Favourite browser?

stolzyboy

just to redeem myself, i wasn't sticking up for the stats, i was merely presenting them as i got them, no argument for or against

however, when i was in college, i used a macintosh with IE, and whenever we would do browser tests, it would come up with mozilla compatible everytime with javascript, php, asp, perl, so i guess the problem is all around, not just in favor of IE

that is just ONE situation out there, i am sure there are thousands more variables you could throw in there to screw up the count

Weedpacket

Yep; everyone was coding for Netscape ('cos that was the only significant player at the time when it came to all-singing all-dancing browsers) and using "Mozilla" to identify Netscape browsers: non-Netscape browsers would be served a trimmed-down version of the page. I wouldn't say that Netscape was being nonstandard, but adequate standards didn't at that time exist - Netscape was making it up as it went along.

Microsoft didn't want Internet Explorer to be left out, so identified it in the user agent string as "Mozilla compatible".

I knew things were going in the wrong direction when I saw that.

Gary_King

Nice to see that Mozilla has more votes than IE - there are probably one so many boards out of thousands where Mozilla is more popular than IE (but I assume that if everyone here voted, IE would still have more votes than Mozilla).

stolzyboy

hey weedpacket,

just for the record, i am not as senior(in age) as you may think, but nonetheless, nutscrape and ie were just about =, but ie was gaining ground fast

planetsim

I dont actually have a favourite. Ive used Opera and Netscape as well as IE (I wonder why).

Anyways to be honest and its been said before there really isnt a browser that is any good. They all have there bad points. I guess nothing is ever perfect.

Anyways IE - Mircosoft enough for any anti microsoft person to hate it. Although i use it because im too lazy to set any others as the defaul browser.

Mozilla havent used in a while so i cant say anything.

Netscape is pretty good. If you take AOL out of the picture. I like there sort of code highlighting when you view the source. But
Forms and CSS tables etc are screwed in it. Something they can fix for sure in there next release. As well as departing from AOL (The worlds worst ISP) no offence for anyone with them.

mogster

😃 I started out with Netscape 1.1! 😃
This was the first browser my isp shipped with their "connect-to-internet-packet" back in '97, and was already obsolete by the 2.0 GOLD-version by the time I got on the net @ home.

At work the hw/sw-situation was:
- black and white 19" NCD terminal
- tiny picture in the middle of the screen
- 256 gray shades, interpreted as dots
- running Solaris
- with Netscape 2.0

Not exactly the huge multimedia-experience...

IE was at that time just NOT PRESENT! MS had a 2.something-version, but remember: Gates just did'nt believe in the internet...

He does now, and on my windoze xp pc IE is the preferred choice.
As this is the most widely used browser, is this also what I'm using for developing. Then there's the workarounds for other browsers to write...

Netscape 4 was a really terrible browser! Funny it is regarded so, because when it came out it was recognized as a real leap in browser-technology.
But then they just stopped developing on the code, and it became the start of their decline.
Netscape had well over 90% of the market, and even when you take into account the overwhelming dominance of Microsoft on the os-side, you'd expected them to play their cards smarter...
IE now got the break it needed to set the terms for browser technology as there were no real opponents except Netscape.
Sloppy?
Well, they redeeem themselves a little by developing on Mozilla 🙂

As for Opera I'm critical, because this seemed to become the new NS4 (v.6 and > ), designwise. But in the 7.x version the dhtml-problems has been fixed and the browser is generally more "wholesome".

But there are some things about Opera (and probably other browsers) that is completely absurd:

It installs default to identify itself as MSIE.
Look, here I am, (sometimes) taking extra time to write workarounds for Opera-browsers. This is because I want the pages to work in Opera, different versions.
Then when my pages hit the browser, it says: I'm Internet Explorer! and flunks.
It's a no-win situation were Opera tells me: There's no point in taking that extra time, because we treat the user-agent string as we like.
Me: Why?
Opera: Because we believe that predictability isn't something you need to be concerned about. And Internet Explorer is so nice name.
Me: But you leave the name Opera in the string anyway?
Opera: That is so that thou shall be able to differ between the Two
Me: Weeell, hm... isn't that what's the user-agent-string is for?
Opera: We want to be Different.

knutm :p

planetsim

You forgot to add that Netscape 7.0 was the version Netscape Redeemed themselves. Although there is still lots to fix.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by mogster
Netscape 4 was a really terrible browser! Funny it is regarded so, because when it came out it was recognized as a real leap in browser-technology.
But then they just stopped developing on the code, and it became the start of their decline.

Something I said too often a couple of years ago: "Once upon a time Netscape Navigator was the best browser in the world. And since then, it hasn't changed a bit!"

(Still remembering the good old days before NCSA Mosaic...)

leatherback

Hehe,

Yeah! Netscape 4.. I still have it on my system, and check pages sometimes (To be honest> 4.6..)
But since I have found opera.. Became a standard. But now people have been showing me the way towards mozilla..

But most frequently I USE internet exploder. Mainly becaus otherwise you miss a lot of the pages you visit. (I prefer cross-browser, CSS/HTML standard coding where possible though..)

Gary_King

Firebird 0.6 has been out for a few weeks now, just to let you all know. A big improvement over 0.5, I'd suggest you all check it out.

tshafer

Uaually, I use Konqueror, but every once in a while I use Firebird. How can you set up Konq to show the IE string on all sites? I can only get it for one site at a time. 😕

elToro

I'm using Mozilla Firebird these days, though I have to fire up IE or AvantBrowser occasionally when a site insists on using IE/Win-only code.

Before I was satisfied with the stability/power of Firebird (The Browser Formerly Known as Phoenix), I used Mozilla with Multizilla. I use the Tabbrowser Extentions with Firebird.

Gary_King

Originally posted by elToro
I'm using Mozilla Firebird these days, though I have to fire up IE or AvantBrowser occasionally when a site insists on using IE/Win-only code.

Before I was satisfied with the stability/power of Firebird (The Browser Formerly Known as Phoenix), I used Mozilla with Multizilla. I use the Tabbrowser Extentions with Firebird.

Tabbrowser, are you talking about the built-in tabbed windows feature?

goldbug

I thought Tabbrowser enhanced the tabbed functionality. For example, right clicking on a tab w/ Tabbrowser installed brings up a nice big context menu with many options, instead of like 4 choices.

Gary_King

Ah ok, I didn't know about that.

elToro

Right. Tabbrowser Extensions is one of many extensions available for Firbird (http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions.html). Firebird already has tabs, but the extension gives you a lot more control over how tabs behave.

In some ways it's similar to Multizilla (http://multizilla.mozdev.org/), which I used with ordinary Mozilla to add functionality to Mozilla's tabs (and to add tabs to Mozilla before Mozilla had tab support built in).

Gary_King

I've got it installed now. It's a very handy extension to have 😃

goldbug

Give OptiMoz a whirl too if you haven't already... much niceness to be had

(OptiMoz gives Moz/Firebird gesture support, similar to Opera)

fr8

Mozila. Its all about the tabbing.

Moonglobe

whoa major bump...........