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I remember feeling a little defensive when I first learned that not all Mac users love Safari. Perhaps it was because I was being ridiculed for liking Safari. I have tried several times to make Firefox my primary browser on the Mac (it already is on PC), but keep coming back. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that it is time for new Safari release.

Safari was the first browser to pass the Acid2 test, to support CSS3 Specs like multiple background images and CSS2 text-shadow. While I’m glad that the Safari developers are dedicated to being leaders in these areas, many of these items actually have limited application until other browsers catch up. There are some areas where I’m ready for Safari to catch up.

Andy Budd took contributions of Common CSS Bugs in Safari, Firefox, and Opera over a year ago. At that time one commenter expressed surprise at the lack of an existing list. Quirksmode has accumulated a useful list of Bug Reports for Safari that include test cases. There are a few CSS bugs in Safari that are annoying, but the main complaint of most is Safari’s increasingly lagging Javascript support.

TinyMCE still does not work in Safari. There are also numerous quirks with Scriptaculous and other Javascript frameworks. A javascript debugger, named Drosera, was announced in June 2006 and integrated into WebKit. However, you must download one of the WebKit nightly builds in order to reap the benefits of Drosera. It is not useful for debugging in the current version, but will be included in the release coming with OS 10.5 Leopard.

Other enhancements to be included in the release with the coming OS include:

• JavaScript getters and setters, DOM class prototypes, New CSS3 properties including resize, background-size, border-radius (now complete), overflow-x and overflow-y, CSS3 Media Queries, Continued progress on styleable form controls, and more
• CSS3 Multi-Column Support
• Box Shadow
• Text-Stroke

I still use Safari as my main browser despite trying several times to adopt Firefox (which I use when developing web interfaces). Even though it has a more compliant rendering engine, there are a couple of annoyances that keep Firefox from becoming the top dog for me:

• It takes Firefox about 2-8 more seconds to open than it takes Safari to open (depending on what else my computer is doing at the moment).
• The Firefox leaks badly. This means that the longer it is left open, the slower my computer gets as more and more memory is being used. Eventually I have to close Firefox and reopen it for me computer to be usable…and wait those additional seconds that it takes Firefox to open.

The absence of an announcement at MacWorld ’07 as left many speculating about the release of 10.5 originally promised for Spring 2007; I still think it will happen and I’m ready for it.