Opera, Chrome, Firefox, OR?

[Awesomeness]

Toolbars are for tools
The toolbars just take up space and memory, for no real reason. Why would I want a 'Yahoo' search bar, when I could just type me search in the address bar and have Google or bing do a search for it? Why do I need AVG telling me how many popup's have been blocked when all good browsers tell you anyway? Toolbars are stupid and useless.
and look at this...

Spoiler:

a quality program with no toolbars!

[Emu*]

popup blockers are other similar tools which don't get used that often should use the statusbar, like foxytunes does. I use the Web Developer plugin, but only access it via the rightclick context menu and never have the toolbar visible.

[null1024]

Chrome, and if I'm on my Mac, Opera. FF feels like a slow pig, although after using Opera on an old 500MHz iBook G3, it's not nearly as an unpleasant experience as before, and I use Opera now just because I'm more used to it now. Also, Opera supports APNG.

[MildCore]

I had to give it to Opera. A pox to those of you who voted IE!

I like Firefox and Safari both, to an extent, but Opera's easier to use and more reliable for me.

[Woegjiub]

Firefox goes unbearably slowly on my linux system for some reason (mouse gestures in particular), but the only browser that comes even close is opera (and even then, the interface isn't customizable enough, and it lacks so many of the features I get from firefox plugins (adblock, firebug, netusage, 4chan extension, greasemonkey etc)

I'd love to use chrome, but I refuse to until google release an official linux version which supports all the features of firefox plugins, or has as many plugins, allows me to customize the interface more, and has as many FOSS-friendly features (ogg theora, ogg vorbis) as firefox.
Sure, it's faster to load, but it's slower to use, and is simply less useful.

IE is not even a proper browser (standards compliance, please... I want to only have to write a single piece of code for an element)

Safari is okay, but doesn't do anything special, and lacks in all areas.

Konqueror is rather good, but it's a file manager to me, It's not so good as a web browser.

[phlip]

(adblock, firebug, netusage, 4chan extension, greasemonkey etc)

In order: I'm pretty sure Opera has ad blocking built in. I'd be surprised if it didn't have some kind of web developer tools available (but not sure if it'd be as good as Firebug). No idea about netusage. I hope by 4chan extension you mean this. Opera has user scripts built in, and can run simple GM scripts without modification (it can read the GM header comment, but doesn't have the GM_* helper functions that Greasemonkey has).

[Amnesiasoft]

I'd be surprised if it didn't have some kind of web developer tools available (but not sure if it'd be as good as Firebug).

It does, Opera Dragonfly. Which is released under an open source license if I recall...
I have no idea how it is compared to Firebug, I've never used Firebug before.

[duckshirt]

I'm at the point where I have so many addons and and stuff in Firefox that there's no way I could get used to anything else I see at this point (I even used to write my own extensions a long time ago). I have multiple friends now that like to tell me about how Opera loads .02 seconds faster and uses 8mb less of RAM, but I'm sorry, until they come out with every single feature that I take for granted via Firefox extensions, I'm not switching. Apparently instead of addons, Opera has these 'widgets,' which doesn't really make sense to me, because I thought the point of a widget is that you don't need a web browser to use them. So then I complain to my friends that Opera isn't customizable enough for me, and then they tell me it's actually more customizable because you can rearrange all the buttons! *sigh*

[Nemphael]

I would use Chrome, if not for Firefox's plugins~ I NEED Foxmarks (Xmarks), Downthemall, Skipscreen, Greasemonkey and Update Scanner. Most of these could be substitued, but I don't want to take the time to find another browser. =/

[0.7734]

I don't know about Chrome pulg-ins, but i can't browse without the spellchecker or the dark skins for websites from userstyles dot org. So I stay with Firefox

[OOPMan]

I'd be surprised if it didn't have some kind of web developer tools available (but not sure if it'd be as good as Firebug).

It does, Opera Dragonfly. Which is released under an open source license if I recall...
I have no idea how it is compared to Firebug, I've never used Firebug before.

DragonFly is actually pretty decent now. Not quite as nice as Firebug, but it does all the basics well enough.

[Awesomeness]

i can't browse without the spellchecker

Chrome spell checks and the dictionary has shenanigans in it!

[Woegjiub]

(adblock, firebug, netusage, 4chan extension, greasemonkey etc)

In order: I'm pretty sure Opera has ad blocking built in. I'd be surprised if it didn't have some kind of web developer tools available (but not sure if it'd be as good as Firebug). No idea about netusage. I hope by 4chan extension you mean this. Opera has user scripts built in, and can run simple GM scripts without modification (it can read the GM header comment, but doesn't have the GM_* helper functions that Greasemonkey has).

Don't get me wrong, opera is a great browser.
The interface just doesn't feel right, and I checked for adblocking - a no-go.
The 4chan extension is the official one from the website, I adblock inappropriate content by hand, and then submit reports.
One thing which I cannot understand is that although opera had mouse gestures first, firegestures just feels better to me.

[Amnesiasoft]

The interface just doesn't feel right

Then change it. You can do more things to the interface out of the box in Opera than Firefox.

and I checked for adblocking - a no-go.

You didn't look very hard.

although opera had mouse gestures first, firegestures just feels better to me.

Define "feels better." The gestures themselves? The way it recognizes them? If it's the former, you can change them to just about whatever you want. You can change every single shortcut in Opera, and even define platform specific ones if you want.

[jords]

FF for web development and heavy duty research (Zotero!) , chrome for normal web surfing.

[Woegjiub]

The interface just doesn't feel right

Then change it. You can do more things to the interface out of the box in Opera than Firefox.

and I checked for adblocking - a no-go.

You didn't look very hard.

although opera had mouse gestures first, firegestures just feels better to me.

Define "feels better." The gestures themselves? The way it recognizes them? If it's the former, you can change them to just about whatever you want. You can change every single shortcut in Opera, and even define platform specific ones if you want.

Nope, this is stuff you can't change. I mean the way the menu behaves, etc.
I'd have to block everything by hand?
And yes, how it felt.
The entirety of its interface feels wrong, it's closed source, and firefox's addons just make everything so wonderful.

If any browser seriously wants to take down firefox, it *needs* addons.

[Amnesiasoft]

The...way the menu behaves...? How does it behave any differently than any other menus?
You only said there wasn't adblocking. But you can always just install a premade urlfilter.ini file for Opera.
"yes, how it felt" is not even a proper response to that question. I asked you to tell me what how it felt means, not reiterate your point.
And if the entirety of the interface feels wrong, you can, you know, change it?
And I'd disagree that a browser needs addons to compete with Firefox. Opera is capable of doing pretty much everything the majority of firefox users cite as "necessary add ons" out of the box. Ad blocking, userscripts, developer tools, noscript. The only one I can think of is "Down Them All," which I've never actually found a need for.

[cerbie]

Capable does not mean good. Has Opera actually ripped off Noscript, yet? Last I knew you had to change many options multiple UI layers deep, where Noascript has a menu that opens right there in front of you, with list of sites, and whether they are allowed or blocked. ABP is infinitely easier to use than opera's included blocking functionality. You can simply open a list of everything loaded on the page that can be blocked, and make a rule that blocks what you want. I tried Opera again a couple months ago, and it still didn't have either of those done anywhere near as well as FF's add-ons.

Opera was also slower than FF once it got too big to fit in RAM (as in minutes to change tabs--no idea WTF it keeps doing).

[Amnesiasoft]

F12


And really, these are less work than Firefox. In Opera, I set them up once. In Firefox I have to worry about updates breaking compatability with my Add-Ons.

EDIT: Oh hey, I found a handy list! Top 150 popular Firefox Extensions and Opera.

[cerbie]

cnn.com:

Spoiler:

noscript.png (18.1 KiB) Viewed 3791 times

Spoiler:

abp.png (40.71 KiB) Viewed 3791 times

I generally have no problems with incompatibilities due to updates. In the cases I have, there's either another add-on that does the same work, or it's a matter of waiting a few days for the compatibility list to include the newest version. I think it's been a problem 2 or 3 times since I started using Phoenix.

[Amnesiasoft]

That looks entirely unpleasant to use (See? I can complain about the UI too!). Not to mention after that whole Adblock/NoScript thing, I'm really not interested in trusting the guy developing NoScript.

[cerbie]

The alternative is waiting on ad and tracker sites, unless Opera gets something similar. Not really a good alternative, when they make 10-20Mb/s feel slow.

[Amnesiasoft]

You're...you're not even looking at the things I'm say, are you? The urlfilter.ini file I linked earlier should block those out.

[cerbie]

You're...you're not even looking at the things I'm say, are you? The urlfilter.ini file I linked earlier should block those out.

Yes, I am. They just suck in comparison.

ABP allows one-click access to anything in the current page (that list in the image is what you get when you click the ABP button). So, if it is not already blocked, I can go ahead and add filters right then and there, and it takes effect right immediately. Likewise, I can turn off or edit filters in use from there. A text file to go find and edit with another app simply does not compare.

Noscript has detailed setup, but comes with good defaults, so you only need to really go in and edit them to make it a proper Flashblock replacement. With Noscript, you can use JS on one page, but not run the tracker, or rotating ads, or whatever else from somewhere else. Since most forum software has nifty features on each page using JS (mainly hidden menus), this comes in quite handy.

I will cede that the new redirect protection is annoying, though.

[Amnesiasoft]

No, the URL filter will block those things out regardless of your Javascript setting. And You don't have to just edit the file itself. There's the block content button in the context menu. The file I linked is just a pre-built database of content to block.

And having played with NoScript on my dad's laptop since he wanted Firefox, no, it doesn't come with good defaults. Right out the gate most sites did not work, even popular ones that could be considered reasonably trustworthy (say, YouTube?)

[cerbie]

No, the URL filter will block those things out regardless of your Javascript setting.

I wasn't saying it had anything to do with javascript.

And You don't have to just edit the file itself. There's the block content button in the context menu. The file I linked is just a pre-built database of content to block.

OK, but how do you block it all as easily and quickly? When you go to block content, you don't get nearly as useful of a list of blockable content, nor quick and easy filter options, as ABP.

And having played with NoScript on my dad's laptop since he wanted Firefox, no, it doesn't come with good defaults. Right out the gate most sites did not work, even popular ones that could be considered reasonably trustworthy (say, YouTube?)

That's not what I mean by the good defaults. I mean what it blocks on white- and black-listed sites (particularly the plugins tab of the options), and that it, by default, notifies you that it's working. By default, every site is blocked, which is good, IMO. Permanently allowing, say, Youtube on, takes all of 1-2 seconds, the very first time. And, if you want the other way, there is, *drumroll* ... YesScript!

[Philosophe]

Firefox at the moment, but I re-downloaded Chrome yesterday and I'm getting a huge kick out of the speed and (particularly) the fact that the tabs won't all go down if one crashes.

However, until Chrome includes adblocking of the Adblock+ calibre, I will never use it for anything more than a laugh.

Not to mention all of the other FF extensions whose absence in Chrome is painful.

[ash.gti]

For chrome you can try http://www.adsweep.org/ It has an extension that acts like adblock+.

Chrome has an extension API but its not as used as FF.

[Nemphael]

Okay, I've started using Chrome over Firefox for the speed. Firefox is still my swiss army knife (Update Scanner, Skipscreen, IE tab (When using FF anyway), Xmarks/Weave and DownThemAll), but Chrome has apparently got some plugins of its own now.

The features I really miss are Update Scanner and something like Weave/Xmarks (To sync bookmarks (Across computers and preferably browsers too) - otherwise a tedious process to do manually). I guess Update Scanner could be replaced by RSS feeds, but I don't really like those... Well, anyway.

[Woegjiub]

after reading everything you pointed out, I've had another shot at opera, and I have far fewer issues than I had thought.
one main thing which bugs me is that I can't put any buttons on the menu toolbar, or disable the menu toolbar.
the problem with mouse gestures was that I can't go next/last tab... but, I prefer how opera uses right mouse+ wheel to swap tabs.
There are some great features, and it appears to be more responsive than firefox in linux (not hard to do).
It seems that adblocking is inferior to adblock plus, and script control is equal (missing simplicity, and ease of selection, but has some nice options in the menu)
everything seems hidden though, harder to get at.
with firefox, the config is clearly laid out, and addons make everything easily accessible, and sorted.

They both have definite plusses, but IMO firefox wins out (probably just through familiarity).

If google want chrome to work on chrome os, they should hurry up with chrome for linux though....

[Amnesiasoft]

disable the menu toolbar.

If you're on a unix based system, you should be able to press Alt+F11 to toggle it on/off. If not, go to the keyboard shortcut manager, there's one in there that says "Alt+F11, Unix" (or something along those lines), delete the unix part. Then you can disable the menu bar.

If I know what you mean by how gestures cycle through tabs, go to Preferences>Advanced>Tabs and switch from "Cycle in recently used order" to "Cycle in tab bar order." If that's not quite what you meant, go to the mouse preferences and change them from "Cycle" to "Switch."

[Woegjiub]

disable the menu toolbar.

If you're on a unix based system, you should be able to press Alt+F11 to toggle it on/off. If not, go to the keyboard shortcut manager, there's one in there that says "Alt+F11, Unix" (or something along those lines), delete the unix part. Then you can disable the menu bar.

If I know what you mean by how gestures cycle through tabs, go to Preferences>Advanced>Tabs and switch from "Cycle in recently used order" to "Cycle in tab bar order." If that's not quite what you meant, go to the mouse preferences and change them from "Cycle" to "Switch."

That's one awesome thing about it: so many options.
Again, laid out/labelled badly though.
I'd already changed what you said, I was referring to up+left moves to the tab on the left of the current, and up+ right for the right.
Which is obviously just a preference from firefox.
Thanks for the tip with the menu.

[OOPMan]

Still running the latest Opera Unite build Lots of fun And stable too

[aPawn]

I use Chrome. I love it. The biggest plus for me is the small, simple, and straightforward interface. It's the smallest I've ever seen. One of the best things, if not the best, is having the tabs show up in the title bar, basically eliminating the space normally taken up by the title bar. I keep my bookmarks bar hidden, and if I want it, it's just a ctrl B away, but it automatically shows up in the new tab page, so there's no real reason to ever use it. It's just wonderfully small. It's also fast when browsing, fast on startup, etc. The way that all the tabs are independent is very nice, because I really have used that (had one tab freeze up, so I just switched to another). I'm honestly ignorant about any security holes. I know Google claims that Chrome is very secure, but they, being the makers, are not completely credible. I use common sense though, and eschew shady looking sites. I have AVG, I scan all my downloads, etc. Maybe I'm not protected, but I don't have hard evidence saying so, and don't have any infections yet, and I've been using Chrome for a while. The skins are cool too. I've found that they make the program open just a little slower (so it's not quite instantaneous) but it's still very fast, and they don't impact browsing speed. The greyscale skin is very aesthetically pleasing to me. And I've gotta love the customizability of the new tab page. The way downloads show up in a little collapsable bar at the bottom is nice too. I've always been a little annoyed by the way Firefox's downloads manager works. Finally, chrome is extremely reliable with popups. I don't have to install any special popup blocker tool bar or anything (no tool bars, actually, and none are necessary). I have never, ever had an unwanted popup go unblocked, and neither have I ever had a wanted popup bocked. Chrome definitely had some problems when if first came out, and it didn't meet my standards then, but now, it's WAY better.

Besides Chrome, I like Opera, which has pretty much all the benefits of Chrome, except it's not as sleek. Its interface is bigger, and it's a little slower. I do like the fact that with Opera, all of one's favorites can be stored online on a sort of Opera account, so when I start using a new computer for an extended period of time (such as at school), they're all there for me. I have heard from various sources that Opera is the most secure, so Opera is my second choice.

[shadyraptors]

[honorious]

dude, chrome's minimalism just gets me downright hot, i'd use firefox if it looked nicer and didn't run slow for me, as it is chrome is beautiful, like safari plus firefox all in one

[Alexander The 1st]

Personally, I prefer IE because it loads faster on all the computers I've seen that have FireFox and IE [All Windows XP computers, but on my Vista computer, IE still loads very fast] and hey; if I'm going to browse the internet, it's usually because I want to browse it NOW, not in a minute or so, so that it can be all 'proper' and such.

Not to mention the only weird issue I've encountered in my own validated code was in my latest project, where a textarea would normally render properly, but after regenerating it, rendered it in twice the vertical space it was supposed to [A.K.A. rendered space for two, one after the other], where only one textarea appeared, leaving a bit of empty space on the page. Also, only if I was logged in at the same time - if not, it worked fine.

~~~

Personally, I don't understand the point of noScript or AddBlocker - the advertisements [Sometimes run by scripts so that the can provide dynamic linking, and Flash, and all that jazz] are what are paying for the bandwith you just used to recieve data from that server - yes, we pay the good old ADSL/Broadband/Dialup/Cable fees, but we don't pay the server for giving us that information from the site, so we also do not intuitively pay for the developer who created that content, be it the web developer, the reporter, videographer, actors, etc.

I personally will take advertisments on the edges or in the middle [Not a popup, though] of my page, as long as it is free to view the site - I'll just not look at the advertisments unless they are useful to me. Simple, easy, and I get the resulting page at no cost to me.

Besides, I'd like people to view ads on my pages, so that I don't pay server fees and content-developer fees on top of bandwith I pay for home use.

~~~~

I feel so unnoticed about my points about IE.

Any way, my sites most of the times look exactly the same in IE, especially the simpler ones I make, the more complex ones which look like flash pages due to a Javascript/CSS combination can look some what off on IE. But really, essentially all my clients really never get a visit from people in IE, neither does my site, so I guess I should feel flattered to that my designs appeal tot the sensible mostly. My own site has some issues of IE not supporting z-index, letter-spacing, and of course older versions not supporting PNG-24 and opacity (yeah, I'm CSS 3.0, it's not a recommendation yet, but it's a standard and the opacity CSS is just too good to ignore for DHTML)

Edit: How could I forget SVG? Internet explorer does not support it, SVG combined with javascript is an immensely powerful tool for dynamic web pages and even static SVG advantages are boundless, also, wikipedia's policy is to replace as many of its images with SVG as possible, is wikipedia a lazy web site made by lazy people now? Or does wikipedia simply take advantages of some of the most powerful web technologies and says to suckers that use IE 'You're probably too stupid to know wikipedia exists any way, get lost.'

I actually like it if my sites look like crap on IE, it's a protest against this practice and the more sites look like crap on it, the less people use IE, the more sits that can use proper coding. Vive la resistance, je deteste l'occipatión d'internet.

If your clients are not getting links from IE, and yet they're getting you to redesign their pages, perhaps they would consider it more of a successful investment if you did always support IE, thus allowing IE users to view the page, and grant them more viewers/members?

I'm presuming their paying you for a site re-design was likely for the purpose of getting more views, since that would allow them to recieve income from the redesign, yeah?

~~~

If CSS 3.0 is not recommended yet, why are you using it? If it's still in Beta [A.k.a HTML 5, which is how I'm understanding why it's not recommended], isn't it likely to change on you without notice? This shouldn't even be a complaint from a developer; "What I'm developing on isn't standardised yet, and IE won't display it properly!"

~~~

SVG, eh?

I dunno, looks like IE7 supports it - where's your basis of this?

IE7 view of wikipedia page of SVGs, with svg file on it.

svg.png (151.5 KiB) Viewed 3581 times

~~~

Also, simple question about the whole EU Win7 deal - if the users don't start off with IE, how do they get FireFox, Opera, Safari, etc.?

Rather, how do you think they WILL?

IE's should still be included because it'll solve the easy way of "Wait, how am I going to research these browsers to decide which one I want to get, when that information is on the internet, and in order to view information on the internet, I need an internet browser, which I need to get to go to the internet to find out more information about?"

Chicken and Egg scenario, yeah?

Or at least, to the non-1337.

[phlip]

SVG, eh?

I dunno, looks like IE7 supports it - where's your basis of this?

IE7 view of wikipedia page of SVGs, with svg file on it.

That image is a PNG file... MediaWiki automatically renders all SVGs as PNGs for view, exactly because so many people use IE which can't see SVG files without a plugin. Pretty much the only difference between uploading a SVG and a PNG as far as a user is concerned is that the SVG can be shown at a higher resolution on a certain page if the editor wants, without losing quality.

Indeed, that very page you're looking at has a section on SVG compatibility in web browsers.

[Alexander The 1st]

Nevermind then, I stand corrected.

Isn't that what alt and title text are for, though, in general? To supply a description of the image when it won't load?

In hindsight, after looking at it, looks remarkably like .swf, which IE has a add-on for; I should be surprised they don't have a .svg add-on as well, then. Which I am now, I guess.

[Amnesiasoft]

there is an add on for SVG. phlip just said that. He said it has no native support for them. In fact, I think Google even has a plugin for IE to support SVG.