What's your main web browser?

[Aloone_Jonez]

Well, I have firefox too, but I tend to only use it on sites which absolutely won't work without javascript. It's kind of my "plan B" browser. My IE is configured to work without activex/activescripting, so 99% of IE security holes never apply to me. The rare ones that do, I patch. IE has worked perfectly for me, and for a while I thought it was misbehaving until I started debugging it and realized the glitches I was having were because of my own browser helper objects leaking. Oops!

I've found that in every way that matters to me, IE has been superior for a long time.

So hang on, you say "Internet Explorer it superior" yet you admit that you've disabled ActiveX and JavaScript under IE  for security reasons and yet you use FireFox for pages with JavaScript. :confused:

Only recently (like, late last year) the firefox has become actually usable. I'll still stick with IE, though, I see no reason to switch over. Oh, and I'd have to reimplement all my plugins for firefox, and I hear they need to be rewritten every now and then as different firefox versions have plugin compatibility issues. Yay.

FireFox was still beta back then it's a lot better now, this just proves how much further FireFox has come in a just over a year than Microsoft Internet Explorer has in over 10 years!

That's understandable but Internet Explorer 7 will probebly break your existing plugins anyway.

I also have various versions of netscape and opera installed, back from the times I did some webdesign. I only use them for testing purposes, though.

I can't see any reason to use netscape, opera has some good features (I like the zooming) but it's a bit slow.

[themacuser]

I use FireFox and Safai. Mainly Safari, firefox just isn't Mac-like yet.

I also use Links from Terminal (in case you can't figure it out, I do use Mac OS X), it's great because Microsoft People can't work out that I'm secretly browsing the web...

[sjor]

but on Mac it's just not close enough to acting/feeling like a native OS X app for my taste.

u could get camino.

i mainly use firefox

[muzzy]

So hang on, you say "Internet Explorer it superior" yet you admit that you've disabled ActiveX and JavaScript under IE  for security reasons and yet you use FireFox for pages with JavaScript. :confused:

Yes. ActiveX and javascript and such are features I don't need, the plain IE without annoying features is my preferred browser. However, since IE isn't safe with javascript and activex turned on, I use firefox for untrusted sites that need them. For trusted sites (microsoft, banking, etc) I've turned scripting on. Firefox is pretty much just a backup solution. Typically, if a site doesn't work without javascript/flash it's not worth checking anyway. If I absolutely have to, I have the backup plan.

FireFox was still beta back then it's a lot better now, this just proves how much further FireFox has come in a just over a year than Microsoft Internet Explorer has in over 10 years!

I assume you realize that your comparison isn't based on any factual evidence, or any hard numbers. You're just throwing stuff out of your hat, expecting people to be amazed. Anyway, mozilla's rendering engine has been getting pretty good lately, but how long did it take? Let's see what's going to happen as microsoft finally continues development of IE...

That's understandable but Internet Explorer 7 will probebly break your existing plugins anyway.

Well well, we'll see. Most probably it will still keep the same interfaces around and support the same stuff, so everything will work fine.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Thanks of the quick reply! :thumbup:
Edit: Just in case anyone thinks I am, I'm not being sarcastic, I sent muzzy a PM reminding him about this thread and re replied very quickly.  

I assume you realize that your comparison isn't based on any factual evidence, or any hard numbers. You're just throwing stuff out of your hat, expecting people to be amazed. Anyway, mozilla's rendering engine has been getting pretty good lately, but how long did it take? Let's see what's going to happen as microsoft finally continues development of IE...

Granted it was my opinion, not fact, but wouldn't it have been quicker just to say that?

Why do you think Internet Explorer is superior to FireFox?

Well well, we'll see. Most probably it will still keep the same interfaces around and support the same stuff, so everything will work fine.

Well if their past record on Microsoft office and Windows is anything to go by I can't see everything working that smoothly.

[TB]

I'm a 100% Firefox browser now. I made the switch to Mozilla over 2 years ago and there's been no looking back whatsoever. Tabbed browsing + awesome security options = Mozilla owning IE. It's as simple as that.

[JanusChrist]

I use FireFox and Safai. Mainly Safari, firefox just isn't Mac-like yet.
 

Ya know, you can get Themes for Firefox. Mozilla also has a browser built just for Mac called Camino.

[muzzy]

Why do you think Internet Explorer is superior to FireFox?

So, you want to know what I value in a web browser? First, I could ask why would it not be superior? There are only few UI issues that make firefox better, and those can be worked around with plugins. Perhaps, as a programmer, I see IE differently than you do.

One big bonus is being native to the system, which means I can do things that are impossible with Firefox. For example, can you have Firefox in a toolbar? Well, you can have mshtml rendered page there. Go ahead, right click taskbar and go toolbars->new, and type "http://microsuck.com/forums" as the directory. While this specific feature isn't critically important, it's just one of the many things that result from the design. In windows world, objects are more useful than applications.

Also, I like the rendering engine better. While it's true that mozilla renders CSS better, having done some little webdesign it blows mind how ambiguous some of the explanations are. CSS isn't very well specified, and trying to implement it will lead to implementation differences between different browsers. Obviously, such differences will be blamed on microsoft for no real reason, just because MS interprets things differently from others.

For things that matter, IE6 functions great, and I see no reason to use an alternative browser except for situations where braindead webdesigners have designed that the site will require flash and javascript to function at all, and for some reason I'm forced to use the site.

[Aloone_Jonez]

From what you've said you find the integration with the Windows desktop useful. This is one of the main things most people dislike about Internet Explorer. What do you think of  Konqueror's integration with the KDE desktop?

I prefer FireFox because of it's user interface.

Security - I can use web pages with Java without the worry of being connected to a premium rate number or get infected with spyware.

Speed - FireFox renders quicker than Internet Explorer.

Plugins enable me to add numerous extra features.

And it's still improving, FireFox gets better with ever release, Internet Explorer hasn't improved that much in many years.

As far as I'm concerned IE just lacks features, I use Opera every now and then for it's numerous features but for some reason I prefer FireFox.

Have you tried the latest versions of FireFox and Opera?

[muzzy]

I assume firefox 1.0 is new enough, that's what I have currently. (yeah yeah, I should upgrade that, I know it has critical issues. hmph)

Anyway, I hate java applets. Java is mainly useful in the server side IMO, in form of servlets. Java on clientside is mostly useless, due to early versions being such crap and everyone having different versions. Also, I find the whole idea of applets horrifying, since they're mainly suitable for implementing single intelligent widgets, while people are using them as replacements for stupid widgets and full applications and whatnot. Nnngghhh. Painful.

Why would people dislike integration with the desktop? It's not like you have to use it. What comes to Konqueror and KDE, I don't have experience on that. I haven't used a KDE desktop in a long while and I've never had one on my own box. When I was running linux at work, I had fvwm2 desktop because that's all I needed. Anyway, you can't take the windows approach in *nix world without going for a lot of heavy technology. We'll see who laughs last, when windows is suddenly the performance king as linux kids try to implement COM/DCOM-like behaviour with ORBs, while still having to support zillion different RPC mechanisms since "linux is about choice" ;D

[WMD]

Why would people dislike integration with the desktop?

Heh, reminds me of an old prank.  A web site would say "I have your hard drive.  Click to see it." with a link to "file://c:/".  Unsuspecting (aka, stupid) users would click this and not notice, and proceed to freak out.

[muzzy]

Heh, reminds me of an old prank.  A web site would say "I have your hard drive.  Click to see it." with a link to "file://c:/".  Unsuspecting (aka, stupid) users would click this and not notice, and proceed to freak out.

IMO this is a security vulnerability. Such things shouldn't be accessible, even through links, from the webpages. Unrestricted scope is such a messy thing, and very few developers pay attention to reducing it properly. Other examples include FTP servers where you can trick the server to do SMB queries (and to send out NTLM hashes, for a more concrete take on the attack, yay). Filesystem isn't a security mechanism, no namespace should be trusted with full access unless it's designed to be a minimum-scope one.

Oh, I sooo have to work my way into some standards committee to take care of these issues

[JanusChrist]

Why would people dislike integration with the desktop? It's not like you have to use it.

Becuz not everyone wants Internet Explorer and Outlook Express and NetMeeting, etc.,etc. to BE ON THEIR COMPUTER!! For what possible reason whould I even need a web brower to run Windows XP Disk Defragmenter (it won't work if you cripple the IE registry)? It's not like Microsoft couldn't build Windows without IE and OE integrated, we all know it's more than possible and would make a better OS in my opinion.

The security holes alone make IE 6.0 a poor choice for a web browser. This might change to some degree with IE 7.0 but I doubt it.

[Refalm]

Why would people dislike integration with the desktop? It's not like you have to use it.

I dislike integration with the desktop because of choice. I tend to shake off everything I don't use.
If I someoen doens't use Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows Messenger, Outlook Express and all that other vaporware, then why keep them on the harddisk?

For all you know, they could form a security risk just sitting there.
With Linux, you can install or uninstall anything you like.

I don't know about you, but some people just like freedom.

[muzzy]

If developers depend on some library, you can't remove it. It's simple as that, and not any different in linux. You're free to get rid of the stuff you don't like, as long as you accept that things that depended on them won't work anymore.