Bow to the browser

[mahesh2k]

Firefox continues to supress other browsers with it's power.Recently netscape announced that they are no longer going to develop future versions of netscape.They will continue to provide support for their current version 9.But they are encouraging the use of mozzila browser to their users and visitors.This ultimately fails other browser which are using netscape engine.Like Neoplanet and many others.Netscape is out of browser race now and they may not able to put their web standard from now on.This clearly makes firefox on the top of others.

The future holds only to 3-top browsers.

Safari: It will remain alive as long as apple thinks.It will do exist on apple OS,so that apple can implement their operating specific settings and features.

Internet Explorer
No chance that firefox is going to repalce it officially on windows.Microsoft is bending to

open source technologies unofficially (.Net Mono Devlopement)  but they are not going to implement any open source framework on windows other than java.Lauch of Blend proved that AJAX,Ruby and Python will be incorporated in Blend but again MS is not making any claims officially about it.

Firefox
It will continue to rise.It is currently the only secure cross paltform browser.Other brosers which are based on gecko engine like flock(Same as mozzila) will continue to have little market share.I'm not sure about opera cause i've personnaly done survey for this browser in many internet cafes.and the users are complaining about its stability and security.It's just my observation.Your experience may vary.

So what is your opinion?

[app103]

I think you forgot about Opera

[tomos]

well he mentions Opera ... [but under Firefox heading]

I'm not sure about opera cause i've personnaly done survey for this browser in many internet cafes.and the users are complaining about its stability and security.

-mahesh2k (January 13, 2008, 04:51 AM)

anything I've ever read about browsers though, says that Opera is the most secure of all

[icekin]

I have all three installed (IE, FF, Opera). I've always admired many features of Opera, but because FF works better with more sites, I've always tried to implement Opera's features in FF through plugins and use FF as my main browser.

But since Opera 9.5 beta, I've set Opera as my main browser. While it eats about the same amount of RAM as FF, it renders a hell lot faster and the whole application feels snappier. Even on poorly coded sites with broken HTML (e.g. Myspace), Opera doesn't hang. On mobile devices, I think that Opera enjoys better market share on desktop. Opera mini is far better than its mobile counterparts.

As for IE, I only use it when nothing else works. Sadly, there are still websites that will work only with IE. IE7 is certainly an improvement in features, but is slower than IE6 and still far behind FF and Opera.

Safari is frankly a joke of a browser. I tried it on Windows and even lesser known browsers like K-Meleon and Seamonkey have more features out of the box. Its resource usage isn't small either, especially for such limited features. I understand that Safari on a Mac is a very different experience since its integrates closely with the rest of the system much like IE on Windows. But even then its features seem limited over FF or Opera.

While the browser market clearly has dominant leaders, I would like to see more small and lite browsers such as K-Meleon and Dillo continue to develop and make new versions. Dillo is particularly attractive due to its tiny resource usage, but development on it seems to have stopped. Flock on the other hand is really FF with more bang out of the box.

[Lashiec]

Why is this in Developer's Corner? I think it may fit better in General Software Discussion.

Ya know, AOL was the primary economical force behind the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, many of the developers at Netscape went to Mozilla to develop the new OSS browsers, and Netscape based all future developments of Netscape in Mozilla and Firefox codebase, so it's natural they recommend you to use Firefox now. Besides, to recommend a browser which received its last update in 2001 (NeoPlanet) it's not exactly a good option

To call Opera insecure is like calling right now Firefox the most secure browser. It may gain you a few friends among the Firefox fanboys, but Secunia says another thing, so I'd like to know why the individuals involved in your survey say that. And all those security and privacy extensions are included with Opera, you only have to know how to use them. As always, software is only as secure as the person using it makes it to be.

And Flock it's all that Firefox wants to avoid: consuming high amounts of memory and becoming bloatware.

Anyway, don't worry. Presto and KHTML/WebKit will keep Gecko at bay. And maybe Trident in a far future

[urlwolf]

Actually, I agree with the list.
Opera is technically superior, but I think its management is horrid; Ignoring their users is not good for any kind of company. They will step on a landmine and remove theirselves from the genepool.

While innovative, they are the snobbish of the snobbish. How else can you explain having threads with thousands of users asking for features that are never implemented?

For example, the thread for PGP support rivals the one on notetakers here. They didn't even blink.

[Renegade]

My Browser Rant...

OK - well, not much of a rant for those that know me, but still, the point to having an Internet browser is that IT'S A TOOL!

The this vs. that vs. whatever with browsers is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo flogged to death.

I need to get back on track here...

Ok - so:

The future holds only to 3-top browsers.

Not really. Opera is still very much alive with an almost 3% marketshare (depending where you look). But mostly correct.

Anything with less than 0.5% is totally marginal.

The thing here is that there is NO reason for ANYONE to write YAB (Yet Another Browser). It's a profitless, silly market to get into.

The IE users don't care about another browser.

The Firefox fanboys will continue to rave about OSS/FOSS/<insert buzz phrase here> and whatever extension doesn't bring your computer to its knees with memory leaks (much like how Firefox has not been).

The Safari users will always be Apple fanboys and sneer at anyone on any other OS or whatever.

The Opera users will silently shrug for the most part.

The <insert browser name here> users will continue to develop the browser they use for themselves and the 3 other people that use it for 5 minutes before returning to one of the above...

The only possible market for browsers is specialize usage browsers that have very specific functionality (I'm building one for my own use but will likely never release it).

At the end of the day, IE will continue for a long time because it's just the natural default for the average computer purchased at any store. The browser warz will follow the platform warz in other words.

Sigh...

I use IE, FF and Opera for different things. They all serve different purposes for me.

Peace, Love, and Eternal Groovieness!

[mahesh2k]

Opera is secure.

Try to install it in internet cafe and watch how one user logs in with his username and password and gets log onto diffrent account.This problem never occured with Firefox & safari.Opera crashes so many times in comparison with any of the browser (it depends on your CPU memory also).Opera is not good choice if you save webpages for your study or anything.There is lot of problem properly saving and retriving the pages.Internet explorer is quite good at saving webpages,they have file format *.mht that saves image and html files together in file.that is cool.

Firefox is most secure

I don't care what secunia says.These secunia is b*#h of commercial software companies,they only tell the commercial truth.So i dont count their opinion.I don't care if firefox is secure or opera,i want the browser that is not crashing & is secure in internet cafes.As i spend most of my time on the internet cafes.

Safari is joke for browser definition

I don't think so,ask this to any apple user.They'll turn this thread into flame war.What mistake apple did is made safari available to Windows platform.Mistake is :

• Windows is highly saturated platform of developers.
  
• There is no appreciation for innation or portablity or any reason.
  
• Lot of criticism can be achieved for designing app for windows platform.
  
• Almost 6 user out 10 don't want to pay for software.
  
• They don't care if their information is accesible by Microsoft & google.,they want free thing.

[Lashiec]

This Opera crashing intrigues me, I've seen other people complaining about it, and I'd like to know why is this happening. In the almost two years I've been using Opera, it never crashed on me. Nor Firefox did (except on my old computer), only IE7 :D

Opera is as good as saving webpages as IE. The problem is that it defaults to save only the HTML page, without pictures. In the dropdown box for "Type", there are options to save in pure HTML, HTML with pictures *and* MHT. The ideal would be to save everything in PDF anyway, it's more portable.

Secunia the commercial truth? O-K, if you don't care about the vulnerabilities present in software, we could go back to IE6. Besides, if you want security, what are you doing using the preinstalled browsers in a internet cafe? Use a customized version of Portable Firefox so you can keep your personal information to yourself (well, if the computer has a keylogger installed...). Unless you don't have a pendrive, or the internet cafe does not allow "installing" (decompressing a file in a new folder in the desktop, really, no registry entries involved) new programs.

The 90% of the users want a browser, nothing more nothing less. Any improvement a particular browser may have it's ignored, they simply want something that works. For now this is what Internet Explorer provides, and those who did some more research, went for Firefox. In a Mac it's Safari, and in Linux is Firefox. Opera is for the elite ;D. At the end of the day, what matters to a person is to have a mean to an end, all the security considerations, extensions, mouse gestures, keyboard shortcuts and all that only matter to advanced users.

[icekin]

Safari is joke for browser definition

I don't think so,ask this to any apple user.They'll turn this thread into flame war.What mistake apple did is made safari available to Windows platform.Mistake is :

-mahesh2k (January 14, 2008, 03:05 AM)

Of course they will turn it into a flame war. While there are intelligent and matured Mac users out there, the majority that you find online will be blind fanboys. But not to say that Linux and Windows don't have their own fanbases. The ultimate measure of a program's success for me is this : the amount of work I can get done in a certain period of time. In that respect, Safari failed quite miserably on Windows and FF has come out tops, except when it crashes (occasionally).

• Windows is highly saturated platform of developers.
  

Agreed.

• There is no appreciation for innation or portablity or any reason.
  

There may not be emphasis on portability from Microsoft, but the users certainly appreciate it. See portableapps.com

• Lot of criticism can be achieved for designing app for windows platform.
  

Criticism against developers is not limited to Windows, though given its larger userbase, its easy to see how competiting software programs will all fight for a chunk of the user's time.

• Almost 6 user out 10 don't want to pay for software.
  

Most users on any OS don't want to pay for software if they can get it for free, which is why piracy (even for the Mac) thrives. A quick search on mininova for this week's torrent cloud will illustrate the point.

• They don't care if their information is accesible by Microsoft & google.,they want free thing.

If you get a good firewall, your information won't be so easily accessible to MS or Google. And what makes you think Apple would not like to know its customer's usage patterns as well?

[jgpaiva]

To each his owh. If you prefer firefox/ie to opera, that's your business. You can't say opera isn't the most secure browser, though. It's more than proved otherwise.

Still, if you only browse in internet cafes, lashiec is very right, you really shouldn't use the preinstalled browsers there.

Here are 2 solutions:
Portable Opera
Portable Firefox

[arunpawar]

Opera and Firfox are not quite useful for saving webpages.MHT format is workable only under windows it requires outlook to be installed on your system.But here so many guys are advocating opera,even if it creahes and not good for saving webpages.Again portable firefox and opera is not solution for cafes which don't allow ou to install anything.

PDF is not suitable for using to save webpages,look how much file size increase is there.Also while saving webpages look how succesfully they are saved.As far as saving webapges are concerened go with Internet explorer.

And what makes you think Apple would not like to know its customer's usage patterns as well?

Hey apple never released any software that tracks data from users computer to their server not even licesne or system information etc.On the otherhand windows does this to check the licesne,winbdows versionetc.

Google does this by reading your email and displaying ads.also Google desktop indexes your files on computer and organizes the search engine & advertisers accordingly.Evry google software is created keeping advertisers in mind,thats why apps are free.

Sometimes MS and Apple give something for free but not with advertising intention like google.

[f0dder]

For saving websites, I really love the scrapbook firefox extension. And best of all: it doesn't rely on proprietary file formats.

[icekin]

And what makes you think Apple would not like to know its customer's usage patterns as well?

Hey apple never released any software that tracks data from users computer to their server not even licesne or system information etc.On the otherhand windows does this to check the licesne,winbdows versionetc.

-arunpawar (January 15, 2008, 05:53 AM)

Okay, I'm just curious then, how does Apple OS update itself over the internet?

Google does this by reading your email and displaying ads.also Google desktop indexes your files on computer and organizes the search engine & advertisers accordingly.Evry google software is created keeping advertisers in mind,thats why apps are free.

If so, Google will do that on any OS their apps work on, including the Mac (if they make any apps for the mac). But fortunately, there are other options for indexing and searching besides Google that will not show advertising information. See Locate32 for a great example.

[f0dder]

And what makes you think Apple would not like to know its customer's usage patterns as well?

Hey apple never released any software that tracks data from users computer to their server not even licesne or system information etc.On the otherhand windows does this to check the licesne,winbdows versionetc.

-arunpawar (January 15, 2008, 05:53 AM)

Okay, I'm just curious then, how does Apple OS update itself over the internet?

-icekin (January 15, 2008, 06:37 AM)

Does it do that at all? I thought you had to shell out $100 for every point release :]

[Lashiec]

Opera and Firfox are not quite useful for saving webpages.MHT format is workable only under windows it requires outlook to be installed on your system.But here so many guys are advocating opera,even if it creahes and not good for saving webpages.Again portable firefox and opera is not solution for cafes which don't allow ou to install anything.

-arunpawar (January 15, 2008, 05:53 AM)

I don't get it. You can save pages, but you can't decompress a ZIP file?

Does it do that at all? I thought you had to shell out $100 for every point release :]

-f0dder (January 15, 2008, 06:40 AM)

That is the great announcement Steve Jobs is going to make today at MacWorld