Comments on: The most annoying thing about Apple’s Safari web browser

By: Dazza

Dazza — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 23:43:53 +0000

Yep, the bookmarks menu thing annoys me too. I thought I was having mouse control issues at first, glad to see it’s not just me!

Also, I’m sure there’s a similar oddity when trying to close tabs sometimes. It’s as if the little close button becomes unresponsive unless you click onto something else first.

By: Doug Jackson

Doug Jackson — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:30:00 +0000

I’d just like to add my vote to the “this is maddening as hell” column. Other than this menu behavior and the lack of site-specific pop-up blocking, Safari is a pleasure to use, and has lots of nice touches. What makes this so frustrating is that it would be so easy to fix.

By: TurningWorm

TurningWorm — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:45:01 +0000

This has been my biggest gripe with Safari for years. Everyone for whom it doesn’t matter thinks it’s a silly point, but it drives me nuts. Mostly because every other menu in the OS works the exact opposite way. Why wouldn’t the book mark menu behave the way the main apple menu does?

Never mind that every other browser in the universe works the right way, Apple’s own OS menus and app menus work the right way as well. Safari is the ONLY program apple makes with this bizarre menu behavior. Apple seems insistent that the bookmark bar items act like buttons instead of menus, but that just doesn’t make sense. I know for a fact they have been getting this feedback since Safari 3, so if they had any intention to change it, they would have done it by now. Save yourself some grief and use Chrome. Chrome had this same problem for a while, but it’s has been fixed since version 3.

By: Richard

Richard — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:06:59 +0000

I love the new Read button, and did you ever try to read/modify bookmarks or history in other browsers (like Chrome to take an exemple)?

By: Tina

Tina — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:37:48 +0000

My Macbook is a couple of years old and running low on HD space, so that may be the problem, but Safari has been so incredibly slow to start up and run I won’t even use it. Safari 5 is no better.

I think it has to do with the “Top Sites” feature, which I can’t seem to figure out how to turn off. I don’t use it and certainly don’t want my browser to keep a rendered version of every page in its memory like that.

Am I missing something? Can I keep Safari from doing this? Does anyone else think Safari is painfully slow?

By: James

James — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 01:27:35 +0000

I’ll be the first to admit that my complaint is relatively minor, and there are ways around it (as you pointed out). But it’s just one of those little things that I just can’t bring myself to overlook. It just bugs me to no end.

The memory problem you mentioned occurs in virtually every browser I’ve ever used – though the amount of time it’s open to slow down varies. And as you stated, it’s most likely due to Flash. At least, that’s when I notice it the most.

By: Robert Elliott

Robert Elliott — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:32:46 +0000

James, Safari is still my favorite browser. I still like how we can add any image to iPhoto library and get instant definitions of words while browsing and being able to copy/paste items in the Activity window into the downloads window for downloading. My biggest beef with Safari (and this is probably to actually be blamed on Flash) is the amount of memory it takes up over time.

The annoyance you are talking about does not bother me but, for you the only thing I can think of is to press the esc key and it will deselect the current folder. Not a real solution but, the only thing I can think of.

By: Stinkbucket

Stinkbucket — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:14:52 +0000

I don’t get it. When I open my bookmarks and hover over a folder…a 2nd menu pops open to the left. When I move away the menu goes away. It won’t pick a bookmark until I click it. If I click it …it opens the page. what’s wrong with that?

All my browsers work the same way.
(Chrome, Safari, Firefox on Snow Leopard.)

By: James

James — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:54:13 +0000

“Un-Apple like” is a good way to put it. But then again, I’m not a huge fan of Apple’s software beyond the OS itself. I always feel like they stopped half-way through and left out a ton of obvious and useful features. iPhoto, iChat, Mai, Font Book, and Safari come to mind here. Then there’s the utter disaster they turned iMovie into. Ugh.

By: john v

john v — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:38:04 +0000

I agree with this BIG TIME. I still shake my head. The few times I switch to firefox for compatibility reasons, I just smile at the proper functionality. What cracks me up is the fact that there has to be employees at Apple who also hate the way it is, but can’t do anything about it. This is common sense interface design here. It should not work the way it does. It makes no logical sense to require the extra clicks to do something so simple. Dare I say it, it’s very un-apple like.