What web browser do you use? (poll)

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ajkula66 · #31 Post by **ajkula66** » Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:36 pm

I'm getting to really like K-meleon...my flavour of the month, if you will...

New Firefox is also a lot better than anything from 3.x generation IMO...

hunterman223 · #32 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Apr 13, 2011 5:14 pm

For years I have used firefox, and I really loved firefox 4. I recently installed google chrome just to try it, and I haven't looked back. It now supports both adblock and lastpass, which is really all I cared about with firefox, and it is BLAZING fast. I thought firefox was fast until I tried chrome. It opens in a fraction of a second and sports a nice, clean, minimal UI. What else do you need in a browser?

Colonel O'Neill · #33 Post by **Colonel O'Neill** » Sun Apr 17, 2011 7:52 pm

I found Chrome's interface bulky and unintuitive. Plus Chrome's chrome (lol) takes up way too much space for me (as does every other browser OOB) especially in this widescreen era.

Firefox 4 is plenty fast (although Pale Moon 4 seems way faster) and has the customizability that I need. I've managed to reduce the vertical space taken by the browser chrome to 40 pixels, and that's as much as I can comfortably squeeze out of it. (It becomes 20 if I choose to hide the address bar.)

I'm also not quite amused by how Chrome handles itself (platform timer resolution, random resources usage, RAM hogging, etc.). What kills it for me is the whole phone home part of it, so I'd consider SRWare Iron before Chrome for that reason.

EDIT: Now 35 pixel high user chrome, with address bar independent of tab bar.
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5403 ... mesize.png
Chrome coming in at 60px and IE9 at 53px. PROBLEM, MINIMIALISTIC (without sacrificing functionality)?

Still trying to figure out where else I can shrink the tab bar vertically. I think I'm at the limit.

hunterman223 · #34 Post by **hunterman223** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 11:32 am

It seems to me that with chrome, you either love it or hate it. It definitely lacks in the customisation department, but if you're okay to begin with it's not a problem. I don't like he default baby blue (yek) so i switch to a grey theme. I don't know about those issues, but on my machines it uses very little memory and loads very quickly, which is important. (if I want to know something I want to know it NOW

)

#35 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 1:07 pm

hunterman223 wrote:It seems to me that with chrome, you either love it or hate it. It definitely lacks in the customisation department

Exactly, that is why I dislike it.

I have been playing around with some of the settings in Opera and Windows 7 to gain some vertical real estate in my browser (and other apps) on my new X220. I am pretty happy with my settings now. I put the Windows taskbar on the right side of the screen, removed 2 taskbars from Opera, and moved a 3rd Opera taskbar to the right side of the browser.

Colonel O'Neill · #36 Post by **Colonel O'Neill** » Mon Apr 18, 2011 8:27 pm

It's definitely love/hate. I have a friend who absolutely will not budge from her Chrome. (Complains about poor battery life, but said friend runs Chrome and Skype on battery despite advice to the contrary.)

There doesn't seem to be any way to disable those annoying animations everywhere. If I jab Ctrl+T as fast as I can on SRWare Iron, CPU usage maxes out. Doing the same in Firefox only gets me up to 30% with tab animations off.

http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/1111/ramp.png
Almost identical pages loaded (didn't feel like logging into sites; some stuck at login page). That said, it's a portable copy of SRWare Iron, so I don't know if it's storing some data in RAM instead of dumping it to disk.

Scarce vertical space is scarce.
I once shoulder-glanced at a laptop once. Person was reading a PDF from the school site. I'd say 25% of the vertical space was FF3 browser chrome. Another 25% was the school site itself's upper navigation pane. 5% was Adobe Reader's own toolbar. Another 5% was the taskbar. So all in all, there was only about 40% of the vertical space devoted to the document. That and it looked to be a 1366x768 screen. There was much facepalm.

jdk · #37 Post by **jdk** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 8:44 pm

Opera. It has rendering quirks, but it has two redeeming features that I've relied upon for years:

1) Synchronization of information (bookmarks, speed dial, history, etc) across multiple computers/phones/whatever out of the box, without any required add-ons. Firefox just added this in 4.0, which was about five years too late for me.
2) Traditional bookmarks menu. I've had hundreds of sites sorted into categories and subcategories for at least as long as I've been using Opera Sync, and probably longer. Firefox 4 and Chrome are so unintuitive with how they deal with bookmarks anymore, they just want you to "star" it and use the awesomebar to type. Garbage.

bgalakazam · #38 Post by **bgalakazam** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 4:36 am

Opera. Time-proven browser, will always be great, no matter what FF and Chrome fanboys say.

Remember 5-6 years ago: "FF is the best browser, screw everything else."
Similarly, in the past 1-2 years: "Chrome is the best browser, screw everything else."

Fanboys will asways give the current "in" browser more usage %, along with the pathetic attemps of M$ and G00gle to limit Opera compatibility. Nevertheless, Opera will continue to exist as it has always been and it will always have a market share.

hunterman223 · #39 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 8:05 am

bgalakazam wrote:Opera. Time-proven browser, will always be great, no matter what FF and Chrome fanboys say.

Remember 5-6 years ago: "FF is the best browser, screw everything else."
Similarly, in the past 1-2 years: "Chrome is the best browser, screw everything else."

Fanboys will asways give the current "in" browser more usage %, along with the pathetic attemps of M$ and G00gle to limit Opera compatibility. Nevertheless, Opera will continue to exist as it has always been and it will always have a market share.

That's not really how it goes. Reading through this thread you will see quite a variety of browsers, not just My Browser, Screw Everything Else.

I've tried all of the mainstream browsers, including Opera. The only one I didn't take to was IE, especially 9. I could happily live with any of the others. I choose to use Chrome because I like it's speed and it's integration with Google services. I do not notice any CPU usage spikes or memory usage issues, although maybe they corrected that in the latest release.

ozzymud · #40 Post by **ozzymud** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 10:07 am

Back in the day, when it was IE or Netscape... i used IE... did so until like Firefox 2 (maybe 1.5ish), I had tried every browser under the sun, even Linux browsers (linux was so awfull back then). I tried Opera and Safari... not customizeable enough, that's when I fell in love with Firefox... plugins/greasemonkey/custom builds (I actually use Pale Moon, a custom compiled Firefox). I loathe the new Firefox 4, hopefully chrome gets better or plugins can fully cure 4... Chrome is AWESOME for flash games... WAY faster then Opera/Safari/IE & Firefox... At least in a day to day test with full configs... My wife uses it for facebook flash games (general browsing she prefers Firefox).

Besides the speed of chrome in some things (and speed of running it don't count for me, my machine/browser is litterally open 24/7) [\\BEDROOM has been up for: 49 day(s), 12 hour(s), 10 minute(s), 2 second(s)] I haven't found a feature in another browser that isn't albe to be customized into Firefox either via editing the chrome, using a plugin, changing the about:config, or with greasemonkey.

I'm no fanboy, I use what works for me...

WinXP SP2, Pale Moon (Firefox) 3.6.14, Thunderbird 2.0.0.25

The main thing I try for these days is opensource software (I know, i use windows... I really do want to give Linux a fair shake, but I play games... and that is still a hassle under Linux). But 99% of my software is now either public domain, no strings freeware, or opensource.

P.S. Someone mentioned portability, my thunderbird/firefox profiles are stored on a NAS server with VPN access... so i am able to use MY stuff whereever, even thru portableapps on a thumb drive on someone elses machine. Although normally on vacation I'll just copy the profiles to the thumb drive, NAS/VPN works when I need something NOW.

hunterman223 · #41 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:53 pm

ozzymud wrote:I'm no fanboy, I use what works for me...

Pretty much sums up how I feel too...

Colonel O'Neill · #42 Post by **Colonel O'Neill** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 12:56 pm

ozzymud wrote:I'm no fanboy, I use what works for me...

Well said.

Anyone else using the Nightly build of Firefox 7?

hunterman223 · #43 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 1:14 pm

Firefox 7?!

Nothing like skipping 3 versions ahead!

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

Colonel O'Neill · #44 Post by **Colonel O'Neill** » Wed Jun 01, 2011 6:53 pm

hunterman223 wrote:Nothing like skipping 3 versions ahead!

Yeah they're taking on Chrome's development schedule.

Their new IonMonkey JavaScript engine looks like it's giving V8 a run for it's money.

bgalakazam · #45 Post by **bgalakazam** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:50 am

@hunterman223, @ozzymud

I wasn't talking about people here, but the general public

.

Also, I think FF4 is actually the best FF so far, why don't you like it exactly?

Colonel O'Neill · #46 Post by **Colonel O'Neill** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:53 am

bgalakazam wrote:Also, I think FF4 is actually the best FF so far, why don't you like it exactly?

What is it about the new Firefox that irks you so?

bgalakazam · #47 Post by **bgalakazam** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:00 am

I like the design, maybe I am very attached to it as it imitates Opera's, also, believe it or not, FF3.X was crashing a lot for me throughout several machines, including at uni. My wife hasn't noticed this issue with FF4 since she has been using it on her computer.

ozzymud · #48 Post by **ozzymud** » Thu Jun 02, 2011 5:41 am

I will eventually move to FF4 as well as Win7... I don't much care for change though... and making FF4 is a bit tougher then transparently getting my wife's Thunderbird back to looking like 2 when she unknowingly upgraded to 3 (I might even goto Thunderbird 3 now)... But I installed 4, and came close to getting the feel of 3 back... but I still need to wait for a few more plugins to be invented before I'm totally there

I keep checking out Chrome... maybe it will "do it" for me eventually, not yet though... Don't think I'll ever be a Safari or Opera user, just too different from what I'm used to.

Pretty much stuck with windows (avid gamer), but at least I've been able to convert a few from IE (was able to set up Firefox and through plugins/tweaks, make it look IDENTICAL to IE... for a buddy who wouldn't even give Firefox or any other browser for that matter a shot, this was in the IE6 days

)

As far as what I wasn't impressed with in FF4... geese, what a list... I been researching and I know how to "fix" pretty much all of it... but OOBE...

menu bar missing(replace by an ugly button), tabs are above address, status bar missing, address strip all mis-organized(used to ff3), missing bookmarks toolbar, glass/aero/transparency blow imo...

I know all this is easily fixable, and most of my plugins are now compatible with 4 (Although i like the older greasmonkey plugin, and to use 4, i would HAVE to upgrade it)...

There is just too much hassle to get it to where I am confortable... so... eventually unless something better comes along... or not

Nigellus · #49 Post by **Nigellus** » Sun Jun 05, 2011 10:35 pm

I use Firefox, but that doesn't mean I'm happy with it. They did something to it that made it a lot more resource-hungry, it seems. (Or maybe it's all the scripts-heavy web pages that seem to be all the rage these days

)

I do like the privacy-friendly add-ons.

Microsoft is going to have to do something pretty amazing to IE to ever get me to use that one again. It may be because I'm running an older system, (this could be part of the problem with the newer incarnations of firefox as well), but all of the newer versions of IE have slowed down my entire system when in use, and I'm not alone.

Back when IE 7 started coming with Windows updates, one of the most common IE related requests from my clients was to somehow downgrade to IE6. We ended up instituting a company policy of never installing the browser updates from the Windows update bundle.

Nigellus · #50 Post by **Nigellus** » Sun Jun 05, 2011 10:43 pm

Colonel O'Neill wrote: I'm also not quite amused by how Chrome handles itself (platform timer resolution, random resources usage, RAM hogging, etc.). What kills it for me is the whole phone home part of it, so I'd consider SRWare Iron before Chrome for that reason.

I completely agree. It seems faster at first glance, but it gets as resource hungry as the new Firefox fairly quickly, especially if you utilize multiple tab browsing, which I always do.

hunterman223 · #51 Post by **hunterman223** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 4:49 pm

@Colonel O'Neill: Thought I would add that I have switched to SRWare Iron. I don't notice any performance differences, less memory usage, or any less CPU spikes, (none to begin with) but it's a more secure browser and it works with all of my Chrome extensions, and syncs my Bookmarks with my Google account. The interface is also surprisingly similar. Two windows side by side and you couldn't tell which is which, save for the cooler icon that Iron uses.

It also loads just as quickly as Chrome did, which I didn't really expect at all. Huh, interesting. Well, I'm sticking with it for the time being as there's no point in using Chrome when Iron is more secure with all the same benefits and features of Chrome.

ozzymud · #52 Post by **ozzymud** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 5:14 pm

As a side note, I voted that i use Firefox, but in actuality it is Pale Moon 3.6.17, basically a recompiled version of Firefox that takes advantage of instructions in modern cpu's to make it run quite a bit faster.

AMATX · #53 Post by **AMATX** » Tue Jun 07, 2011 8:53 pm

WHOA! This PALEMOON stuff is really interesting

Never heard of it...an running version 4.0.7. as of five minutes ago and it -does- appear to be snappier than Firefox 4...will investigate further...

Thanks for the tip.

MrPeter1985 wrote:PALEMOON!

Its a clone of Firefox modified for Windows. It uses everything firefox uses. Extensions, add on's and themes. Firefox was made for linux.

I use to like Chrome myself, but after a while of usage it loves to crash. So a no go for me.

Read about Palemoon here ---> http://www.palemoon.org/

#1 Reason to use IE ---> http://ellisbenus.com/wp-content/upload ... rowser.jpg

hunterman223 · #54 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:43 am

Just tried Pale Moon as well. It is definitely snappier than Firefox 4, but not as snappy as Chrome or SRWare Iron. (at least on my machine) Again as with SRWare Iron and Chrome the UI is quite similar, and the overall look and feel is very similar, verging on identical.

ozzymud · #55 Post by **ozzymud** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 4:24 pm

Just tried SRWare Iron, it is indeed snappy too, but so was Chrome when I had 1st installed it... I do like it's MISSING "features" versus Chrome...

http://www.srware.net/en/software_srwar ... s_iron.php

The lack of auto-update running all the time is a good one. With browser, e-mail, and task manager... I normally only have 22 processes running in windows... I like to keep it that way

For anyone reading this thread...

Firefox ---> Pale Moon is Firefox optimized for specific CPU's (SSE2)
Chrome ---> SRWare Iron is Chrome(Chromium) with garbage removed, and some usefull stuff added

hunterman223 · #56 Post by **hunterman223** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 5:01 pm

I do miss Chrome's search suggestions though. Supposed to be more secure without them though, so I'll live.

Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

ozzymud · #57 Post by **ozzymud** » Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:35 pm

search suggestions, instant search... I think it all ruins Google, I started using Google WAY back because of it's simplicity... In the past year or so, it has really became annoying... so i went to archive.org (The Wayback Machine), and snagged the Google home page from WAY back, popped it into a folder on my webserver, now myself, family and friends use it...

http://google.conradshome.com/

View source on the current google page... rediculous for a page I constantly goto... here is the source of mine, notice HTML 3.2

Code: Select all

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"><HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Google Simple</TITLE>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<META name="GENERATOR" content="Notepad">
<META name="description" content="A google home page with an old school feel, no modern gadgets included. This is JUST a simple home page.">
<META name="keywords" content="google,classic,autocomplete off,disable sidebar,old google">
</HEAD>
<BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000" link="#000099" vlink="#003366" alink="#000099">
<CENTER>
<IMG src="images/Title_HomePage.gif" width=555 height=130 border=0 alt="Google">
<TABLE width="100%" border=0><TR><TD align=center>
<FORM action="http://www.google.com/search" method=get>
<FONT size=-1>Search the web using Google</font><BR>
<INPUT type=hidden value="en" name=hl>

<INPUT type=hidden value="hp" name=source>
<INPUT type=text value="" name=q size=40><BR>
<INPUT type=submit value="Google Search">&nbsp;<INPUT name=sa type=submit value="I'm Feeling Lucky"><BR>
</FORM>
</TABLE>
</CENTER>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Looks like it did when they 1st opened

Colonel O'Neill · #58 Post by **Colonel O'Neill** » Fri Jun 10, 2011 10:13 am

Yeah I have my parents using Pale Moon. Nightly 7.0a1 is about as snappy, even with a full complement of addons. TypeInference looks like it's going to give V8 a run for it's money.

IE9 is pretty awesome... except for the interface. =/

Chrome and SRWare Iron are built more or less of the same thing. (Chromium base; Google just wants to do things it's way). Both are RAM hungry once the tab count starts getting in the two digits area, though.

Google's random new stuff made me switch to Bing. (I know.)
That mirror is awesome, though. Needs a memorable shortened URL.

EDIT: OT: Anyone wanting to super-shrink their Firefox browser chrome, here's my hashed together (credit to whose scripts I chopped up XD) Stylish script.
Result (as posted before; new one is 2 pixels less): http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/5403 ... mesize.png
Worked best with FF6, don't want to backwards compatibilize for FF4/FF5/PM4, and have yet to make a tiny alteration for FF7. Best results with Tab Mix Plus' tab progress meter. Best maximized.

ozzymud · #59 Post by **ozzymud** » Sat Jun 11, 2011 3:18 am

Colonel O'Neill wrote:That mirror is awesome, though. Needs a memorable shortened URL.

http://tinyurl.com/gsimple

or make your own

Sites been up since like late 06, ain't going anywhere anytime soon, I got too much stuff on it

hunterman223 · #60 Post by **hunterman223** » Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:31 am

This is interesting. I took the values using "about:memory" measuring private working set. I don't know how accurate of a test this is, but it gives you some idea. Chrome version 12.0.742.100, Firefox version 5.0.

No Tabs Chrome: 65MB
No Tabs Firefox: 159MB

2 Tabs Chrome: 125MB
2 Tabs Firefox: 167MB

10 Tabs Chrome: 377MB
10 Tabs Firefox: 281MB

The exact same extensions and the exact same pages were loaded on each browser. Apparently chrome is better under lighter tab loads, with a slightly faster startup time. Firefox is much better with large amounts of tabs.

It varies how many tabs I have open at a time, though usually only 2-5 unless I am doing something "important". I am thinking of switching to Firefox none the less, I have been kinda missing it, though I don't like they're funny button placements. (The first thing I change

)