Since getting my intel iMac at the office and my MacBook Pro for freelance work, I’ve installed Windows on both, using both BootCamp and Parallels. The process of running both Windows and Mac OS X, going back and forth between the two to test websites, has been stimulating.
The world of web browsing on Windows is a pretty sorry state of affairs.
Over the past five years or so, I have become a total web browser nut. I’m sure this is partly due to the fact that about five years ago I got into web design. Either way, these days, I spend a ton of time in the browser. In some respects, the web browser is my primary tool for web design. So, naturally, I’m a bit sensitive to good and bad web browsers.
As I’ve been doing extensive testing of some of my sites on Windows I’ve noticed one thing across the board that really gets under my skin as a graphic designer. The typography is terrible! I’m not just talking about limited font choices, but the type itself, when rendered on the screen is just ugly. Check out this example from a small corner of Mark Bixby’s blog.
Notice what the type looks like, especially in the date. It’s so much prettier in Safari. The built-in font engine in Mac OS X is so much nicer than in Windows, even with Windows’ font-smoothing tool, ClearType turned on. (ClearType is off, by default. If you’re stuck in Windows, go turn it on. It’s conveniently deeply nested in the Control Panel -> Display -> Appearance -> Effects -> Smooth edges of fonts with ClearType).
You can see that ClearType does make a difference in smoothing the fonts on the screen, but it’s not wonderful. It’s not pleasant, especially when you get to serif fonts, such as the date in the example. This makes things extremely frustrating for a designer, as you want to make your sites beautiful. It’s my understanding that the type engine will be improved in next years’ release of Windows Vista, but my hopes aren’t high.
There are three main choices for browsers in Windows: The ubiquitous Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera. Firefox is a fantastic browser, extremely user-friendly and extensible. Every Windows user should be using it as their primary browser. Internet Explorer should be hidden away from view, only brought out for rare occasions. Opera is great too, though not quite as friendly as Firefox.
On the Mac, we have those options, but that’s just the beginning. The browser market on the Mac is diverse and fun. Safari is extremely well-designed, renders sites well and is nicely integrated into the operating system. Camino is a fabulous browser, built off the same engine that drives Firefox, but it’s more mac-like. Apple afficianados have a love/hate relationship with Firefox. It’s fast and powerful but doesn’t look and feel like something developed for the mac. Camino steps in there with a look and feel that is top notch, and feels just right.
My current favorite, though, is OmniWeb. This browser has it all. The folks at Omni Group really have tried to innovate in the web browser arena and with OmniWeb they did a great job of having a bunch of cool features but with a simple, beautiful design. One of my favorite features is the tab drawer. A drawer that slides out that keeps all your tabs that you have open, including a thumbnail rendering of each one. This rendering is live, too. So if you start loading a web page, and switch to another tab, you can see the thumbnail image change as the page loads. It’s a neat effect. OmniWeb 5.5 the new version that is in public beta, uses the latest version of WebKit, the same rendering engine that Safari uses. In fact, it uses a more up-to-date version than Safari itself uses! OmniWeb has a built-in ad and popup blocker, as well as support for cool stuff like site-specific preferences, saving your browsing sessions as “workspaces”, and spell-checking in form fields (in fact, the whole browser is integrated with the Mac OS X dictionary).
Good design makes all the difference. The typography on the Mac and the quality of the UI in these browsers makes using the web on the mac so much more pleasant.
The wonderful world of browsing the web is just one great example of how well off Mac users are. It’s one thing I would really miss if I had to switch.
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Be Good Not Bad is all about really good web design, based on the utmost respect for web standards, accessibility and respect for the user. Based in Denver, Colorado, Be Good Not Bad is run by Brian Warren, freelance designer, blogger, homebrewer and coffee nut.
ah, another article lampooning IE6 – well deserved, well deserved. Have you tried Opera 9? They’re the founder of the feast when it comes to tabbed browsing – now there is a cool feature where hovering over a tab gives you thumbnail of the contents – great for thoes research sessions when you have lots of identical looking tabbed names.
§ #1 By David Fields at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
Sorry for bymping up an old discussion, but i just had to thank you. I didnt remember about cleartype until at this point. I formatted my PC in about six months ago, and i forgot to enable cleartype. I’ve allways admired Apples way of rendering fonts, that is actually one of the biggest reasons for me to convert to Apple. But my point is: cleartype isn’t as bad as you want it to be.. Lock yourself in a closet for 6 months. Use Windows XP a few hours a day without Cleartype. Then get out of the closet, enable cleartype, and it will feel like you died and went to heaven.
§ #2 By Niclas at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
Might already know this, but SafariStand adds the thumbnail sidebar dealie to (you guessed it) Safari.
§ #3 By Vance at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
“That is a bit remarkable since it isn’t as great with the CSS/HTML rendering as Firefox.”
Au contraire, Opera 9 beta(developer release, not the main download (which is 8.5), you have to know where to find it) passes the ACiD2 test, and is the only released browser to fully comply with it. (Unless I’m mistaken, the fully compliant Safari version isn’t out yet.)
Remember that page I showed you the other day that rendered the footer wrong in Opera (8 and 9) and Safari, yet rendered ‘right’ in IE? Well, IE was broken, but Firefox looke the same as IE in that case, not ‘wrong’ at all, demonstrating another bug in the Firefox renderer. SIGH But Opera 9 still has prblems that cause me to use Firefox more.
I use Firefox more day-to-day now, as all of my intranet apps work except one in it. For that one, I use IE. Many of them don’t work properly in Opera. This is a function of the Javascript-heavy intranet sites I have to use, and Opera’s Javascript support is severely problem-laden to the point where I can’t run many sites that depend on it.
Oh, I agree, cleartype is an oxymoron.
There is an extension to Firefox that does the mini-rendered pages as tabs similar to Omniweb that is pretty cool. Doesn’t come in the default package.
§ #4 By JohnH at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
John,
I too enjoy and use Firefox extensions. They make using that browser much more interesting and useful than it would be otherwise. I love the Web Developer extension and use that one a ton, though not as much as I used to since other tools has presented themselves, such as the Web Inspector panel in webkit (the core of both omniweb and safari) and Xylescope.
As for the font smoothing, I believe 10.1 or 10.2 was the first version of mac os x that had font smoothing. Since then, in 10.3 and .4, i think it’s been improved a bit. Now there are four different levels of smoothing from which you can choose, as well as an automatic one that just chooses what might be best based on the display type you have. I use that one and it works great for me.
A single engine to drive all browsers would be amazing. Maybe it’s the pessimist in me, but i don’t see that happening any time soon. Maybe I’m wrong? That would be interesting.
§ #5 By brian warren at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
I think one of the greatest features of Firefox is the extensions – a co-worker of mine has the tab-hover-thumbnail effect on his FF browser just like David mentioned for Opera.
And Brian, it’s been too long since I used a Mac for any length of time, but I remember a bit of a love/hate thing with the font smoothing in OS X (10.2?). I vaguely remember liking the smoothness (and getting shocked with the pixels on Windows), but also not loving the blurry effect it sometimes gave the text. Do you ever notice text being “over-blurry”?
Oh, and as regards html rendering engines – why can’t there be one? Seems like even IE today acknowledges that universal standards should be met (even if they can’t seem to actually do it). Just make one open-source “W3C” engine, and allow browser builders to create their own unique gadgets and interfaces on top.
§ #6 By John Lein at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
I did mention Opera. Opera is a feature-rich browser, but more catering to power users. That is a bit remarkable since it isn’t as great with the CSS/HTML rendering as Firefox. On the PC it still suffers from the font-rendering issues that any app (including Firefox) on Windows suffers from.
So, since it’s more of a power-user app, and since firefox has a better HTML engine, that’s why I recommended people, if stuck on windows, use firefox.
§ #7 By brian warren at 4:48pm on May 19 2006
Cleartype does actually make it a low better, I forgot to enable it again. Thanks for the tip
§ #8 By Samir at 2:52pm on February 23 2008
Cleartype useless with CRT monitor
§ #9 By CasCad at 11:12am on May 11 2008
i see more and more people using firefox these days on windows than IE. some site owners design their site optimized for ff but fail to focus on cross browser functionality which is an issue with all this browers around
§ #10 By computer components at 5:26pm on June 11 2008