Six Mac Web Browsers: How Do They Stack Up?

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Six Mac Web Browsers: How Do They Stack Up?

RockMelt blasted into our collective conscience this month to compete for web browsing dominance against Safari, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Flock -- not to mention a handful of smaller competitors. So which one is right for you?

There's no doubt that web browsing is a very personal experience, and one person's browser of choice might be another person's nightmare. Most of the web browsers today do an admirable job and compatibility isn't as much of an issue as it used to be, but if you don't have the time to test them all out, read on!

MacLife.com is here to help cut through the thick fog and help choose the one that's just right for you from these six Mac favorites.


Safari 5
Who Makes It: Apple, Inc.
Based Upon: WebKit
Who's It For: All but the most discerning power users
Where Do I Get It: www.apple.com/safari/download

Just because Apple includes Safari with Mac OS X by default, that doesn't mean it's the best browser on the platform, does it? Prior to Safari 5 being released earlier this year, we might have questioned whether or not that was true, but thanks to Apple opening up the WebKit-based browser with extensions (many of which are featured in the company's own Safari Extensions Gallery), Safari 5 has finally come out of the shadows with gloves ready to spar.

Safari has been criticized in the past for not doing enough to keep innocent users away from scammy phishing websites, and it's certainly an area where the competition has done a much better job. But otherwise, Apple's prodigal browser is quite fast and thanks to an ever-growing list of extensions, it's quickly catching up to the likes of Firefox as well.

The little things make all the difference, and one area where Safari 5 excels can be found with its Universal Access preference. When Facebook recently reduced the font size of users' News Feeds, plenty of folks cried fowl as they reached for their granny glasses to read the latest from their friends. Those of us who had the "Never use font sizes smaller than…" setting probably never noticed the change, while competitors like Google's Chrome can only combat the dilemma by increasing the font size on all pages or digging up an extension to make the magic happen.

Safari's feature set includes managing bookmarks, downloads, passwords and f...

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