Should
you use Safari? Well, if you’re on Windows or Linux, I’d say no. The
GUI doesn’t blend at all into either operating system. So for those,
stick to Firefox or my personal favorite, Opera. However if you’re
using OS X, that’s another story.

Safari,
at the beginning, was sub-par at best. When it was originally released
it was mildly fast and had very basic functions. Internet Explorer was
most likely better than Safari at that time. But over time, as all
things do, it got better… a lot better. In fact, version 3.0 was enough
to get me to switch from my beloved Opera to it in OS X. And let me
tell you, that isn’t an easy thing to achieve.

The
biggest thing in Safari 3 is its speed. Apple wasn’t lying entirely
about how fast it was. I do believe that their data was a tad bit off
as from my tests Opera was only slightly slower than Safari (I’m
talking just mere milliseconds) compared to Firefox which was a lot
slower (generally a half a second to a second slower at loading the
same content). But nonetheless Safari is the faster of the three, so
that is a major accomplishment on Apple’s part.

Aside from that, however, Safari seems to be just another browser without anything unique to it.

[Enter Safari’s unique plugins.]

Plugins
for web browsers aren’t a new concept. They’ve been around since all
the way back to 1997 when Microsoft pioneered their latest version of
Internet Explorer (version 4 if I recall correctly) at the time with
the ability to be extended with third party plugins. The plugin system
was adapted by the Mozilla team as well. However there is a major flaw
in that system: it requires no users password to install the plugins.
What does that mean? Well, you could have plugins installed without you
knowing it that are malicious. Knowing this, Apple decided to not go
that route for plugins. Instead Apple went with the route that’s at the
core of OS X: the system library.

In
the library you can find such magnificent folders like Application
Support and the like. In these folders there are more folders which
store various files that can be used to extend the functionality of
virtually any application in OS X. But what do they share in common?
The need for a user password. With this method Apple was able to let
Safari be extended through third party means without risk of security
holes (and it shocks me that PayPal thinks Safari is less secure than
Firefox, ha!).

So
using this method, and a helpful site called pimpmysafari.com, you can
find a plethora of extensions to give Safari more usability. But these
aren’t entirely like Firefox extensions. Firefox extensions try and
replicate functions of other applications (such as filezilla for FTP).
A web browser should never be entrusted to do these, and when you try
and use it for those, the browser takes up a lot more RAM to function.
Therefore the extensions you find for Safari are particularly geared at
web browsing enhancements.

Extensions
like PicLens, Inquisitor, SafarTabs, etc. These plugins give Safari so
much functionality and compromise on zero of the RAM usage. That’s
right, you can have a ton of extensions for Safari and it’ll use no
more RAM than as if it had none.

So
my verdict is if you’re using OS X, use Safari (unless you like another
browser such as Flock for social web browsing). It’s fast, has safe and
fantastic plugins, and it’s made by Apple, so you know it has a
simple-to-use interface.