Safari Regressions

Tim Bray:

For some years, Safari has been my default browser. I generally prefer its choices in framing and ergonomics and shortcuts over all others. But I’ve had to stop using it. In recent releases, Safari has been re-architected, with some of the work farmed out to a thing called “WebProcess”. This doesn’t seem to be working out that well.

I’m seeing the same things Bray is with Safari for Mac, particularly the performance problems when you have a lot of windows and tabs open. I’m not ready to switch yet, but I’m starting to shop around. And if anything, Safari 5.1 seems worse on Lion than it does on Snow Leopard.

Looking at the user agent stats for DF over the last year, Chrome for Mac has gained, at least partially at Safari’s expense. For the year-ago month of September 2010, Safari/Mac accounted for 53.2 percent of DF visits, Chrome/Mac for 5.8 percent. This month, to date, Safari/Mac is at 42.2 percent, Chrome/Mac up to 9.6 percent. (iPhone and iPad browsers account for most of the rest; they’re up to 19 percent combined from around 14 percent a year ago.)

★ Monday, 19 September 2011