29 replies to this topic

[Langley]

Do you prefer anything other than the latest version of IE? Are you ever in a situation at home, work, or school when it is inconvienient for you to use something other than IE? I'm setting up Cascadeing Style Sheets on my site, and I'm afraid to do certain things if there's anyone out there that's a hardcore Netscape user. If you use an alternate or uncommon browser, does it support pretty much everything IE supports? Or do you have problems viewing certain pages?

[cxwq]

 #:   #reqs: #pages: browser
--: -------: ------: -------
 1: 6769816: 238255: MSIE
  : 6223915: 216243:   MSIE/6
  :  539815:  21684:   MSIE/5
  :    5884:    284:   MSIE/4
  :      27:     27:   MSIE/7
  :     151:     13:   MSIE/3
 2:  520867:  37717: Mozilla
  :  267193:  20206:   Mozilla/1
  :     861:     70:   Mozilla/0
 3:   31581:   2134: Netscape (compatible)
 4:   47203:   1689: Opera
  :   45330:   1592:   Opera/7
  :    1565:     87:   Opera/6
  :     308:     10:   Opera/5
 5:   18352:   1098: Netscape
  :   12425:    625:   Netscape/4
  :    5908:    459:   Netscape/6
  :       8:      8:   Netscape/8
  :       9:      4:   Netscape/3

Test against the last two major versions of IE and the last stable version of Firefox. The vast majority of users are on IE6, IE5 or Mozilla1.

[Ice Nine]

Short and simple: Safari.

Tabbed browsing, baby.

[CustomSnake202]

Short and simple: Safari.

Right on Ice, I love surfing the web without any pop ups and having a google search in the top right corner at all times. Eat it Bill Gates... and those other guys.

Edited by CustomSnake202, 14 April 2004 - 08:50 PM.

[cxwq]

Short and simple: Safari.

Right on Ice, I love surfing the web without any pop ups and having a google search in the top right corner at all times. Eat it Bill Gates... and those other guys.

You do know the Google toolbar provides both of these features for IE, right?

Mozilla has both of them built in and supports tabbed browsing as well.

Safari: What you use if you are stuck on a Mac.

[SkiMan]

FireFox .8

Tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, & mouse gestures, baby.

Safari: What you use if you are stuck on a Mac.

Exactly I love you man.
In a strictly heterosexual, mutal internet browsing way, of course.

Edited by SkiMan, 14 April 2004 - 09:21 PM.

[CustomSnake202]

You do know the Google toolbar provides both of these features for IE, right?

Mozilla has both of them built in and supports tabbed browsing as well.

Safari: What you use if you are stuck on a Mac.

Uhhh...yeah, of course I know. Well I don't care: some people like Mac and others like Windows and what not. I just prefer the look of Panther on my iBook and the User Friendliness.

[Zero Talent]

Well, looks like I missed the Safari bash by 4 posts.

Firefox is cross-platform too. Bitch.

Edited by Zero Talent, 14 April 2004 - 09:32 PM.

[ompa]

Google toolbar eh? Gotta try that... God how can anyone use Netscape?! I just hate it! No particular reason why, besides the fact when I go to some pages it tells me to go download the older version of netscape for the page to work because the newer netscape sucks... IE all the way, or Mozilla. I'm just too lazy to download it.

~ompa

[SkiMan]

ompa - Click Me!

[ompa]

lol for a second I thought it was going to be some porn link... God you scared me, then I looked at what it linked to. Mozilla eh? Maybe I'll try it .

~ompa

[cxwq]

Just so everyone (mostly ompa) is aware...

Firefox began as a project (Firebird) to seperate the browser out from the rest of Mozilla. Lots of people wanted a browser without chat, email, news, and other bloatware. After that point, Firefox entered into a completely seperate development tree. So, Firefox was more or less a subset of Mozilla, but has now become an entity with a divergent evolutionary path.

Netscape is basically a branded version of the last major release of Mozilla. Netscape 7.1 is based on Mozilla 1.4 which was recent at the time 7.1 was released. Of course we're on Mozilla 1.6 at the moment so it's obvious why this isn't going to work out too well for Netscape.

So, in short, every browser with a major market share is either IE or is based on Mozilla. Personally, Firefox is my favorite. Its got all the strong points of Moz but has a leaner, faster exe that's very appealing. In addition, the development cycle is hyper-speed so there are improvements to download every few months.

I also use IE quite a bit because it's the only browser that fully supports the (MS-centric, natch) extensions for the Exchange webmail component which I have to use at work - and actually like quite a bit.

[Gamefreak]

I personally use IE, but a friend of mine uses Avant which is very good.

Edited by Gamefreak, 15 April 2004 - 12:27 AM.

[SkiMan]

Yeah, the whole Netscape/Mozilla thing gets can get pretty comfusing.

What it boils down to is:

Netscape
v ^
Mozilla -- Phoenix -> Firebird -> Firefox (win/linux/mac/other browser)
| \
| Camino (mac browser)
|
Thunderbird (mail)

They had to change the name from Phoenix for copyright issues or something, then they decided to switch again since Firebird was used by another open source project, so now the standalone browser from the Mozilla code is Firefox.

Edited by SkiMan, 15 April 2004 - 01:33 AM.

[Alexthebeast]

I like Mozilla Firefox and SlimJimba

[Ice Nine]

Okay, I didn't say anything like, "b1Ll gATES si teh suxx0r!" I just said I used Safari. And tabbed browsing rocks, because it does. That was in no way a point that Apple is completly superior. I know that other browsers do it.

Just curious, can you turn off pop-ups with IE, Netscape, Mozilla, etc? That's one of my favorite things about Safari, but I don't know if you can do it on other browsers.

I also use IE, as my G3 iBook came with it. It can do some stuff that Safari can't, but it's a little slower. Like right now. My dad blocked me from using Safari until my project is done, and so I'm using IE.

[Death]

Links
Best. Web browser. Ever.

Oh, and yes, Mozilla does allow for the turning off of pop-ups and for tabbed browsing.

[Spectre2689]

I use Mozilla. I may get around to trying Firefox later, I may not. Until then, It's Mozilla all the way. No downloading 3 different applications to make IE work worth a shit.

[leftnut]

I personally use IE, but a friend of mine uses Avant which is very good.

Well I am glad some one said it. I use Avant Browser, no popups and minimizes the use of the toolbar.

[cxwq]

I just posted on Avant's forum regarding a bug I've been having with you guys who use it. At first I thought it was indicative of spyware or malware in the browser but now I'm not entirely sure.

Whenever your Avant browser requests any page, there's also a request for a file that doesn't exist on my server, and the referrer site shows up in the logs as http://www.avantbrowser.com/

Needless to say it's rather troubling when a particular browser keeps looking (600+ times a month) for a file on my server that doesn't exist. Since this request is an apparent bounce from their website, it looks an awful lot like a privacy issue as well.

Their support people claim it's just a harmless bug and say they've probably tracked it down. Time will tell I guess.

By the way, can someone explain to me why tabbed browsing is so great? I always thought Windoze kind of had that feature built in - I hit cntrl-n and a new window pops up. I can preload a web site in that window while reading a different window. There's even a spiffy (alt-tab) hotkey to change windows. I love Firefox, but the pro-tab propaganda on their site is more than a little silly:

Browsing with Tabs makes browsing the internet faster and more efficient. You can concentrate on reading each page without the confusion of having to switch between windows. As you're reading each page, links you have opened in background Tabs load, so when you're ready to read themthey've already loaded and you don't need to wait.

I guess it's browsing optimized for people on dialup or something but the whole 'confusing windows' thing is a joke. I think it would be more confusing for most people to learn a whole new interface for windowing rather than the one built into their OS.

Anyway, insight appreciated.

[Zero Talent]

I just find it's a useful method of organization. My only problem with multiple windows is the tendency to cascade and block my desktop area, which usually has other somewhat important visual content, such as pdf's, file browsers, other windows... I also like to segregate my browser content from my other programs, with a handy way of closing down selected content... ALT-F4 is all fine until you have about 24 pages loaded for reading, then accidentally kill your music program, or some evil Adobe program as you're shuffling. WinXP has that whole "group like programs," thing, but that does nothing in the face of ALT-Tab shuffling.

But nah, it's not that big of a deal unless you're assailed by pop-ups.

[SkiMan]

I really like the tabbed browsing in Firefox mainly because I also use the Mouse Gestures extention. Instead of hitting alt tab and alt shift tab, I can hold down the right mouse button, and scroll the mousewheel to flip through the open tabs. Along with the roll right-click to left-click for 'Back' and roll left-click to right-click for 'Forward', it makes for some very speedy browsing.

[Black Wrath]

I really like the tabbed browsing in Firefox mainly because I also use the Mouse Gestures extention. Instead of hitting alt tab and alt shift tab, I can hold down the right mouse button, and scroll the mousewheel to flip through the open tabs. Along with the roll right-click to left-click for 'Back' and roll left-click to right-click for 'Forward', it makes for some very speedy browsing.

My mouse has a button for each of those operations your described. I even have a refresh button on my mouse... and I can set the buttons for different functions.

It's quite the mouse.

I use IE 6 because I can't use anything else without my mom thinking it will destroy the computer.

[Death]

Bah, you people and your fancy schmancy needs. I don't need Tabbed Browsing. I don't need New Windows. Heck, I don't even need graphics. Once again, I point you ALL in the direction of Links-- which, mind you, is Windows compatible under Cygwin. Nice tiny memory footprint, and all the power I need in a browser.

For a very long while, my primary (as in, most used, not as in best) computer was Max, my crappy Pentium 120 laptop that I brought back and forth to school. I do not have X installed at all on Max. I used Links for web browsing, and I used NTAIM for Instant Messaging. Emacs for writin' and codin' (vi sucks balls!). GCC for compilin'. GNU Go and GNU Chess for entertainin'. And of course, bash for file browsin', program executin', and minor scriptin'. The only graphical thing I needed was some good ol' Quake action, which I ran through SDL, and I was freakin' set, man.

Those were the days... Ahhhh, yes, those were the days...

[cxwq]

Every time you type Links I read it Lynx.

I used Lynx back in '93 or so when there were two browsers - Lynx and Netscape. Netscape didn't run too well on the DEC VAX/VMS mainframe that provided my internet access. Interestingly, both Lynx and Links are text-based browsers.