Browsers

I've been spending some time thinking about browsers recently. When I first got my Mac, I was so used to Windows that I used IE as my browser. Since then, I've switched to Safari, to Firefox, back to Safari, to Flock (a Firefox spawn I wrote about a while ago), back to Safari, and now back to Firefox. But today I ran into a completely unrelated article (about the prevalence of circular application icons), which mentioned several browsers I had never heard of. I decided to check them out: Of course, I'd recommend everyone (PC or Mac user) try Firefox. None of the browsers below will come close to having all the features you get through Firefox extensions. It's just an awesome browser. The rest of the browsers are Mac-specific:

• Shiira is based off of Safari, but has a few additional "cool features" like Page Holder and Tab Exposé. It mixes my favorite features from Firefox and Safari (I like to use Favicons as bookmarks in my Bookmark Bar, but Safari doesn't seem to support that, and I like that Safari puts a "close" button on each tab, while Firefox has one button at the end of the bar). All that's missing are Firefox's Live Bookmarks.

+

• Camino is a more intentional combination of Safari and Firefox - the idea is to create a browser with all the power of Firefox, which would be integrated into OS X as well as Safari (since Firefox is meant to be cross-platform, it doesn't integrate with Mac-specific applications like Address Book, for example). It, too, has what I consider to be "the best of both worlds" in terms of features (like Shiira), but with no RSS reader at all, it's hard to compare. However, it looks like Firefox-style Live Bookmarks are on their development agenda, so as soon as that's released, I'll be sure to switch to Camino.
• If you want to test and help code a browser while using it, try WebKit.
• Xyle scope loads HTML and CSS in editors alongside a webpage, so you can view and edit code as you browse.
• Sunrisebrowser is supposed to be "Light & fast. The open-source browser for web developer." It has several cool developer-oriented features like Auto Resizing Windows and graphical bookmarks, but it would take a lot of getting used to.