A Cheat Sheet To All the Browser Betas 188
Harry writes "I can't remember another time when there were so many Web browsers in prerelease form — 2009 should be a really, really good year for final browser versions. I have posted a quick recap of the state of the upcoming versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari." It is nice to see a healthy market of competition driving innovation in a market that has been largely stagnant in recent history. What do other folks see on the scorecard?
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Informative)
I've been using Opera now as my default browser for about a year now. Why? It's the only browser that will run natively on every platform I use, including Mac, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD. Firefox can't claim that last one, at least not since the 1.x branch. Not in any recent versions. And it's had a bunch of the new "features" that people talk about with chrome, like tabs above the address bar and that dial pad thingy that I never use.
One all the platforms, I've found that it is fast and isn't a memory hog like FF. Opera will also do it all, from block ads to bit torrent, all in one place. Now I can argue that there are better bit torrent clients out there, but in a pinch I have used it to pull down ISO's without any problems.
Opera gets almost no press outside the mobile market. It still has issues with some JS out there, but it's pretty rare these days. And it's a shame, because they probably have the best browser on the market.
Opera can block adverts if you want it to (Score:4, Informative)
This may be off-topic; if so....sorry.
I've liked Opera each time I tried it although the interface is different it's a damn good browser. The reason it never grabbed me was the lack of any useful (Chuck Norris trivia anyone???....I'm serious, they have one so I guess at least one person on the planet has a use for it) plugins, specially for blocking adverts. In the settings you can disable JavaScript etc but there's no way to block adverts. Well I found one....and it works.
http://my.opera.com/Tamil/blog/index.dml/tag/urlfilter.ini [opera.com]
The above link explains how to create a blank urlfilter.ini file in your Opera profile directory, copy and paste some urls to filter out and restart Opera. Every site I tried before and after, it was like surfing in Firefox with AdBlock.....bliss. I don't think it's perfect, it depends on the site and the type of advert but it's a damn good start. It's also easy to add a new line to the text file if you come across an adserver not on the list.
Having said all that, I'm still blown away by how fast Opera is, even WITH adverts. Being able to block them helps speed that up further. I've been a Firefox user for so long that I don't think I could switch but Opera is a damn good second browser for site testing.
I recently tried Epiphany with Webkit, it may be one to watch for the future but it's a bit early yet.
Re:OWB always missing from the list?? (Score:3, Informative)
It got 100/100, but still failed the test on a number of small points...
http://amigaowb.googlepages.com/screenshot2.png [googlepages.com]
Re:Well.. (Score:2, Informative)
Try arora http://code.google.com/p/arora/ [google.com]
It needs the Qt4 libs but has no KDE dependencies.
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
It works just as well on FreeBSD as on Windows, Linux or Mac OS X.
Typing this very comment from Firefox 3 on a FreeBSD machine (no it's not dead yet).
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
iTunes and Quicktime are horrendous on Windows; they noticeably slow my computer down after installation - even when they aren't running!
There are much leaner and quicker alternatives to both, so I refuse to install them on my Windows computers.
Re:Whom is the better? (Score:2, Informative)
If you like leather and ball gags, try IE.
And guess where the ball-gag goes...
Re:Won't Work with Hundreds of Favorite Sites. (Score:5, Informative)
You're joking, right? "M$" is making IE8 standards-compatible by default, and it's telling web site operators (especially high-volume ones) to add a tag to make the browser drop down to "compatibility mode" or "quirks mode" that allow the site to be viewed if it was designed for the lower standards of IE7 and IE6. They're also giving you an UI to add sites that you know are *not* standards-compliant so that IE8 can degrade gracefully in those cases and let you use the site, as opposed to just displaying garbage.
The end result is that people don't have to rush to update their sites that were already proven to work with older versions of IE just because of the next release.
This is a mess Microsoft got themselves into, undoubtedly, but your ignorance isn't helping much here. I'm sure that will make the front page though, since you seem to have that little game down [slashdot.org], all ScuttleMonkey would have to do is remove all the dollar signs and we'll be all set.
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
It's the only browser that will run natively on every platform I use, including Mac, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD. Firefox can't claim that last one, at least not since the 1.x branch
Really? Does 3.0.4 [freshports.org] not count as 'since the 1.x branch'? If you don't like 3.x, 2.0.0.18 [slashdot.org] is also in ports.
Re:Well.. (Score:1, Informative)
It's the only browser that will run natively on every platform I use, including Mac, Linux, Windows, and FreeBSD. Firefox can't claim that last one, at least not since the 1.x branch.
I dunno what the fuck you are talking about. every version has worked just fine here on my FreeBSD machine. perhaps you just cant admin your system for shit?
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
iTunes and Quicktime, along with the major anti-virus (McAfee, Norton), are the source of a large chunk of the complains you'll get about Windows. The difference in the stability of the OS and the experience are major before and after. Quicktime STILL tries to hijack PNG rendering in IE, and it totally ignores when you tell it to return things to normal (the option is THERE, it just ignores it). iTunes install some system drivers (that it seriously shouldn't need) that sometimes can make the file explorer slower or even unstable (not as bad in Vista, quite bad in XP). Lots of conflicts (which you may or may not see depending on which software you use), and all around makes things slower in general, and do some stuff really weird.
They're easily in the top 20 worse pieces of Windows software currently (that is, when compared to current versions, and ignoring stuff from the past), up there with Norton, AOL, etc. They work fine on Mac as far as I can tell, but on Windows...ewww. Just ewww. Sometimes I wonder if Apple does it on purpose... since now virtually EVERYONE has itune installed... helps gain arguments to make em switch to MacOSX
Re:Opera can block adverts if you want it to (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/
You are welcome.
Of course there is. (Score:3, Informative)
I know you're trolling, but: http://www.ieaddons.com/ [ieaddons.com]. (Mostly crap, but then, so is https://addons.mozilla.org/. [mozilla.org])
Even better: http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/ [bhelpuri.net]. Trixie enables user scripts (ala Greasemonkey) in IE.
Re:Opera can block adverts if you want it to (Score:3, Informative)
You don't need to manually edit urlfilter.ini to block ads in Opera!
Ever since version 9.0 (I think), you just right-click anywhere on the page and choose "Block Context" from the menu, then click on all ads on the page you want to be gone, and click "Save". That's it.
Or, if you want to edit the list directly, it's in Tools -> Preferences -> Content -> Blocked Content.
The main remaining use for urlfilter.ini - which is still there - is to get premade blacklists from other sources.
Re:galeon? (Score:3, Informative)
are you serious? I have right now 11 galeon windows with about 15 tabs in each.
Of course I'm using bookmarks, galeon has a nice feature "bookmark all tabs in a window into subfolder...". And I'm using galeon more than firefox or opera, just because it's damn so good at handling hundreds of tabs open. And still uses less memory than firefox 3.0.3 with only 15 tabs open.