I have been a Safari user for a while now. Safari’s built-in sharing on OS X and iOS and the ability to store tabs in iCloud means I could easily move between my phone and my latop. Aside from this, there isn’t much else that would make me choose another web browser. As long as I have the right addons for my browser then I’m happy with Safari.

Mozilla recently announced a new way of testing new features in Firefox without having to run the bleeding edge version of Firefox. Their Test Pilot program allows you to run new features in your stable version of Firefox. Not one to shy from trying something new, I decided to start using Firefox again and turn on all the experiments in the Test Pilot program.

So far the biggest impact has been the Tab Center. This moves the tabs from the top of the browser to the left. It’s running for a few days now and I’m still getting used to the column of icons in my browser down the left hand side. Naturally my reaction is to always move my mouse to the top of the screen but with the icons on the left it’s usually a case of “Doh! There they are!”.

So rather than using the mouse I’ve started using the shortcut keys for switching tabs. I do find it alot easier to switch tabs using the “cmd + number” shortcut for my pinned tabs and anything further down I end up just using “ctrl + tab” to open the right tab.

Also with Firefox now available on iOS, I can now share my tabs and bookmarks on my iPhone using Firefox Sync. It’s early days for this as well, as I’ve been using Safari for about three years on my iPhone.

I’ll give it a month and see if I’m still happy with the setup in June.