Mac Browser Design
Aesthetics are incredibly important and becoming increasingly more so (if that’s possible). This article is about GUI, not function. Most of these browsers would get top marks for features.
A design is what makes an application usable, whether it appeals or not, and for better or worse, a lot of purchase decisions are based on who a product looks. It isn’t as absurd as you may think and this is no truer than on the Mac (and for your browser, one of the most used applications).
Apple’s Safari is still the most Mac-like application, it integrates fully into the Mac OS X environment and I’m not just being an Apple suck up either, their capsule styled buttons in Apple Mail are pretty poor, but their browser features a simple polished user interface.
One problem, however is that the button to add the website to bookmarks is permanently attached to the address bar and I see no need for that, it’s extra unnecessary clutter. Their minimalist mantra fell over a bit there.
Again, this is based on design. If we were talking about features, I’d have to point out the inability to add other search engines to its search box. Oh, I just did.
Camino 2 is a Mac-like product, but it’s more for the Tiger Aqua look than for Leopards Unified environment. Their design is clean and it works, but it needs updating. Not to say that it doesn’t work now, it wouldn’t look too out of place, but updating the design would be rather simple in comparison to the massive development that took place in developing version 2.
Mozilla Firefox has an appalling design, but at least they have tried to make it Mac-like, it’s just that they have failed. Firefox is a great browser, but their Mac version doesn’t live up the expectations (design wise). It is clumsy, oversized and they seem to have just rounded the corners off everything and said, “That works”. It is a great shame, because early beta versions of Firefox were a lot better looking and would have received higher marks.
Then steps in Google Chrome, it follows a strict minimalist ideology that works, similar to Safari and they have done quite well to make it look ‘nice’, but it doesn’t fit. It stands out like a sore thumb on your desktop. It doesn’t look like a Mac application, it looks slightly butchered, like a kids jigsaw piece that has been hacked at to fit in somewhere where it shouldn’t be.
- Safari 3: 9/10
- Camino 2: 7/20
- Firefox 3: 4/10
- Chrome: 4/10