Love it or hate it, Safari is your first port of call for all things internet during that magical moment when you boot up your Mac for the very first time. Luckily, as far as browsers go, it’s not a bad one either. Having your web browser made by Apple has its benefits; it’s fast, beautifully-designed, and integrated with your Mac in a way no other browser ever will be. That said, it’s nice to know about the competition – whether it’s for a quick flirt with Chome, a full-blown affair with Firefox or even to ditch your Apple factory browser altogether for Opera. Whatever reason you have for switching browsers, here’s our guide to shopping around and finding the best browser with the feature-set that works for you.

Google Chrome (Free, google.com/chrome)

When Google first released their much-anticipated web browser for Windows, Mac users waited with baited breath…and waited…and waited…and eventually passed out as they hadn’t exhaled for a good few months. But now Chrome has been successfully ported to OS X for some time now, was it worth the wait? The answer is a resounding “HELL YEAH!”. With an aesthetic quality to rival anything that Jony Ive has ever dreamt up, speeds which could quite easily blow not only your socks but your trousers, shirt and coat off, and bunch of features that a few browsers are still playing catch-up with, Chrome is without a doubt, Safari’s biggest competitor. The only real setbacks here is that it doesn’t play half as nice as Safari does with RSS feeds (so if you’re not using an app or web-based feed reader, you might want to step away now) and that updates can take some time (did anyone else feel like Lion functionality took forever to be pushed out?).

Firefox (Free, mozilla.org)

Firefox has been around for so long now that it’s almost plausible that it was originally built before the internet itself, but don’t let the fact that it might have been built by dinosaurs put you off. This browser is the open-source community’s flagship offering, meaning it’s updated by a whole load of passionate people on a day-by-day basis. In other words, it’s got a heritage but that doesn’t mean it won’t beat any of the others. Firefox’s open-source infrastructure means that improvements and updates are made by the people, for the people and most features like the built-in password manager and the plethora of available add-ons (mini apps that add extra functionality to the browser) are extremely useful. The downside? Well, there’s no easy way of saying this, but Firefox is a bit of a RAM-hog. If processor-intensive browsing is your bag then great, otherwise, you’ll have to keep a close eye on it when you’re running a load of apps and your Mac starts to get sluggish.

Opera (Free, opera.com)

Much like Firefox, Opera seems to have been around for Donkey’s years, but don’t let that put you off. Opera has more features built in to its browser than any other in this round-up, and whilst not every single one may be useful, there are some absolute gems here such as native BitTorrent support (downloading via Torrents just got a lot easier) and a ‘Turbo’ mode, which optimises web pages for times when your bandwidth is limited (think an entire airport departure lounge crowding around one poor, struggling WiFi hotspot). There’s all your Lion support built in, and they’ve even borrowed a feature or two from Safari (see exhibit A, above). Opera isn’t exactly well-known, nor widely used, but it’s certainly the dark horse in this browser battle.

Camino (Free, caminobrowser.org)

With Camino’s original name of bringing all the functionality of Firefox into the native environment of OS X now somewhat redundant (Firefox has come on leaps and bounds as far as Mac support goes since its early days), the whole project seems to have been  put on the back burner of late. That said, there’s still a few good reasons why you’d have Camino as your browser of choice. For starters, passwords are saved into the OS X Keychain as opposed to any proprietary system touted by Chrome, Firefox or Safari and because the whole thing runs on Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine, you know pages are going to load fast, accurately and with the stability you’d expect from Firefox, all with a slightly more Apple-like interface.

Stainless (Free, stainlessapp.com)

As we’ve already mentioned, Mac users had a long and excruciating wait for an OS X-friendly version of Chrome, so long in fact, that a few clever chaps decided to release Stainless – a Mac-only browser that bought Chrome’s multi-processing architecture (that’s the stuff that makes pages fly) to your Machine. Much like Camino, the fact that Chrome is now fully supportive of OS X has made the whole project a little redundant, but there are still a fair few features like the natty little bookmarks sidebar, that make it a great alternative if you’re getting sick of Safari.

So there you have it, five great alternative browsers to Apple’s own, stellar offering. We’re using a mixture of Safari and Firefox here in the office, with Chrome coming a close third where needed, but which is your favourite? Have we missed an absolute gem? Let us know in the comments, via Twitter or on our Facebook Wall. Automatic bans awarded to anyone who mentions Internet Explorer.

If you’ve jut got a new iPhone, and iCreate’s tutorials aren’t quite quenching your thirst for knowledge, you can now learn how to use you new device on the move thanks to the iPhone for Beginners eBook from Imagine Publishing. Available on Kindle (there’s an iOS Kindle app for this too!), this book will walk you through setting up your device and learning its core functionality. It will also walk you through all the best apps to download from each category of the App Store, as well as an extensive section dedicated to answering all your iPhone questions.

Editor in Chief Aaron Asadi commented: “iPhone for Beginners was a great bookazine, and it has now made a fantastic eBook. This will allow people to learn about their iPhone on the move, and to follow the tutorials at any time, anywhere. The guides will help people extend the functionality of their phone no end, and the extensive app section will provide great material to browse through when you’ve got some time to kill.”

Designed and written by experts as an accessible, friendly guide to world-beating software and devices, the For Beginners series will help give you the confidence to learn everything you need to know. Clear, easy-to-understand and comprehensive, For Beginners’ first class tutorials, features and reviews are created with you in mind, ready to give you the tools you need to get the most out of your new passion.

The iPhone for Beginners eBook is available for Kindle from http://amzn.to/qmtlGO priced £5.81.

Like all modern browsers, Apple’s Safari allows for the development of third-party software in order to extend its abilities. Among these so- called plug-ins, ClickToFlash is an interesting addition that relates to both the browsing experience and the blocking of adverts. Indeed, with the release of Safari and the official support for third-party extensions, surfing the web with this excellent browser has reached a new level. Although the modern media that is the web is cool, it has also brought about the nasty trend of websites becoming cluttered with adverts and irrelevant content. One of the main vectors for this nonsense is the ubiquitous Adobe Flash component. For the regular web surfer, it can become vital to regain control over the irritating and omnipresent features of many websites. Enter ClickToFlash, a Safari extension that improves productivity and browser stability, reduces processor temperature, and extends laptop battery life.

1: Locate the extension
In the Safari menu, select Safari Extensions Gallery. From Apple’s selection of plug-ins, scroll down to the Productivity section to find ClickToFlash.

2: Download ClickToFlash
In the ClickToFlash section, click ‘Install Now’. Once completed, a green tick box with ‘Installed’ will appear at the bottom of the ClickToFlash section.

3: Enable-Disable ClickToFlash
Select the Safari menu and choose ‘Preferences’. Click the Extensions tab, find ClickToFlash, tick/un- tick the Enable ClickToFlash checkbox.

4: How does it work?
Once ClickToFlash is activated, no Flash advert or content is displayed. It’s replaced by a grey area in the webpage on which the Flash word is embossed.

5: Un-block Flash content
To unblock Flash content, click anywhere in the grey backdrop replacing the ad or video. The webpage element will load, allowing you to watch it.

6: Get HD video
From Preferences choose to enable HD-quality videos. Tick ‘Look for video replacements to Flash’ in ‘Video Setting’ to load only these HD videos.

7: Create Whitelists
From the Whitelist section of Preferences, add entries to a list of sources and locations from which you wish to allow/ disallow Flash content to play.

8: Use the contextual menu.
In Preferences, the Contextual Menu Items section presents you with the ability to access short cuts to the extensions via a right-click on the Flash content.

9: Get Auto-updates
Keep extensions up-to-date by selecting ‘Updates’ in the Safari Preferences Extensions pane. Tick the Install Updates Automatically checkbox.

If you’re anything like us, your go-to website for daily information or entertainment updates probably changes week to week – whether it’s your preferred news site, a social network or maybe a reliable sports results page. And yet we rarely change our default home screen to reflect these fads. The upshot is that we load Safari, wait for the home page to load and then immediately navigate elsewhere. However, with the help of one simple operation you could preserve a lot of time. Not only will this save you from having to navigate away, but also if your bookmarks are synced across MobileMe, any other Macs you own will be updated to reflect the changes. This time-saving operation is simple and easy to action. In fact, whenever a new website takes your fancy you can quickly make it your home page so it’s right there when you launch Safari.

1: Preferential Treatment
Load Safari and click on the Safari menu at the top of the page. Once the menu springs to life, navigate to Preferences and then click on it to bring up the Preference pane.

2: Type it or click it
You can now enter the address of your new preferred home page, or if you are already on that page, simply click the ‘Set to Current’ page button and you’re done.

Since Apple started allowing other developers so submit alternative browsers to the iOS App Store there have been a few major competitors trying to take the crown. Opera was the first direct competitor for Safari, with SkyFire later offering Flash support (by converting it to HTML5). Now there is Portal, the new kid on the block, and if you feel like you need more screen space it may be just the app for you.

With a simple shake of your phone you can show or hide the dot, giving
you a full screen browsing experience

Portal is a full-screen browser which uses a small spot on the bottom of the screen as it’s entire control input. You can shake to show or hide the spot if you want the full viewing space, and by holding down a finger on the dot, a menu spirals out offering you options for Tabs, Navigation or Actions. moving your finger to another of these offers you even more options. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s a simple enough system with a smooth, stylish design. When you’re loading a page, the loading bar is moved from the top of the screen to an orange line that slowly makes its way around the dot; it looks great.

The button at the bottom of the screen acts as both a control panel and a
loading bar

A new feature, called Research Mode, allows you to search a page for certain text and jump to it instantly. “But that’s just like the Find function!” I hear you cry. Portal has taken the idea and run with it, offering you the ability to create Reseach Topics, and add key phrases to each one. The example they give is buying a new TV; you create a topic called TV, then create key phrases of “HDMI”, “3D” and “1080″, giving each key phrase a different colour. When you launch the search, Research mode will find each word on the page and colour code them, so you can easily see which TVs have all the options that you want. It’s not something you would necessarily use every day, but it’s a nice addition. It works well, and it’s easy to create topics and phrases, but they will tag everything on a page until you turn them off, which can be a little annoying.

The search has 3 pages of choices, and once the page is loaded the two sides
of the socket come together in a pleasing animation

While the app costs £1.19/$1.99 to download, it works really well and it a great addition to your iOS device. If you want a little more space on your iPhone screen while browsing it will be perfect for you. When you’re used to the interface you’ll wow your friends with it’s beautiful design, and it’s quick enough that you won’t be waiting any longer than you do with Safari. An excellent browsing alternative.

So, as you may have seen from my Tweets and will doubtless hear on the podcast this month, I bought myself a new 27-inch Core i5 iMac which arrived yesterday. As the day went on and my excitement grew, I began building a list of the apps I was planning to install first and, as I promised the Twitter faithful, I am now publishing them here.

This is by no means a definitive list of apps to install on a new Mac (some aren’t in fact apps at all), just those that I felt were essential enough to be picked first and some that just suited my new 16:9 screen.

If you’re interested, beyond these utilities I also installed Aperture 3, Logic Studio, iWork, Civilization, Microsoft Office and Reason as well as transfered an obscenely large iTunes library of movies and TV Shows (that I’ll now need to buy again in HD) and music.

In no particular order (other than maybe AppleJack) here they are, the first 10 apps on my new iMac:

AppleJack A product you hope you’ll never need but could be a lifesaver. AppleJack is a text-based trouble shooting tool that can be invoked any time your Mac wont launch into its GUI (Graphical User Interface). The best part about AppleJack is that you don’t even need a system disc to boot from in order to repair permissions and cache files which could be causing your boot problems. An essential tool to install and forget until you need it. http://applejack.sourceforge.net/

Adium This all-in-one chat tool brings the instant messaging tools you use most often into one app. The interface is customisable in numerous ways and you can group your contacts by friends, family, co-workers etc. Supports all the favourites including; iChat, AIM, MSN and Yahoo. http://adium.im/

Tweetdeck I’m normally a fan of Atebits’ Tweetie as a Twitter client but, with so much screen real estate at my disposal, I decided to give this wide Adobe Air app a try. I’m excited to see Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace integration is included and the organisation of direct messages, tweets and replies into different columns makes the whole Twitter process a great deal easier. www.tweetdeck.com/

Skype You know what it does, it’s clean simple and easy. Perfect for saving money on international calls and even better for video and audio podcasts when you can’t be in the same place as your co-hosts or guests. www.skype.com

VLC A free and very obliging media player that will play just about any media file you throw at it. It’s open source which means it’s updated regularly. I had a quick blast of The Hangover in HD using VLC and it worked flawlessly. www.videolan.org/vlc/

Perian If you can’t handle using a video player outside of Apple’s default QuickTime, you should investigate Perian. I downloaded this in seconds and within a couple of clicks I was playing an AVI inside the beautiful new QuickTime X interface. Mac purists rejoice. http://perian.org/

Cooliris With such a massive screen, browsing Google Images just got a whole lot more entertaining. Cooliris is a plugin for Safari and Firefox that displays your searches as a wall of images that you can scroll through smoothly until you find what you’re looking for. It’s a bit flashy but then who cares if it looks great, huh? http://www.cooliris.com/

Flip4Mac Back to the video department, this is another set and forget tool that simply allows QuickTime (and Quick Look) to play those annoying WMV (Windows Media Video) files that you see from time to time. www.flip4mac.com

Fusion 3 Following Flip4Mac, there’s a slightly more expensive alternative for using Windows file formats and that’s by running Windows itself. With a copy of Windows (XP upward) and Fusion 3 you can run Mac OS X and Windows side by side, even seamlessly using Windows apps and native Mac software alongside one another. It was a little unnerving seeing Windows 7 up so large but it can be handy to dip into Microsoft’s OS now and again, if only to realise that the grass is definitely not greener. www.vmware.com

UnRarX If you download a folder of files with the .RAR extension you can use this tool to piece them back into the original file. Rar files are favourites for torrent users (keep it legal guys) who split large files into smaller pieces for easier sharing. These files are sometimes password protected which UnRarX also caters for. www.unrarx.com

As I said, this is by no means a definitive list and I welcome you to add your favourites in the comments section below or via Twitter to me (@benharvell) or the magazine (@icreatemagazine)

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After a quiet period since January’s Expo, Apple has once again ignited the web with news of a new beta release. Safari 4 for Mac and PC introduces new features including Cover Flow and a Top Sites screen and is said to be Apple’s fastest browser yet. The reason behind the improved speed is down to Safari’s Nitro Engine rendering pages faster than Firefox, IE and Chrome, according to Apple.

Top Sites
Top Sites provides a handy way to check out your favourite spots online by showing a preview of the sites you visit most often in a slick grid that changes over time. When a site in the grid is updated as star is displayed in the upper right hand corner of the screen to notify you. The Top Sites page can hold up to 24 thumbnails at a time that can be displayed small, medium or large as well dragged and dropped and locked to position. When loaded for the first time, the beta took a little while to scan and add thumbnails on an iMac G5 running Leopard, but once loaded worked beautifully.

Bookmarks and History
Searching bookmarks and your browsing history is made more attractive with the implementation of Cover Flow which, like Top Sites, takes a little while to update itself but, once it has, makes skimming across pages a pleasure and far faster through its visual cues rather than scrolling through a list of links.

Tabs
Tabs have seen a shift in both performance and position, now moved to the top of the Safari window, they allow more room on the currently open page and can be dragged around as before to reposition them or create whole new windows.

Overall the beta adds some attractive new features to Safari and does appear to load pages faster than before. Searching and autocompletion also feel snappier and the new position for browser tabs will be very useful once you get used to it. Versions are available for download for Leopard and Tiger users from www.apple.com/safari/download

Full coverage of the Safari 4 Beta will be available in issue 67 of iCreate magazine on sale April 4th at www.imagineshop.com

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Developer: Dan Park 
Category: Utilities 
Price: £0.59

Apple has finally started allowing web browsers onto the App Store and one of the first out of the blocks was Incognito. This is the most basic of browsers but does allow users to leave no trace of where they have been browsing, as soon as you leave the session the history is erased. We can’t imagine what kind of sites someone would visit without wanting to be seen doing so, but we’re guessing that a lot of people can and that the developer stands to make a vast amount of money. As a browser, Incognito is extremely simple offering no perks or frills and for just 59p we can see why. The most interesting thing about this app is that it managed to get on to the App Store. Hopefully as a result we’ll see some more inventive browsers in the future.

Longevity: 7.2

Fun Factor: 6.0

Practicality: 7.2

Value For Money: 7.8

Kung Fu Verdict: 7.1

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