I stopped using Apple’s Safari web browser months and months and months and months ago, making the switch to Mozilla’s FireFox, which was a great for a while. The themes and extensions for FireFox made it undoubtedly more valuable than Safari, which besides basic browsing, has little added-value besides an integrated RSS reader.

But then I started noticing how much FireFox was slowing down my system. Sure, the slowdown was probably due to the extensions and themes I was using, but since they were my main draw to FireFox in the first place, getting rid of them made me question why I was sticking with the Fox.

So about a month or so ago, I made the switch over to Mozilla’s Mac-only, lean and mean browser, Camino. I had some issues with it at first, but I used the “Submit Feedback” button to do just that, and within an hour or so, someone got back to me with a fix for some of my issues and with acknowledgements of the others (with a promise that they were currently working on them for future versions). The quick response made me want to keep using Camino despite the issues, because I think dedication should be rewarded.

But that was a month ago. And dedication can only be rewarded so far. It turns out that my frustrations with Camino have grown too great for me to continue using this version of it. The biggest pain in the ass is that, at least a dozen times a day, a page simply does not load. I’ll click on a link, the status bar will tell me that the browser is doing its thing, then, a moment or so later, the status bar will tell me that the page is loaded and rendered on my screen. Unfortunately, it will be wrong. Instead of looking at a new page, I’ll be looking at the page I was trying to leave, except now, nothing on the page works. I’ll have to click the back button to get the page I was on — and can still see — to “come back to life.”

This happens all the time. And today, I’ve decided that I’ve had enough.

So it’s back to the beginning for me. I left Safari for FireFox’s extensions. I left FireFox because its extensions were slowing me down. I chose Camino because it was lean and mean. But apparently, it’s too lean for me. And that’s how I find myself telling my Mac mini that Safari is, once again, my default browser.

C’mon people! Why can’t anyone design a kick-ass browser that can keep my loyalty for more than six months? ‘Cause I really don’t want to use Safari. I know the other options, Flock and OmniWeb, but Flock still isn’t ready for prime-time (it’s on version 0.5.13.2) and OmniWeb costs $30. Last I checked, OmniWeb wasn’t worth it. It didn’t improve enough on the basic browsing experience to justify paying for it. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll take another look at OmniWeb, but I gotta tell ya, it better be damn good if they expect me to shell out some cash.

If you’re on a Mac, could you let me know what browser you are using, what other ones you’ve tried, and why you finally ended up where you did? I gotta imagine there are people out there who would appreciate it.