Requires: Mac OS X 10.6.
Developer: RockMelt
Shiira
Shiira
“The goal of the Shiira Project is to create a browser that is better and more useful than Safari”. A goal it manages to live up to pretty well. It features numerous page transition effects, visual tabs and an innovative Expose style tab interface.
The browser also incorporates a clever ‘Shelf’ interface for your favorites, and full RSS handling incorporated as a ‘Shelf’, all of which makes it a delight to use. The developer has also recently resumed development of the application according to his blog.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.4 or later.
Developer: HMDT
Stainless
Stainless
Stainless started out as a technology demo to showcase it’s multi-processing architecture in response to Google Chrome, however since then it has grown into a fully fledged web browser. Stainless is fast, and uses a dual purpose address and search bar making it a breeze to search and navigate.
Stainless also showcases a visual bookmarks shelf where you simply drag and drop your favorite websites for easy access. The killer feature of Stainless is parallel sessions, which allow you to log into a site using different credentials in separate tabs at the same time.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Developer: MD Software
Sunrise
Sunrise
Sunrise is a browser full of cool and interesting features, the most obvious being that bookmarks are displayed as thumbnails in the bookmarks sidebar.
Sunrise also offers features for web developers; you can also take a snapshot of a web page of your specified file type and size from inside the browser. Sunrise also allows you to view the source code for every tab and open it in another application.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Developer: Atsushi Jike
Opera
Opera
A relatively well known web browser that often gets overlooked. Opera offers a wealth of features that set it apart from the crowd, namely mouse gestures and ‘Speed Dial’: allowing you to access your favorite web pages instantly with one click from the main window.
Opera also supports visual enhancements such as visual tabs and content blocking. Opera offers complete mail integration using it’s own mail service, meaning you can efficiently manage all e-mail within the beautiful Opera interface. The Opera browser also boasts ‘Opera Turbo’ which, in short, it makes it really fast.
Price: Free
Requires: Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Developer: Opera Software
Give Them a Try!
Safari is good – it offers all the features the average user likes, but you don’t have to confine yourself to one browser.
For the Mac user who wants more out of their computer, other browsers have got a lot to offer as well such as social integration, workflow automation, visual tabs and parallel sessions. Just play the field!