I've been a Safari user for ages. I'm not a Firefox fan (just don't like the UI, plus the fact that it doesn't honour my Locations ( we use a proxy at work, but I don't use one at home) annoys me). I've tried various other browsers at various other points, but they've never been enough to make me want to give up Safari. But now might be the time. Here's my list of things I don't like about Safari 4:
clicking on a link with _blank in the target doesn't and cannot be set to open in a new tab, no matter what you do.
It's brutal for any business application which inevitably opens tabs for new things you want to work on. Every other browser on the planet does this right, why can't Apple?
You can force it to open in a new tab, but it requires twiddling a variable via the Terminal:
http://www.tuaw.com/2008/09/08/terminal-tips-force-safari-to-open-all-links-in-new-tab/
I've had this set for ages in Safari 3, and I believe it's still working in Safari 4. I haven't noticed being forced into a new window when I want things to open in a new tab, at least.
I'm with you on everything except Top Sites, Nadyne. I like the effect and the purpose and use it quite regularly.
I usually prefer Firefox as my back up, but find that the new 3.5 takes for-ev-er and a day to launch on my Win machine at work. Haven't tried it at home on my PPC Mac.
Just out of curiosity, for #4, why does it matter if there's no X on the tab bar if you already use the Cmd-W shortcut to close a tab? Aren't you viewing the website that you're closing the tab for already?
#2 is annoying but the progress bar information seemed to always be a lie anyway.
#5 I actually like fairly well. Giving me a good overview snapshot of what's been recently updated instead of having to open a bookmark that opens 10+ sites and manually having to go to each one. Sure I could use a RSS reader (and do) but there are some sites I go to whenever they are updated (i.e. the RSS feed isn't complete so I go ahead and click to the original site anyway).
Chrome actually does a bunch of things right with their omni address bar.
#4 matters because I often have several tabs open with nearly identical content, say when I'm searching for something or have several tabs open for reference. Since the tabs aren't very visually distinct right now, the little X gave me more indication that this was the selected tab and so I could close it.
I like the idea of topsites more than I like the current implementation. The curvature is gratuitous and makes it difficult to figure out which site is which.
I must say I disagree regarding #3...
On my iMac 20" the current tab and the inactive tabs are clearly distinguished from each other as the inactive tabs are in a much darker colour.
I do agree that the Topsites page is completely useless. I never use it and I can't dream up an idea why I would ever use it. I tried just now, just to have a second look at it - it took nearly five minutes to load on a 2,4GHz iMac Core2Duo!! Safari went beach ball on me...
I'm not sure what to say about #7. Every time I enter a URL the history is accurate - spot on! Always!
What I despise about Safari 4 is the same thing that I despise about Entourage 2008(2004/X).
I cannot paste, or even create, complex HTML in an email message.
Good Lord, even my *iPhone* can paste a web page into an email message, now.
It's time for all to start rewriting the HTML guts of the programs, isn't it?
The heck with Exchange connectivity. I'd rather have emails that can look like web pages, than Exchange server support. (Well, the ONLY thing good about Exchange servers is not getting winmail.dat files. But I don't have an Exchange account, so I have to put up with winmail.dat files, too.)
There are dozens of themes for Firefox that greatly improve its looks. (takebacktheweb.org) You can get a progress bar (Safari 3 style, for example), close buttons on tabs and a nice awesomebar.
(Hope I don't sound too much like another Fx nutjob trying to win somebody over)
I know that Firefox is essentially infinitely customisable, and I honestly don't want to put in the effort to find all of the plug-ins and themes and so on to make it a reasonable experience.
And I have absolutely no idea what an "awesomebar" is!
The only issue that still trips me up - the reload button the right side. All other browsers have it on left, and I still move the cursor there.
I like top sites probably the best. And it is much faster than previous incarnations.
Like your blog but that proxy excuse about FF is about the lamest one I've heard this year.
SystemProxy - systemproxy.mozdev.org makes FF act exactly like Safari does on Mac. period.
That's great, but Safari works with no need for digging through plug-ins. I have pretty much zero desire to mess about with that. Why take the hassle of getting Firefox to be usable for me when there are options that work without the hassle?
Shall we start a thread called "Things I dislike about messenger"?
Nah, I don´t think so... I don´t have that much time to spend.
I found the same shortcomings but also found Glims - http://www.machangout.com/ - that allows you to some extent customize the way Safari tabs behave. It also makes it a lot easier to use Bing as your default search engine :-)