Published on February 07, 2010.

On my computer (MacbookPro), I have two browsers: one for web development and the other for the rest of my web activities. Firefox is definitely the best for my coding tasks, mainly because of its flexibility, its rank on the most used web browsers (please don't ask me why I don't want to use Internet Explorer) and numbers of insanely efficient extensions. Nevertheless, Firefox is, in my opinion, far to slow for my daily use. So the problem is: which browser for the rest? I wasn't sure which one to use, especially between Safari and Google Chrome. But I finally decided: Chrome. Here is why.

Software »

Chrome 5.0.307.5 dev
Safari 4.0.4 (6531.21.10)

Benchmarks and tests »

I ran a few tests as a matter of form.

Google benchmark
Safari: Score: 1575
Chrome: Score: 4123

Sunspider
Safari: 547.0ms +/- 10.7%
Chrome: 444.2ms +/- 7.6%

Acid 3
Safari: 100/100
Chrome: 100/100

Security check
Safari: 3 tests passed.
Chrome: 3 tests passed.

Conclusion: Chrome looks a bit faster than Safari.

Extensions »

There are two features I need to have in my browser.

1. Ad blocking, done with AdBlock on Firefox.
   Chrome: AdBlock
   Safari: AdBlock too but forces me to use Safari in 32bits mode. #fail

2. Display the download progress in the dock
   Safari: built-in
   Chrome: need a revision superior to 38304 (not even in dev channel yet) #fail

Bookmarks »

I use bookmarks.google.com to manage my bookmarks.

Safari: No way.
Chrome: No smart way. (strange)

#doublefail

RSS »

I rarely read news feeds in my browser, yet I need an RSS feature in my browser to easily add the given feed to Netvibes (for example).

Safari: Built-in is really nice.
Chrome: Needs an extension. One is provided by Google and it does the thing really well.

Extensions »

Potentially, extensions represents the chances the program may have to fulfil my eventual features wishes.

Safari: few
Chrome: dozen

Write extensions »

As I love to tweak the softwares I use, writing extensions for them must be easy.

Safari: ObjC, not really well documented. #fail
Chrome: JSON+Javascript. Well documented with videos.

Web development »

Both has the same Developper toolkit, but Chrome's default view source is smarter (color/lines/links).