Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3
The main reason I switched from Safari to Firefox in the first place was memory consumption on my PowerBook G4—after just a few hours of my use, Safari 3 inevitably consumes at least 300 MB, often more, of private memory. In the same usage, Firefox 3 never seemed to use more than 90 MB, even after a few days.
But for this I really, really like Safari.
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Just to prevent repetitions of my minute of head-scratching, by "but", he meant "except". I read it the other way, "but" being an objection to the quote, and the rest of the sentence affirming that it's because of the memory usage that he really, really likes Safari. :)
I recently started to use Firefox instead of OmniWeb, the big advantage in my opinion is the adblocking, cookie control, script control and other plugins ... I've never managed to do this in a nice way using Safari
Thanks, Jesper, I was trying to figure that out myself, and hadn't quite completed the mental loop when I read your comment. :)
He is just missing a coma people...
But for this^COMA I really, really like Safari.
Safari does leak memory like a whore. It also lacks a lot of specific configurations that you can achieve with firefox. But if Safari is a whore, Firefox is a son of a whore. It uses way more initial memory to do the same thing Safari does, except it doesnt leak memory for websites using Flash nearly as much as Safari. And yes, Flash is the devil. Any page with Flash open will hog up bandwidth and memory the longer it sits there.
I use Safari over Firefox because its less buggy. All you have to do when you run low on memory is close it, open it, and Reopen All Windows from Last Session.
Also, its a good idea to keep an eye on your Inactive Memory via Activity Monitor. When that gets too high (more than 500mb) its definitely time to restart your computer so you are not relying solely on swapfiles (Virtual Memory).
Also, You can make VM work tremendously better for you by formatting your drive and reinstalling with multiple partitions. One for your system, one for your swapfiles, and one for your media/storage. There are several ways to achieve this; lots of online guides. But if you use a lot of Virtual Memory (and mac users sure do because the OS kinda forces us to) having your swapfiles on their own partition makes your HD go about twice as fast. Especially on older computers and servers.
Happy Hunting.
