9 Browsers Compared For Speed and Features 363
notthatwillsmith writes "Counting public betas and release candidates, there are a whopping nine different web browsers out today with enough market share to be considered mainstream. Maximum PC explains the differences between the browsers, future and present, so that you can make a more informed decision about the primary tool you use to browse the web. From the rendering engines used to the features that set the different browsers apart, this is a comprehensive, blow-by-blow battle between Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1, IE 8, Safari 4, and Opera 10."
9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Funny)
And their conclusion is...
There is no conclusion?
FTA: "In our testing, the answer is no. However, we did notice a difference among browsers, just not as pronounced as the benchmarks indicate. Safari 4 and, to our surprise, Internet Explorer 8 felt the snappiest, though neither version of Firefox ever felt slow by comparison."
They need to get someone with a backbone to say one is definitely better than the other, so that I can tell them that they are wrong.
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Funny)
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Funny)
Can't we just be all wrong and get along?
No. How can we be all wrong and get along now that you made that statement? Sure, we could get along, but that would make you right.
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The Reverse Rodney King Paradox?
Chewbacca defense?
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:4, Interesting)
The circumstances that make NECESSARY [townhall.com] to kick the crap out of a suspect.
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My favorite film critics seldom or never rate movies.
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Informative)
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Insightful)
They also didnt bother to test how fast each browser rendered html either, which is just as important, if not more so than how fast it can render javascript.
I disagree. HTML always renders fast enough. Slowdowns are from scripts and ads.
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree- I run with javascript OFF and some horribly buggy html saturates my CPU for tens of seconds while my poor browser tries to figure it out. Ebay pages- look at the code someday. Even slashdot- lots of html errors. I have my theories about it all...
Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Interesting)
HTML always renders fast enough
I wrote a program a few years back that used a genetic algorithm to generate HTML. First I wanted to just see if it would crash browsers (which wasn't all that hard for the most part), but one of the things I used to score "genes" when there was no crash was the rendering time. Naturally enough, this led to long rendering times - even on relatively short (20K was the usual limit) files. Firefox once took almost 24 hours(!) to render a single such page, but the amazing thing was that it did not crash in the process. Perhaps I should dust that off again and try now.
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That's a really cool idea, dude :-)
Post the code somewhere!
source (Score:5, Interesting)
OK. Source code is here [ewu.edu] - I though I had it on sourceforge, but a search there didn't seem to work. It is written in java and an adaptation of something far older (trying to use grammars to generate music). Code is not as nice as I'd like, but it is not intended to be production quality - it is intended as a testbed for hackery and experimentation.
Unpack, cd down to the html directory (down a few levels) and run make. There are scripts (unix) to then try to run different browsers ("run-firefox" for instance).
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The true cost of Microsoft's monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the browser wars, round 1? It seemed that everytime you turned around, there was a new version out with new features and new tags to learn. Features like VRML and javascript, CSS, a dizzying array of choices that seemed like it could go on forever.
That is, until MS killed the browser wars by bundling their browser and coming up with a browser that was 'good enough'. Innovation stalled almost completely. Webmasters, frustrated with the pain of developing cross-platform web sites, frequently bought the koolaid of the all MS dev stack.
The open, free Internet was, for a time, in danger.
But then the guys behind Mozilla, mostly funded by AOL who only used Mozilla to threaten MS in order to get an icon for the desktop, finally started to mature into something good.
And, though years in the making, the browser wars are suddenly back! Suddenly MS releases two versions of their browser rapid-fire, suddenly there's a reason to pay attention!
Just imagine where we'd be if there hadn't been that near-decade of stagnation in the middle? That's the price of the MS monopoly.
Re:The true cost of Microsoft's monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
Features like VRML and javascript, CSS, a dizzying array of choices that seemed like it could go on forever.
That's not a good thing. You forget that many of the "innovations" of these browsers in the bad-old-days were to give themselves something the others didn't support. When we're talking about standards for the interchange of data, you want them to move slow so everyone can keep up.
Now I'll admit, the ubiquity of a browser with a lack of standards compliance and ui features like tabs are painful results of MS's monopoly, but let's be careful when we talk about "innovation" anywhere near standards.
Re:The true cost of Microsoft's monopoly (Score:5, Insightful)
You aren't serious are you ?
The only innovation Netscape did was to introduce frames and layers, the first of which was universally hated and eventually kicked from the standard when it was already too late. And the second, which was a pathetic attempt to keep up with the DHTML and on-the-fly re-rendering that MSIE 4 was already doing so well. Except NS4 DIDN'T re-render properly, didn't resize the layer based on content, so all you ended up with was crappy looking content overlaying other content and a damn mess of cross-browser hacks to even achieve that.
Whereas, look at what MSIE did, taking innerHTML as a prime example. It was their innovation, it wasn't considered standard at the time, but it was so useful that Firefox and all the others implemented it anyway.
You really need to stop believing everything you read about the browser wars, and actually admit that NS4 sucked so badly, no one WANTED to buy it. Plus the fact that MSIE was being bundled for free, why bother paying for an inferior competitor. Netscape didn't deserve to survive, sorry. Not because of MS abusing a monopoly, but because NS4 browser was a dog, and needed to die.
To my mind that was the time when people were starting to realiss that a browser IS an integral part of any O/S and there was already becoming less market space for paid alternatives to survive. Let me ask you this ? As we're all so used to "free" browsers these days, do you think Firefox would have such dominance if it cost $5 ? or $10 ? Of course not, people want something that works most of the time as they expect, and if it's free, then so much better.
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Re:9 Browsers compared (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're joking, but were you seriously expecting a solid statement anyway?
I can't remember the last time I saw a scathing review of... pretty much anything. Companies have reviewers so scared of lawsuits for libel and their publishers have become such milksops, afraid they might alienate an advertiser, that nobody will say anything is bad anymore. There are only varying degrees of "good" now.
Whats with the Chrome tests? (Score:5, Insightful)
hmm (Score:2)
So many engines ...
Re:hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Or so many pages, so little time, so here is link to the "print" page -- one page with all the text and pictures and no ads. [maximumpc.com]
PS. Mods, if you are tempted to downmod this post as redundant because there is a similar post above mine in your listing, please check times of posting first.
Re:hmm (Score:5, Funny)
PS. Mods, if you are tempted to downmod this post as redundant because there is a similar post above mine in your listing, please check times of posting first.
How did you know there was a similar post?
I'm terribly confused...
Oh, I see...
You must be running firefox with the "oracle" plugin (affectionately known as the pre-post-preview) enabled?
Or are you simply posting from the future?
Re:hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
How could they miss Seamonkey? (Score:5, Interesting)
How could they miss Seamonkey?
I won't use a 'browser' that doesn't have an integrated WYSIWYG html composer. It's in the tradition of Netscape for browsers to also be composers. In the early days of the WWW, the vision was that people would be creators and communicators, not just 'browsers' in the spirit of cows on a feedlot. Blogs have replaced 'personal home pages' (PHP anybody???) but not completely. And the integrated Editor isn't just for creating sites. With Seamonkey, you can cut and paste off web pages to your local system in a fashion far more powerful than anything from Microsoft. Firefox is a gelded browser.
You idea gave us MySpace (Score:4, Insightful)
This idea of people making their own sites is what gave us myspace and the like. So sorry, but for the good of humanity and to stop your idea you must be shot. It is for the best.
Also, this function has been taken over by wysiwyg javascript editors in the website itself which is a reason the next bullet will go to the guy who thought this up.
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Also, this function has been taken over by wysiwyg javascript editors in the website itself which is a reason the next bullet will go to the guy who thought this up.
That would be the "contentEditable" attribute. That's - ha! - Microsoft.
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Or, more generally, on the web itself. For example, see the new Mozilla Labs project, Bespin [mozilla.com].
Re:How could they miss Seamonkey? (Score:5, Interesting)
This post is tl;dr Summary: Seamonkey R0xx!
Indeed, how could they miss Seamonkey? In my experience, Seamonkey is the best browser on every platform.
When I first started building multi-OS compatible webpages, I decided I wanted them to be compatible with everything. That means...
Windows:
-Firefox
-Seamonkey
-Opera
-Safari
-IE6
-IE7/8
-GoogleChrome
Linux:
-Konquerer
-Firefox
-Seamonkey
OSX:
-Safari
-Firefox
-Camino
-Seamonkey
Seamonkey is the only browser with identical rendering across every platform. Firefox and Safari really failed, with small differences on each OS. Seamonkey was also the fastest at rendering, on every platform I tested. I was really surprised by that, as I expected Opera to beat it at rendering pages, and Chrome to beat it with javascript. (Chrome may be faster now - it was beta before)
I tested on 3 systems before deciding Seamonkey was best:
WinXP/Ubuntu
VIA C7 Eden 1.2ghz
512MB RAM
WinXP
Athlon X2 2.8ghz
2GB DDR2-800
PPC iMac (borrowed from a friend)
OSX 10.4.8?
PPC 2.53ghz?
2GB DDR2-667?
(can't recall exactly)
Adding a hack to support IE6/7 would add a rendering anomaly in Safari. Fixing it in Safari would add one for Firefox(OSX only). Fixing that would result in Opera or Konquerer or some other webkit browser breaking.
Finally I said screw it, re-did my CSS, and used tons and tons of div elements. The result looks like the code you get from Dreamweaver, but my pages finally display identically in every browser I test...
Re:How could they miss Seamonkey? (Score:5, Funny)
This post is tl...
Sorry, that's about as far as I got before falling asleep.
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not to mention that while seamonkey still carries the mozilla/netscape "bloatware" rep, it runs better than any other browser on my older machine (933Mhz, 512MB SDRAM). I've found it to be snappier than firefox 3.x and I can run seamonkey mail and browse with multiple tabs with a much smaller memory footprint than if I simultaneously run firefox and thunderbird. Not to mention the startup time of seamonkey is quicker than the combined startup time of firefox + thunderbird. I know I'll get stoned for sayi
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Oh how I fondly remember the Netscape and Mozilla Suites. A crash in the browser would lose that email I was researching for and been editting for the last two hours. Are the Seamonkey people still ignorantly working with a single process, or have they finally figured out that tight integration doesn't require a monolithic app? As for the composer... there would be a common standalone to bundle with Firefox, Thunderbird and Sunbird, but I guess there just isn't enough demand for it. I used Netscape and
Hey whippersnapper (Score:3, Informative)
How can you talk about the "early days of the WWW" without realizing that Netscape Communicator (which you obviously reference when mentioning that "people would be creators and communicators")and other in-browser editors were middle-age for the Internet?
Those days, to me, are when browsers really began to get too bloated.
And I'm still a few years from 30. I wonder what the 30 year-old geezers on here think of your comment.
Why don't we have 100% conformity to standards? (Score:5, Insightful)
Internet standards are a known entity and have been so for a long time. Can somebody tell me why programmers of open source browsers decide not to code to standards? Why?
Why then should we expect Microsoft to code to standards?
because the standards are a bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
Can somebody tell me why programmers of open source browsers decide not to code to standards? Why?
The standards can be a bitch. Not just a bitch, but a major bitch. Standards at their best are forward looking and interesting because they are stated without much thought as to how they would actually be implemented and part of the problem is figuring out how too implement them.
In a perfect world, yes, you could go and code something completely to a standard, but a turn of a phrase could blow a design. Then you have to backtrack, re-implement, and repeat the process. You could go for years without a release and one thing that the world shows is that someone who implements most of the standards and delivers on time is better than the guy who is perfect with them. Indeed, quite often, shipping "enough" of a standard is quite often cause for a midcourse correction in the standard itself.
HTML isn't the only culprit here, but it stands out to end users because it is as prevalent as it is comparatively complex. C++ itself relies very heavily on standards and even with numerous holes to allow for vendor implementations, it took years to get good implementations of C++.
Why then should we expect Microsoft to code to standards?
The basic simplistic explanation is that Microsoft recruits what it feels are the best programmers from the best universities and has in the past been willing to invent some rather complicated products and forward looking designs. One asks Microsoft to comply with standards, because, if anyone could be able to, they would, and that, in some circles, is sort of thing a responsible leader of the computing community should do. They are members of these standards bodies, after all, and as such, -agreed- to them.
But, Microsoft is just as prey to the backtrack problem as anyone else, and having all those brains can sometimes mean that when they do have to backtrack, they have to do it spectacularly. That is, the degree to which you have to backtrack in a design tends to raise the costs of modifying your product significantly, and its likely that even they cannot resolve some issues in a timely fashion.
Of course, in the case of IE, they damn well could, but have chosen not to. For them IE is a problem. If they spend money on IE, they might well lose it all because the EU and other anti-trust bodies might well make them give it away or discontinue it or, something. And, until recently, IE has been "good enough for government work". But, with Firefox really coming on, and Google Chrome showing so much promise, now IE8 looks like Microsoft is to re-engage.
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Standards at their best are forward looking and interesting because they are stated without much thought as to how they would actually be implemented and part of the problem is figuring out how too implement them.
That's absolutely false, of any good standard.
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I agree, web standards are painfully difficult to implement. Just think about what it would take. It starts with 3 languages (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) that all have different syntax. Even if you'd pull that off, you'd end up with an unusable browser, because it wouldn't be compatible with all the broken HTML out there. And then you need plugins, or the kids won't be able to use their dear Youtube. By the time you have all that done, the standards will have evolved. Meanwhile, meticulously implementing the
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It doesn't help that some standards were based on other standards and then broken. HTML was syntactically incompatible with SGML on purpose to make it "easier" to use. The most notable example is the fact that early in the HTML standard, you didn't have to close paragraph elements.
When you create something with built-in gotchas, of course parsing it correctly is going to be a problem. It continued to be for years until XHTML finally came around, but that still has its own design faults. Many web sites (
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You are joking, right?
Which HTML standard, 4.x or 5.x which css standard, 2.0, 1.0 , which DOM version etc. etc. etc. said in my best Charley Chan voice
These "standards" are a moving target and just when you think you have it right, some fucking pencil neck gets a hair up his ass and decides this one little thing needs to be changed, it is no small miracle that web even works at all.
There are so many kludges in HTML/CSS/XHTML - pick a flavor of the month that it simply boggles the mind. Then there are sem
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Typical reply I get when I complain about a buggy page: "I don't know what the problem is, I tested on both Internet Explorer and Firefox!"
Express bus link for those who don't love ads (Score:2, Redundant)
http://www.maximumpc.com/print/5491 [maximumpc.com]
Lynx? (Score:5, Insightful)
Am I the only one who noticed this story tagged with "lynx"? Sure. We all know that no browser renders pages faster and with less resource overhead than lynx, but it wasn't one of the browsers being compared.
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You may be thinking of links2 which does have some javascript support, but not mine.
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Am I the only one who noticed this story tagged with "lynx"? Sure. We all know that no browser renders pages faster and with less resource overhead than lynx, but it wasn't one of the browsers being compared.
Slashdot needs a "+5, Whoosh!" mod.
Re:Lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
Pussy. Real men telnet to port 80.
Re:Lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
Pussy. Real men use emacs to email a URL to a daemon which emails back the web page, etc...
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Re:Lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lynx? (Score:5, Funny)
Real men write emacs to email a URL to a daemon which emails back the web page, etc...
There, corrected that for you.
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Fuck you all. Real men use teams of butterflies [xkcd.com] .
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Pussy. Real men netcat to port 80.
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Pussy. Real men open a raw socket.
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Pussy. Real men use /dev.
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Pussy. Real men write a kernel patch to expose the driver API to userspace and use that.
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I use w3m, you insensitive clod!
Origin of Webkit... (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement from page 4 of TFA bugs me:
It may be true that Apple started the Webkit project, but they did so by forking the KHTML codebase. Saying that Apple "gave birth" to WebKit is stretching the truth. It implies that they created it from scratch, when they didn't. Many other people put in a tremendous amount of work to create the foundations upon which WebKit was built.
A nitpick, perhaps. But it bugs me that the contributions of the KHTML team are being forgotten.
Troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
He is simply stating the truth. Webkit is a fork of an existing project. Apple did NOT create webkit from scratch. Of course, that is not a bad thing, in fact it is one of the goals of opensource that you can take existing projects and modify them for your own needs BUT it is usually considered nice if you mention this. Apple sure as hell ain't advertising it loudly and sadly a LOT of people on the net seem perfectly happy to ignore it.
It also shows that Apple doesn't exactly return the favor because Safar
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Huh, I'm not sure what you're getting at?
Someone could make another Webkit browser that runs under Linux, why does it have to be Safari? Safari is not Webkit, and Apple never promised to make Safari open source and available on multiple platforms.
Re:Troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
Webkit is a fork of an existing project. Apple did NOT create webkit from scratch.
true. The original poster shouldn't be marked as a troll for saying that. This is a self-correcting issue. he is currently marked +4 insightful.
Of course, that is not a bad thing, in fact it is one of the goals of opensource that you can take existing projects and modify them for your own needs BUT it is usually considered nice if you mention this. Apple sure as hell ain't advertising it loudly and sadly a LOT of people on the net seem perfectly happy to ignore it.
You can't make a list of rules then go "oh yeah, this would be cool too, but it's optional". and then get pissed when someone adheres to all of your rules but chooses not to do the optional one. If you don't want it optional, make it part of the license. They're not assholes for not doing more than is required of them.
This argument seems a bit hypocritical coming from someone who chooses not to use the Gnu/Linux moniker in his next sentence.
(yes, i'm aware linux is not a fork of a gnu kernel project. the point is that the essence of Stallman's argument for that term is the same argument being made here.)
It also shows that Apple doesn't exactly return the favor because Safari is not available for Linux. So they used opensource code but do not contribute in the full spirit of opensource.
Apple returns all of their modifications to webkit back to the open source project. They are under no requirement, morally or legally, to provide a linux safari. The essence and full spirit of open source is for the source to be available so that if someone desires to port it to linux they can do so. That spirit has been satisfied.
I had more written here but your last paragraph is so irrelevant to the subject, i decided to delete it to avoid distractions.
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Blatantly false. KHTML is still under development and it is still the default engine in Konqueror (though there's an alpha-version WebKit part).
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KDE gave birth to the KHTML, no one ever heard of KHTML outside of the small town called KDE where he was borne.
Apple adopted KHTML, renamed him to Webkit and made him a world wide poster child.
Better?
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There's a joke in there involving Steve Jobs, abortion and scat. Several, in fact. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to imagine the psychologically scarring porn troll I am simply too lazy to write.
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Saying that Apple "gave birth" to WebKit is stretching the truth. It implies that they created it from scratch,
Well, no, actually, saying "gave birth" does, in fact, imply that they got some of the original generic seed from another source.
IE7 Rules! (Score:2, Funny)
Um, anyone know where the Linux version of IE7 is?
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Um, anyone know where the Linux version of IE7 is?
It is here: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Main_Page [tatanka.com.br]
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I use it on occasion, particularly when I need to load those evul ActiveX controls, like at work:
http://www.perfectreign.com/stuff/2008/20081205_ie6_yoda_ii_ponte.jpg
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Better luck next time!
Different OS (Score:5, Interesting)
It is a shame they did not do Firefox on Linux, Firefox on windows XP and Firefox on windows Vista, all on the same hardware. It would have been interesting to see how the underlying OS affects the performance of the browser. Then further compare IE on Vista vs Firefox on Ubuntu.
With netbooks final end user experience is driven by the application on top of an OS and the interface that is used access and control that application.
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To be completely fair, the should have done it to every major browser in every major OS. So its 9*3 = 27 analyses. Then if you wan to cross-compare them, its 27c2 = 351 analyses. So no, thanks, I'm not that idle.
Re:Different OS (Score:4, Informative)
It is a shame they did not do Firefox on Linux, Firefox on windows XP and Firefox on windows Vista, all on the same hardware. It would have been interesting to see how the underlying OS affects the performance of the browser. Then further compare IE on Vista vs Firefox on Ubuntu.
While hard numbers would be useful, it's painfully clear to anyone who's used it on both platforms that Firefox on windows is far faster than Firefox on linux. Try opening a bunch of tabs and see how sluggish it is on linux to switch between them or close one.
Personally, I blame GTK2's obsession with double buffering everything. I recall GTK1-based seamonkey builds being quite a bit faster than Firefox when they first switched FF over to GTK2. Of course you'd be mad to even install GTK1 these days, but the performance issues really need to be addressed. If I could get Konqueror without all the KDE baggage I would, for the brief time I used KDE it was always snappy and responsive.
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``If I could get Konqueror without all the KDE baggage I would, for the brief time I used KDE it was always snappy and responsive.''
I run Konqueror as the sole KDE app on my machine. On Debian lenny, the disk space used is a bit larger than for Iceweasel (nee Firefox), but the lower memory usage and a couple of useful features (especially web shortcuts and access keys) make it worth it to me. I still have Iceweasel installed for a number of sites that don't work well in Konqueror, though.
As for Firefox bein
Fed up with Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm absolutely fed up with Firefox, and no longer care about it's performance. I started out LOVING it back in the 0.9 beta days and still love the web developer extension and tabbed browsing (though that's become standard) but lately it's just been one issue after the other:
* Tired of opt-out upgrades. I don't like software that automatically updates itself or that blocks you from using the full functionality of old versions by, for example removing the ability to search for and add compatible plugins. Don't believe me? Try running firefox 1 and installing updates off the web. Good luck.
* Awesomebar is awful not awesome. I don't care if other people like it. I just want to be able to turn it off. As it stands the only way to get back an address bar that doesn't look like a circus and flash every bookmark up at any passer by is to install TWO extensions: oldbar to get rid of the look and hideunvisited to stop showing off every bookmark in your collection to anyone watching you use the browser.
* Firefox 3 includes "security" functionality (that thankfully can be turned off, ONCE YOU WORK OUT WHAT'S HAPPENING). Symptoms were that if I downloaded a file with firefox and tried to open it with IE, the images would be missing and none of the scripting would even come close to working. At first I thought it was an IE problem, but no. It turns out that each and every file being downloaded with firefox is being flagged as being in the Internet Zone by means of hidden file streams on the NTFS file system. This behaviour is turned off if browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone is set to false, but it's set to true by default. Thanks for the headache, FF devs. I guess I could just not upgrade....except...err...for the point above.
* Somehow infected with pop-up window Spyware (Advertisemen) that only affects firefox cut and copy functionality and only when running as firefox.exe. (Renaming it was enough to work around the spyware. Of course the real solution was to get rid of the spyware itself, but this was one nasty bug to find). At first the FF devs were in denial and were less than friendly about the whole thing but have since included information on this spyware in the info files.
* The extensions are wonderful aren't they? But have you ever looked into coding an extension for FF? It's horrid horrid stuff....and then you'd be constantly having to change it to keep it up to date with the latest version since they constantly break backward compatibility. As you might have guessed by the tone of what I'm saying, as time has gone on I have wanted to bother with this less and less.
Only problem is I hate Chrome even more and there aren't many options, especially if you want something cross platform.
Go on, tag as flamebait or troll. If you really think I'm just saying these things to stir up trouble, you've got wax between your ears.
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* Tired of opt-out upgrades.
about:config
app.update.enabled = false
* Awesomebar is awful not awesome
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = 0
* Firefox 3 includes "security" functionality
Well "generally" people prefer not to lose their credit card numbers and such.
* Somehow infected with pop-up window Spyware
... which is why you "probably" shouldn't have disabled the security features, or been using firefox 1.
have you ever looked into coding an extension for FF? It's horrid horrid stuff
And it's better than any other browser.
So basically you have no real complaints about firefox... which is why your post is troll.
Re:Fed up with Firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
* Tired of opt-out upgrades.
about:config
app.update.enabled = false
Re-read what I wrote. Do you understand the term "opt-out"? I know how to opt out. I try to always do so. This doesn't change the default for installs. Should I forget to set it, I get a nice reminder when my browser is updated for me without me wanting it to happen.
* Awesomebar is awful not awesome
browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = 0
That DOESN'T do the trick. It certainly doesn't revert the functionality. Have a look at oldbar and hideunvisited. Have a look at the numerous discussions about why they exist.
Firefox 3 includes "security" functionality
Well "generally" people prefer not to lose their credit card numbers and such.
Apparently you don't like people opening up their own downloaded documents either. At least not in IE. Why is it that Firefox sets this obscure stream to mark something as downloaded, but then itself does not honour the flag it sets. By default the downloaded file opens perfectly in Firefox but not in IE (In IE pictures won't display etc) and there is no explanation as to why. I'm talking about saved HTML here! How exactly does such awful design protect my credit card info?
* Somehow infected with pop-up window Spyware ... which is why you "probably" shouldn't have disabled the security features, or been using firefox 1.
Ah yes because all security holes are plugged before they make it into the wild. By the way I was using the latest version of firefox at the time (2.0.something). I didn't say I was running Firefox 1 at that stage. Nor would having security flag I mentioned enabled have protected me. Don't let truth or reality get in the way of a perfectly good troll though.
ave you ever looked into coding an extension for FF? It's horrid horrid stuff
And it's better than any other browser.
No actually, it's not. It's more flexible, but it's not "better" by any means. XUL is a piece of trash.
So basically you have no real complaints about firefox... which is why your post is troll.
Actually basically you've just demonstrated how dismissive and utterly out of touch FF devs are. YOU are the troll because your "solutions" are inaccurate, incomplete and do NOT provide anything useful. YOU sir, are the troll.
Re: (Score:2)
Windows
Mac OS X
Linux x86 64
Linux PowerPC
Linux i386
FreeBSD i386
FreeBSD AMD64
Solaris Sparc
Solaris Intel
QNX
OS/2
BeOS
Re: (Score:2)
Most likely he does not want to use a Non-Windows solution. He wants a better web browser for Windows, without having to switch out his operating system.
Most people want the OS that ships with their computer, which is usually a version of Windows, and then an open source solution that works the way they want it to work on Windows sans the malware infections, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
The beauty of open source programs is that if you don't like one of them, you are free to fork their source code into a new project under a different name.
Just how many open source projects have you forked and modified to your satisfaction?
So what stops you from making Syousefox?
Same as what stops me from climbing mount Everest, getting a medical degree, finding a cure for cancer, becoming a world class musician, or becoming an olympic athlete. Nothing, if I have passion, the required skills or the aptitude
Re: (Score:2)
Get down off your high and mighty FOSS horse. Where do people get of spouting this BS? I guess you also have enough time and interest in building your own cars, your own houses, and grow all your own food too. Or are you just independently wealthy and so can spend inordinate amounts of time doing pointless things like this? These software projects often have hundreds of man years behind them, so to suggest an individual forks it is plain retarded.
Re:Fed up with Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like somebody got busted with the pr0n.
It's ok buddy, I hear they are implementing an Incognito setting in the next release.
Nothing to do with porn. I don't surf porn anywhere that I can be busted for it. Basically there's nothing I haven't seen that's worth my job.
Everything to do with professionalism at work. When I'm demonstrating something at work, I do NOT need links to remote control aircraft sites, local newspapers, slashdot, chess sites or the like coming up. I do not need my colleagues to know which bank I am with. (We are permitted to use work computers for personal use within reason). I just don't understand why I should have to show everyone who walks by bookmarks I might not have visited in 4 years! It hasn't caused problems yet, but I don't understand why upgrading my browser should subject me to this!!!
Re: (Score:2)
...but I don't understand why upgrading my browser should subject me to this!!!
Create a separate "cow-orker" profile, downgrade, or install one of the add-ons that you mentioned earlier. *Many* of us *really* like the Awesomebar. I'm sorry that you don't. It's a good thing that you have the option to replace it with something that you like better. :D
Truly, does nobody use the Stop button? (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA, on Google Chrome:
All the navigation tabs -- Back, Forward, Refresh, and Home -- sit to the left of the Address bar.
All the navigation tabs-- except STOP! No other browser puts Stop and Reload on opposite sides of the screen like Chrome does [imageshack.us]. Unfortunately, Ben (Goodger?) always WontFixes bug reports on the issue. At this rate, the only hope is for someone to create a Stop-button extension, once that becomes possible.
In the meantime, is it true that nobody uses Stop nowadays, and thus don't care?
Re: (Score:2)
You have internet slow enough to give you time to hit the stop button? You must be new here.
Mobile Browsers (Score:4, Insightful)
With all this talk about people giving up their computers for mobile devices, it would be nice to see a mobile device browser rundown. From what I have seen, most mobile browsers are atrocious.
For instance, Safari on the iPhone, which is a descendent of Konqueror, has no option to constrain text to the screen (just as Konq-e did not). There is no Firefox derivative for the mobile world. NetFront is ugly and slow and missing lots of character sets, but at least constrains text. PocketIE is so stupidly slow, memory inefficient, and painful to use it is hard to discuss without liberal use of expletives. Android's webkit browser is designed not to link to local URLs (ie: file:///).
That is only one criticism each, but a more appropriate figure would be much higher for each. The bugs in these browsers are sort of unbelievable. Even worse, unlike downloading from the net, these browsers all have a price. When one buys a mobile device, these browsers are included and part of the purchase price goes to these browsers. Why are the for-pay browsers worse than the free ones?
About the only mobile browser I would even say nice things about is Opera. Opera is missing some features I want, but considering the competition -- or lack thereof -- I cannot complain too much.
It is hard to believe that when everybody seems to believe that we are on the eve of the mobile computing revolution that there can be only one decent mobile browser to choose from. Further, it seems absurd that with all of this browser code floating around on the net, one cannot download and install any given mobile browser but must, instead, be stuck with a device vendor chosen browser for good or ill.
Re: (Score:2)
I stopped reading... (Score:5, Interesting)
...at:
Netscape's source was released in 1997. Firefox 1.0 was released at the end of 2004. During those 7 years, Internet Explorer 6 strangled innovation on the web. We're still far from free of its legacy.
If the writers of the article have such a poor sense of perspective on browser history, I'm not trusting their views on browsers now.
I'm right. I'll make a revision for you: (Score:3, Informative)
Netscape's source was released in 1997. Mozilla 1.0 was released in the middle of 200s. During those 5 years, Internet Explorer 6 strangled innovation on the web. We're still far from free of its legacy.
Also, I understand the history of the Mozilla project. I've been pedantic about their history here before [slashdot.org].
Oops. 2002, even. (Score:3, Informative)
Mozilla 1.0 was released in the middle of 2002.
In other news... vi and emacs compared (Score:2)
no winner declared.
Dupes! (Score:2)
Two Internet Explorer. Two FireFox. Two Safari. Two Opera. But zero Konqueror.
"What version of HTML did you write that page in dude?"
"It's version six AND seven man!"
"Whoa! Anybrowser!"
Sheesh (Score:5, Funny)
Safari 3, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Google Chrome, Firefox 3.1, IE 8, Safari 4, and Opera 10."
Man, it's almost as bad as the gaming industry. Nothing but sequels.
The next Firefox release (Score:2)
Re:The next Firefox release (Score:4, Informative)
Update: Mike Beltzner, Firefox product lead, clarifies that despite what the meeting notes may have suggested, the version bump is not a final decision at this point.
Opera Addons (Score:5, Insightful)
Most reviews don't get it and I'm sure a lot of people are mistaken about it, but even if Opera doesn't support "addons" they support a lot more than just adding widgets.
You can customize any and all Opera INI files. There is extensive resources [operawiki.info] about it. For a few examples, you can:
Of course the INI files are part of your profile so editing them won't affect other users. And I'm not even mentioning the per-site configuration.
Opera doesn't need addons IMHO. It's already really heavily configurable.
I understand some people can't do without AdBlock or a few other addons, so no need to mention it, we know you need it. But for the others there's more than enough functionality available through customization.
Content Blocker (Score:4, Informative)
AdBlock? What about Opera's Content Blocker and urlfilter.ini?
Yeah, Opera does have good Adblock (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ [fanboy.co.nz]
Nice list & style, works just as good as FF Adblock for blocking, somewhat better for hiding empty spaces.