Why Opera 10 Is Better Than Safari 4

As soon as Apple released it, I couldn’t wait to download and use Safari 4, the latest and improved version of Apple’s popular browser. As my readers should know very well, I move from one browser to another very often, depending on new released features I want to try out or, in some cases, thanks to some sticky extensions that improve your productivity.

After one month of intensive usage, I can say that my latest love, Opera 10, is better than Safari 4 and here I’ll tell you why.

User Interface

The latest version of Safari shows tabs on top of the address bar, like Google Chrome or Opera. While in these two browsers the user experience gets a big boost thanks to this feature, in my opinion Safari gets worse. There are some tricks that let you move back tabs below the address bar, but in any case when you have lots of tabs opened, switching from one to another becomes painful.

Here are two screenshots which let you get easily understand what I mean:

Moreover, what about favicons? I think those are a must-have in any browser and can’t understand why Safari doesn’t have them yet.

Speed

Safari 4 is definitely a very fast browser. However, my experience leads me to say that Opera 10 is the winner in terms of perceived speed. It’s difficult to state which is faster since the differences are measured in terms of a few milliseconds (not performing serious tests, I mean) but I prefer Opera over Safari. Overall, I would say they are both fast enough for most users.

User Experience

There are some useful features that still make Opera better than Safari in terms of User Experience:

mouse gestures
As soon as you start using it, you become addicted. I use the “open link on a background tab” which lets me open links on new tabs (without loosing the focus on the current tab) with a simple gesture of the mouse (right click + up-down)
tabs handling
I love the ability to open tabs next to the active one.
integrated search
You can live without the search box since you can easily perform any kind of searches from within the address bar.

Speed Dial

While I love the way Safari handles the new feature Top Sites, I like the Opera one better (called Speed Dial). At least, on my 1st gen Macbook I get a much better performance with Opera while Safari looks very slow on my machine. Is it only me?

Conclusion

While Opera 10 is still officially in alpha stage, its performances and overall user experience lead me to stick with it despite Safari 4 is definitely a major step ahead in the fight with the new rival Google Chrome (not officially available for Mac, though).

The point is that despite Safari is much faster and in general better than the previous versions, both Opera 10 (as soon as It’ll be in Beta) and, I bet, Google Chrome for Mac will offer Mac users a better experience than the Apple browser. What do you think? What will be the best browser for Mac in one year time? Comments and integrations to this post are, as usual, highly appreciated.

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Tagged as: Apple, Browsers, Google Chrome, luca filigheddu, opera, Safari 4, Web browser