I’ve been using Safari since its introduction in 2003. \u00a0Upon the death of Internet Explorer for Mac, I switched to Safari exclusively. \u00a0When other web browsers have come out, I’ve given them all a go, but I’ve always returned to Safari. \u00a0Until now: Safari 5.1 has forced me to switch to Chrome as my browser of choice.<\/p>\n
Safari 5.1 now behaves more like Safari on iOS. \u00a0When Safari decides that you haven’t interacted with a page recently enough, it unloads that page to save memory. \u00a0This doesn’t match up with my usage of Safari in any way. \u00a0I often have several tabs open. \u00a0Those tabs represent a to-do list of sorts. \u00a0Some of the open are items that I simply want to read. \u00a0Others represent an action that I need to take: fill out a form, write a new blog post, write my weekly status report.<\/p>\n
Forced reloading breaks every single one of these to-dos. \u00a0In the best-case scenario, the webpage that I’m reading hasn’t changed between when I started reading it and when Safari forces a reload of its content, so I haven’t necessarily lost anything other than my place on the page. \u00a0Even so, I lose the context of what I was reading, and I also lose the time necessary for the page to reload. \u00a0Occasionally, I lose the content of the page, if I’m offline when I’m trying to read the page but a forced reload has occurred.<\/p>\n
In the cast of an action to take, the forced reload is even more irritating. \u00a0I lose my work: the partially-filled-out form, the incomplete blog post, the status report that I forgot to commit to the wiki. \u00a0At minimum, I lose the time that I invested in my half-finished work. \u00a0Recreating that work is always a losing proposition.<\/p>\n
I tried to live with Safari 5.1 for a few weeks. \u00a0Slowly, I found myself trying out other browsers again. \u00a0I tried Firefox again, but its inability to respect my system proxy settings1<\/a><\/sup> and its incorrect handling of keyboard shortcuts like option-arrow2<\/a><\/sup> have made me move to Chrome. \u00a0I’m not sure if I really like Chrome yet, but it doesn’t break my workflows, and I don’t have the constant concern of losing my to-dos.<\/p>\n If a future update to Safari changes this behavior, I might try it again. \u00a0But Safari has really broken my trust with 5.1, and I don’t think that I’ll come rushing back.<\/p>\n I’ve been using Safari since its introduction in 2003. \u00a0Upon the death of Internet Explorer for Mac, I switched to Safari exclusively. \u00a0When other web browsers have come out, I’ve given them all a go, but I’ve always returned to Safari. \u00a0Until now: Safari 5.1 has forced me to switch to Chrome as my browser … Continue reading giving up on Safari<\/span> \n