The Battle of Browsers

X'o'LoreX'o'Lore
edited June 2008 in Tech
Firefox 3 is out as of yesterday. If you have not downloaded it yet, do so.

If you dare to be different, without any significant sacrifices perhaps Opera is more your style.

If you dig the fruity felines, then maybe Safari is your main stop. (Or maybe you're wandering the wilds of Windows like most of the rest and just had Safari dumped on you along with an iTunes update.)

Of course there's a new Internet Explorer in the future, but it remains to be seen if that'll be any less of a train wreck than its predecessors.

So where do you stand in the new browser wars? I am running Opera 9.5 with a super minimlist theme. I don't even have a back button.

Comments

  • NoLongerNoLonger
    edited June 2008
    Meh, I have Firefox 3, cause I do so like Firefox... 3.
  • SerephelSerephel
    edited June 2008
    I tend to avoid being in the lead pack of software users. I'll probably wait a few weeks before getting Firefox 3. I'll stick with my Firefox 2.whatever for now.
  • NoLongerNoLonger
    edited June 2008
    But Firefox 3 is all Vista-ized with it's cool design 'n shit!
  • illithid235illithid235
    edited June 2008
    AIM has proven to me that new is not always better. I'm almost strictly about function with my computer, and I don't need much functioning power... as long as I can enter in addresses, have a bookmark toolbar, and navigate around, I'm happy. So I use Firefox 2.something, and I'm pretty happy with it.

    Though I do wonder if Firefox 3 brings anything new to the table besides an aesthetic upgrade. Does it?
  • deku12345deku12345
    edited June 2008
    I got firefox 3, and aside from the smaller memory footprint, I'm not really using any of its other features. It still looks pretty though. And all my add-ons still work, so I'm happy with it.
  • NoLongerNoLonger
    edited June 2008
    It has some new features, the auto fill in bar that drops down now has the page title and URL, and a "Most Visited" drop down menu. Not to much new stuff but still cool. Keep in mind that this is just stuff I've found by looking at the top of the browser though.
  • illithid235illithid235
    edited June 2008
    By auto fill-in do you mean the thing they've added on YouTube? I'm not sure if I like that so much...
  • Drooling IguanaDrooling Iguana
    edited June 2008
    I've been using Firefox 3 since April, and it's pretty neat. Mostly the same as 2, but apparently it uses less memory (I never really noticed a memory problem with 2 to begin with, but a lot of people complained) and I like the Awesomebar. It lets me type the name of sites that I want to go to rather than the full address, which is convenient when I'm trying to get to a site that's part of a collection of discrete sites with a single main URL, like the comics on WebcomicsNation and the blogs on ScienceBlogs.

    Also, it gives me a prompt to save my tabs whenever I close the browser with more than one open, instead of only doing it when the browser is "closed unexpectedly," which is nice when you have to pay for your own electricity and thus don't want to leave your computer running all night when you don't have to.
  • NoLongerNoLonger
    edited June 2008
    Oh yes, I see, the auto fill-in is when you type in a URL and it automatically puts in a site you've been to that starts with those letters (highlighted of course so you can keep typing) or makes a drop down menu of sites you've been to that start with those letters. The drop down now has site title as well as URL but instead of finding a site that starts with the letters it finds site that have them at all, so you can just type just a bit and go down a bit to find a site.
  • Mish42Mish42
    edited June 2008
    I've been using Safari ever since I got my macbook pro, before on my windows I was using Mozilla. Both have nice little benefits, but I don't think I pay enough attention to have an actual preference on either of them.
  • mariomario
    edited June 2008
    Safari, because it's actually good. By which I mean, it's got the best integration with the operating system by far, with disk image automounting, nice QuickTime plugin support (makes perfect sense), and the passthrough of podcast URLs to iTunes. Also, WebKit has some beautiful rendering capability, and its implementation in Safari tends to stick to web standards a little better than Firefox in many cases (WebKit was the first to pass the Acid3 tests). My acquisition of the iPhone sweetened the deal with their bookmark-syncing. I don't feel tied down to Safari, Firefox is used by all sorts of Mac users who are very happy with it, I just never cared for it. Through Firefox 2, the developers made no attempts to stick to UI development standards in Mac OS X, so I figured they just didn't want my business. I happen to like a certain uniformity in my applications. For Firefox 3, they promised better conformity, but from what I've seen, the similarities are superficial, with the same cross-platform crap code under the hood.
  • X'o'LoreX'o'Lore
    edited June 2008
    Reopening tabs from previous sessions on start is new? Geez I forget how cushy Opera is sometimes. But then usually when I've found myself browsing from a basic Firefox install I feel a bit like I'm missing my left hand or something these days. Kind of ironic considering this is as cluttered as my browser window gets:

    MinBrowser.png
    (The tab bar goes away if there aren't at least 2 tabs.)

    I tend to agree with illithid's thinking most of the time, but with the right theme and a bunch of customization I've gotten Opera to feel very "basic functionality" while still offering as many frills as Firefox with a pile of plugins installed.
  • Drooling IguanaDrooling Iguana
    edited June 2008
    IBM WebExplorer still pwns o'er all!
  • NoLongerNoLonger
    edited June 2008
    It would be cool if they made this into a platformer, so you have to work to get to your web pages.

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