In order to wrap this blog topic up I will summarize the information previously presented, as well as add some new material, with the focus directed Safari once again. However, I will say that though I really disliked using Safari at the start of this project, I have learned a lot about how to use it and it has grown on my. I needed to actually use Safari to do my personal evaluation of it, and much of the learning came into play there. After I had completed this step, the testing I did later went much more smoothly than I would have expected. My personal favorite part about Safari is the reader function described earlier in this blog. I still prefer Firefox the most, but I am now armed with information such as what each browser was designed to do, which is currently the fastest, etc. Most importantly though, I have found reliable places and techniques to base my personal evaluations off of, rather than my sometimes limited perspective on the user interface. So, my conclusion begins!
Safari was created to provide Mac users with a platform on which to surf the web that originated from Apple. This only makes sense because Apple could design the platform to fit their products, which they did. Apple tends to be big on presentation, so it is no wonder that their browser, Safari, is known for being the most sleek and streamlined of the popular browsers. Supporters of Safari tend to say it has an intuitive user interface. As I have used this browser more, through this project, I appreciate its layout more. Now that Safari's foundations are known, we can examine its current stats from a more educated perspective.
Safari is the fourth most popular browser, preceded by Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer (in that order). Some of its rank can be explained by the fact that Safari was a platform exclusively for Macs for a very long time. This means that PC users had all that time to get cozy with other browsers. Mac users made Safari their most preferred browser, for a time, but that is not necessarily true anymore. With the cross-platform browsers available today, Safari no longer dominates the Mac world and has to compete just like any other browser. Safari comes in third for security tests, however. The ranking is IE with a block rate of 99.96%, Chrome: 83%, Safari: 10.16%, Firefox: 9.92%, and Opera: 1.87% (https://www.nsslabs.com/news/press-releases/which-web-browser-offers-best-malware-protection-nss-labs-releases-new-2013-web). When I evaluated Safari's speed compared with other browsers on a Windows 7 OS, cited in my second post, Safari came in last after Firefox, Opera, and Chrome. So to pair the data, above and from my first post, Chrome is the most popular, second most secure, and third fastest, Firefox is the second most popular, least secure, and slowest, IE is only the third most popular but the most secure, and Opera is both the lease popular and the least secure of the four, but is the second fastest. IE didn't even show up on the ranking of the speed battle test. Safari is the best browser, by far, in regards to its media-interface technology. There are extensions/add-ons/apps for similar functions on Firefox and Chrome, but only Safari has this function built in.
All in all, I still find that Firefox is my favorite, though through my own research and what I have read on my partner Sean Prescott's blog entries, I might start looking more seriously at IE. Safari doesn't quite cut the butter for me, but that would likely change if I had a Mac. I found this site very helpful as a starting point for my research as it is a set of numerous comparisons geared towards Safari. http://www.maclife.com/article/features/group_test_6_best_web_browsers It isn't biased towards Safari though, which I found to be a problem elsewhere. When I looked for comparisons, credible evaluations, and statistics regarding how Safari specifically ranks against other browsers, I found a huge amount of bias either for or against Safari. Again, I highly stress that this site is a great one to start your looking. Do your own research though, don't rely solely on one source--even those which aren't overtly biased. I recommend determining what functions you want in a web browser, be it speed, security, customization, OS compatibility, etc., and gear your research towards those components. Happy hunting!
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