After more time with Mozilla's Firefox on the Mac, I am less enthusiastic. I like the overall UI, but the product has not been properly tested on the Mac platform. There are little things it doesn't do that it's supposed to do. For example, I'm big on putting bookmarks in the form of Web icons on the desktop. Firefox doesn't preserve the titlebar text on Web site desktop icons. It can also take interminably long to load. There are other user-experience breaks too. Firefox 2 for the Mac lacks polish.

Camino, the Mozilla browser built specifically for the Mac, has all the fit and finish that Firefox lacks, but it doesn't support extensions, isn't updated fast enough for my taste, and doesn't even offer the search box appended above the status bar -- one of Firefox's great little features. Camino is based on an older version of the Firefox Gecko browser engine, but its maker is marching to a different drummer than I want to march to. If Camino was basically Firefox properly refined for the Mac, it would own the Mac browser space. What a shame.

About Opera, well, I still don't like Opera. So what else is new? I love the features and the speed, but the user interface is quirky and annoying. Whenever I try to use it (on whatever platform), I find the experience a chore. In my book, a browser has to be fun to use; Opera isn't.

Finally, the browser I like the best overall is OmniWeb from The Omni Group. But because of one specific feature, I just can't use it. Its makers will have to adopt a Firefox 2-like tabbed-browsing system before they get me. OmniWeb's tabbed browsing uses thumbnails of the Web sites running down the side of the browser window. That would be nice as an option, but as the only tab UI, it uses too much space. The option to convert the thumbnails to text actually requires a bit more space, not less.

I was supposed to meet with Omni Group at Macworld, but I wound up having to miss the show for business reasons. I didn't get to give them my feedback as a result. I hope this will suffice.