Be Excellent To Each Other

Hello there.

Ever since I received my first PC, about 7 years ago (yes, I was a late developer), which was broken and suffered from a screen that was permanently overcast with a green hue and made yellows and reds appear as the same colour, I was told that IE was BAD. I mean, evil.

So, I was educated in the was of Firefox, which served me well(ish). Since I was bought my first Mac I have had both Firefox and Safari installed, but I have found that recently Firefox has been a bit flaky. I started getting an error message about a crash reporter on both computers when I started up some mornings, which turned out to be a Firefox problem. Deleting and re-installing Firefox does the trick, but then a couple of months later it started doing it again.

I use Safari more or less exclusively now, and I have no problems with it all all (touch wood... WOOD - no wood around - argh! Coffee table is laminated, ah, side table, you come to my rescue) but I'd like to know if there have been any new developments since the first time I heard of Firefox all of those years ago, which is the last time I paid any attention to different browsers.

PS - I was going to attach a poll for voting, but I only knew of IE, Firefox and Safari, so seemed rather pointless. Also, one that the school had wen I was there - Net_____ I think, but I never got to use the school computers

Firefox for me.

I use Google Chrome. It's light and fast, though a little feature-bare at the moment.

I just love the ability to drag tabs out of the browser to spawn new browsers. I use this feature several times a day.

I always used to use Firefox but since March have switched over to Chrome. In exchange for letting Google into even more of life I now use a browser that just feels quick and clean. In that sense it's very much like Firefox was when it first came out, before it started bloating. As I don't use a Mac, I don't know what either is like on anything other than a PC.

At work I use IE 7, which does the job.

Safari on my Mac, Firefox on Windows.

Ooh, I had a look. Looks interesting and I'd be interested in trying it but there isn't a version for Mac, yet. I shall try and remember this for the future, though.

Excuse me for being a bit (LOADS) daft, but how does one go about changing browser? I use Internet Explorer and have no idea how to not use Internet Explorer, or indeed why I use Internet Explorer.

If you go here, Gill (or to the browser site of your choice) you can download and install Firefox/another browser - then you just launch Firefox instead of IE when you want to do your surfing

Do people still say 'surfing'?

I use IE8 at home on my PC and whatever was supplied with Mint

and IE 6 and 7 at work (two different systems)

Firefox isn't great on a Mac - the Windows version is much better. I use Safari on Macs/iPhones (not that I have a choice in the latter) and Chrome for Windows.

Oh, that's a shame. It's a lovely little browser right now, though. But a few extra options (such as controlling how tabs open and close etc.) would be nice.

Also, better support for graphics tablets, seeing as I now use mine exclusively instead of my mouse.

Is it worh trying Chrome? and can you run two browsers. As teh wife hates it every time i change stuff on the PC

I'd say it's worth trying. It isn't right for everyone, especially if you're coming from Firefox laden with addons; if you're coming from Internet Explorer there really isn't anything to lose.

When you install it, just tell it to NOT be the default browser. Your wife won't complain then, though any links you open through emails etc. will obviously still open in IE.

I run four browsers at the moment. I don't use Opera, Firefox or IE much, though.

I always used to have both Firefox and Safari working at the same time, so I am sure you can run two browsers simultaneously (stupidly, the reason I had both browsers working together is because my bookmarked sites were spread across both browsers, and for some reason I could never be bothered to move them over.)

Thanks folks...

It's handy if you want to log into Beex using a sock-puppet account, too.

I run seven for testing sites. It is incredibly annoying and laborious. Fortunately, a lot of them act the same as eachother; it's mainly Internet Explorer 6 and 7 I have to watch out for.

This ain't a scene, it's a goddamn browser race.

Google chrome. I used Firefox for many years until it started being shit. Last year it would crash for anything. Luckly, google chrome came out at the same time and i never had any problems since

I use the Fireyfox on Ubuntu & Explorer on Windows since it only gets used for getting drivers. (Windows partition is used exclusively for Ableton Live & Cakewalk Sonar)

I use Firefox when I'm working, because I can't imagine doing stuff without Firebug (and colorzilla) now.
At how for general browsing I use Chrome.

I have IE 8 and Firefox 3 as well. I tend to prefer printing pages in IE8. For some reason pages printed from Chrome just don't look right to me.

So having seen this thread, I thought I would look at the SavyGamer audience browser use, here it is:





Then it kind of tails off into obscurity.

Beex is the similar, but websites I make for the general public are still showing around 75-80% IE.

Geeks hate the IE

I can't believe Chrome has jumped up to third in such a short space of time.

Chrome doesn't even install itself into every user's profile, never mind take over the default - on my Vista laptop, it doesn't show up anywhere for Charl. Or are you one of those people who shares a single login for everyone? I'm not, even guests get their own profile (temporarily). This remains true even with Chrome's awesome incognito mode.

I use the Dev channel, so am up to 2.0.181.0 or something. It still uses an absolutely ridiculous amount of memory for Google Maps route printing - it shot up to 1.5GB just then for a Liverpool-York route.

Firefox at home, mostly, but I'm pretty happy to use IE too.

Safari on work and iphone.



Netscape navigator? Used that at uni for a bit, it was OK.

[nostalgia]The Netscape meteor storm was oddly relaxing to watch. [/nostalgia]

Netscape - yes, that's what used to be on the school computers - I remember some kid telling me how much cooler IE was, but I didn't understand what browsers were for, and he was annoying and did not impress with his geek speak.

Never saw that, but I did like the icon for the browser, which was like a ships wheel at the time.

You should give Opera a go Mimi. I haven't used it on the Mac to be fair, but it's quite a nice alternative to Safari / Firefox / IE.

Netscape Navigator was extremely good up until version 3, then it went extremely shit for v4, and I switched over to IE (3? 4?). I then used Mozilla for a while until it turned into Firefox (dabbling with Gecko and Opera along the way).

to the first bit. I use Firefox at home too though.

I was thinking about Opera as a replacement for Firefox, actually. I have only ever used Opera on Wii/DS consoles and wondered if there was a version available to use. I do like to have a second browser simply because I think to myself 'what if I only had one browser and it suddenly broke? How would I then access the internet to download a new browser?'

Is that a stupid/unessecary concern?

A little, because you should always be able to uninstall Safari (Mac) or IE (Windows) from your system restore thingy/Add or remove Windows Components).

IE8. Pretty sure I preferred 7 though.

Thanks Mimi

I found Firefox on OS X to be incredibly slow and unreliable. Safari is much better.

I used Shiira for about two years, but after Shiira 2.0 came out all the goodness, user friendliness and features seem to have been shelved, and the old version doesn't like newer versions of Flash.

But, see, I'd need to be able to access the internet to work out how on earth to do that via the use of Google and/or the good folks of beex.

I'm glad I am not the only one who prefers Safari on the mac, though, I always assume hat plenty of folks look down on most things like browsers that come ready-installed on a machine. I'm goign to get OPera down for a back-up though, because though I know it is stupid to do so, I know that I am even more stupid.

@Gill - I don't use a PC now but when I did I much preferred Firefox - no annoying windows popping up everywhere or any of that kind of thing.

Other than 8 does not crash as mush as 7, and if it does it will restore.

Mmm. I'm inclined to disagree. They know how to install better browsers is all. The IE hatin' has gone down a lot since IE7.

Geeks hate IE6 (or, rather, people that still use it) of course, and rightly so.

My experience has shown that it's less stable than 7, so far at least. I'll be happy with 8 when IEPro works properly with it, I think.

If on linux then Firefox with Konqueror (sic?) on standy.
If on Mac then Safari (beta) with Firefox & Opera in the dock but rarely used.
If on a Terminal then Lynx (which is surprisingly good)

I do like the new beta of safari and safari always seems 'leaner' on the Mac than Firefox.

I'm still running my old iBook & Firefox seems to hurt it more.

I would rather not use it, but my machine is so locked down I can't install anything

In beta 8 was less stable for me, seems a lot better now.

Probably about a third of the machines here are still on Windows 2000 so IE 6 is the latest they can use. Not ideal.

And is much the same for a lot of the IT world