Chrome arriving on Mac was an amazing upgrade in the normal browsing experience. However, Safari’s new features and battery savings in Mavericks prodded me into giving it another try.
A few utilities made it a lot easier to use Safari:
- YouTube5 enables many YouTube videos that would otherwise not work.
- command-number-tab can power using
⌘1,⌘2, etc. for switching tabs.
Update 2015-06-14: Safari in OS X 10.11 adds a preference for doing the ⌘1..N shortcut without needing a hacky extension.
There are also a few really important shortcuts to pick up fast:
⇧⌘\opens the “tab expose”; you can then swipe left and right or use the arrow keys to switch tabs. (There’s a gesture, too, but two-finger pinch-out isn’t easy.)⇧⌘Ropens the reader view, which seems better than I remember. It saves scroll positions when you click links, and reformats text impressively.⇧⌘Lopens the bookmarks sidebar, which I’ve found quick and easy.
Zooming is really clean: like in iOS, you can two-finger pinch to fluidly zoom in; and two-finger tap will intelligently zoom to fit the content.
I’ve still itched for Chrome a few times, especially when trying to sign into a second session on a webpage or use it logged out: I end up using Chrome’s incognito windows fairly often. These happen fairly often in my workflow.
Overall, I think Safari suits my needs pretty well without needing to bother with Flash or overwhelming extension use like in Firefox. It uses less power than Chrome, and just feels faster.