John Gruber on Safari and favicons

John Gruber, on the reaction to a piece he wrote comparing Safari vs. Chrome on the Mac:

But really, taken as a whole, the response to my piece was about one thing and one thing only: the fact that Safari does not show favicons on tabs and Chrome does. There are a huge number of Daring Fireball readers who use Chrome because it shows favicons on tabs and would switch to Safari if it did.

The reaction was so overwhelming I almost couldn’t believe it.

And:

The gist of it is two-fold: (1) there are some people who strongly prefer to see favicons in tabs even when they don’t have a ton of tabs open, simply because they prefer identifying tabs graphically rather than by the text of the page title; and (2) for people who do have a ton of tabs open, favicons are the only way to identify tabs.

I use Safari for the most part, but I heartily agree. See for yourself. Here are two pictures, showing a bunch of tabs open, one in Safari, the other in Chrome. Which makes it easier to identify individual tabs?

Solid point, John.