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Firefox 3 a little light in the loafers

June 17, 2008 by Dr. Macenstein
Filed under: Opinion, Software

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Faithful Macenstein reader JCM has noticed that the newly released Firefox 3 seems to render things a wee bit lighter than Safari. Take Apple’s homepage for example:

“Look at the color difference,” writes JCM. “It’s not as good looking on Firefox. It’s like comparing HD (Safari) to standard def (Firefox). It looks more 3D.”

Agreed. Sure, it isn’t like one is red and one is green, but it IS noticeable, and at the risk of being accused of running a pro-Apple website, I dare say Safari’s rendering looks better.

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Comments

15 Comments on Firefox 3 a little light in the loafers

lekid on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 4:51 pm

Come on guys!!
Who’s going to see a difference here??

Eru on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 5:00 pm

This is because Safari tries to “correct” the gamma levels of png’s if the colour space information isn’t stored in the png itself. This is the reason why apps like GammaSlamma exist

Johan on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 5:14 pm

You have to enable color management in Firefox 3 to see colors right. It’s disabled by default for performance reasons. Check this page for details:

“FireFox 3 - Color Management Done Right”
http://www.sanneblad.se/johan/?p=93

Firefox 3 is much better than Safari in rendering pages with objects where some have color profiles and some do not have it.

Robert on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 5:30 pm

It’s not that Safari “tries to correct” the gamma. Safari actually understands and properly renders the color profiles that graphics programs attach to their files. Other browsers do not. Therefore Safari renders images as the creator intended them. Other browsers render them usually with a color flattening. Go to the following url in Safari and some other browser, then hover over the images in Safari and the other browser. You’ll see the difference in the richness of color that you’re missing in other browsers: http://www.gballard.net/psd/go_live_page_profile/embeddedJPEGprofiles.html

f1sh3r on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 5:56 pm

safari has always looked better than firefox or whatever else. however i think ff3 has better looking text/fonts for whatever reason.

Xeno on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 5:56 pm

I agree. Nobody is going to notice that difference except anal retentive web devs like myself. And it’s still not going to make me switch to Safari… even as a die hard Mac user. Love my mac, hate their browser.

BigMan on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 6:17 pm

Yes, they are different. But frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!

Kensei on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 6:45 pm

Bah i have never really used safari at all since i bought my MBP. Sure previous releases have had some niggling issues but…..

Firefox 3 FTW! ;p

Zorin on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 7:41 pm

Turn on color management in the preferences.

http://mozillalinks.org/wp/2007/08/color-management-support-added-to-firefox-3/

Safari has always had color management…. Firefox just got it so things may look different until you enable it.

Xeno on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 8:20 pm

Yep that did the trick alright. Turned on color management and everything is more Safari-like. So for people who really HAVE to have it, Firefox proves once again that open source provides the flexibility that Apple can’t.

Now if only they could make an OS… heh. Though I seriously doubt it could be as cool as a Mac.

macjesus on Tue, 17th Jun 2008 11:11 pm

Oh my gosh! you read my mind, I’m trying to figure out this problem, I’m like 2 hours without solution because the colors on the web pages opened with Firefox doesn’t look well, Safari is perfection, Firefox is passion and IE makes me sick. Viva la Mac!

Lapo on Wed, 18th Jun 2008 3:37 am

Color management sucks! If you give R=0, V=0 and B=0 to a pixel, the color management will render anything but black.

This is because color management is done for printing purpose: printing a “standard” black will give you a very dark grey, not a true black. You have to force with more ink to achieve the true black. So if you just use the R=0, V=0 and B=0 “standard” black, the color management try to render the “very dark grey” you will see if you print it.

Color management sucks, because you NEVER do quality printing jobs from web pages. So you NEVER need color management while surfing.

If one could talk to Adobe, I will be very happy if I can find a way to TOTALLY zap the color manangement, while building web graphics.

Thank you.

dj on Wed, 18th Jun 2008 7:59 am

Checked it out. Seems there is a minute difference between the two. Is there some reason anyone should give a rodent’s rear end about this?

Xeno on Thu, 19th Jun 2008 2:03 pm

I have no idea why anyone would complain especially since it is easily fixable with a simple toggle in the about:config section. 5 seconds Later this minute difference is gone and I still have all the benefits of Firefox on my Mac.

Ronnie on Thu, 19th Jun 2008 8:42 pm

This is nothing new…. This thing was also present in Firefox 2.
It’s one of the reasons I try to place photos with reflections over white or black backgrounds only.

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