Safari vs Firefox and Qumana vs ecto (on a small scale)

I have been using the Safari browser as my primary browser the last couple days and while it isn’t nearly as attractive as the 2.0 beta of Firefox, I have found Safari to be less of a resource hog than Firefox is and with the added benefit that certain pages designed for Internet Explorer work better on Safari than on Firefox. 

I added a plugin called Saft to give Safari some of the additional functionality Firefox has enjoyed for a little while now, for example the ability to move tabs around and to save groups of tabs in one folder in my bookmarks.  An important thing for me is how Safari plugs right in to the iTunes Store and enables me to subscribe to podcasts easier than if I were using Firefox to copy the link and then subscribe through iTunes.

Firefox is still more widely supported and I find that I have to go back to Firefox when I access services like TypePad and Vox.  Then again, some sites just don’t work well on Firefox.  I definitely see myself using both Firefox and Safari for the foreseeable future.  I love using Firefox and I have a growing respect for Safari and look forward to the next version in Leopard.

On the blogging side, I have been using Qumana more and more, rather than ecto.  The version of Qumana I am using at the moment is version 3, beta 5 and it is quite an improvement on the last beta version although there are still a couple things I’d like to see added and changed.  For one thing this version is a resource hog of note and I often find the text slow down for a few seconds while I type.  There is also no easy way that I could find to switch between the blog manager window and back to the editing window easily.  I have to minimise the blog manager window and then try switch between the two.

I do like the way Qumana deals with images although it would be helpful if I could resize images by percentage like ecto does, rather than by changing the pixels (or whatever measure is being used).  ecto is definitely faster but I don’t like the html ecto uses for content I add to my posts.  It tends to mess lists up completely and I wind up hand coding those parts of my posts.  I am looking forward to version 3 of ecto.  It may change my mind, especially if Qumana doesn’t become less of a resource hog on my machine.

Generally, these are some pretty effective tools and I actually recommend all four.  From there it is up to you to decide which ones work best for you.

Tags: qumana, ecto, safari, firefox, browser, blog editor