There are many philosophical reasons for using Firefox, but when it comes to a web browser, I’m not such an idealist. I’ve used Firefox and Safari extensively and will tell you that, especially on the Mac, Firefox isn’t nearly as polished. IMHO, Safari feels like more of a professional product. I prefer Safari for type rendering, ColorSync, Bookmark syncing with iSync and the highly usable SnapBack feature. If you prefer the Mozilla/Gecko layout engine that Firefox uses, I recommend Camino, which is much more Mac-like and professional feeling than Firefox.

Some practical reasons for using Firefox might include:
1. Better compatibility with crumby banking websites and such.
2. More extensible features with plugins. However, for every Firefox plugin that’s well-written, there are at least ten that are poorly written.

I’m not trying to start a war here – these are just my personal preferences.

If there is any reason, I suggest trying Camino first. It’s basically Firefox in a nicer outfit. I prefer Safari though, it works great for me.

Edit: Whoops!

I use Safari 2.0 on Tiger because it renders webpages and starts up a heck of a lot faster than Firefox. Back when I used a PC I was all about Firefox though.

I prefer Firefox simply because for *most* intents and purposes what I do on my PC corresponds to what I do on my Mac (shortcuts, menu positions, plug-ins etc).

It’s convenient to be able to do things in a similar manner no matter which machine I am using or where I am, ie. work (PC & Mac), home (PC & Mac). Yup, there is every possibility that I will be using anywhere from four different machines in a day, so portability is key.

-nic

i agree with nic. i work with a mac, and at home i use a pc. the shortcuts are really nice (better than in safari), the extensions are very powerful (if you start using some, take those from the top-lists on mozilla.org, they are all good in terms of coding etc). also, i love the search-tab to which you can add every search engine (or even translation-websites, wikipedia and others), and you can easily access it with ctrl+k / apple+k.

BUT on mac, i have heavy problems with typerendering in firefox, the text in form-boxes goes over the border, etc..

Thanks. I’m Mac only and guess I’ll stick w/Safari. I was just curious what y’all thought.

I use Firefox for some of the aformentioned reasons. My note is that I use “Tab X”, which is a Firefox extension that puts the close-tab button on the tab. When moving from Safari to Firefox, I found it really weird that the close-tab button was not on the tab. The cross-platform compatability and the extensions are very important to me.