Which internet browser do you use?

[Straha]

I think I got them all, please tell me if I missed a big one.

Also, why?

I personally use Firefox, though I've downloaded and installed Chrome and am quite impressed, I think I might switch over but I need to give it more of a shakedown before I do.

[Tolya]

I use Firefox because that's what I switched to from exploder. I like the interface, like the fact that it is constantly updated and functions as an open source engine coordinated by a corporation that is essentially a foundation for open source programming. I like Mitchell Baker and I really appreciate what she does for the internet community. And she gets by with a modest 500 thousand USD a year (officially) which, considering her position, is change money.

I will continue to use Firefox for as long as it keeps up its quality.

[Serafina]

Opera.
Why?
Internet Explorer still sucks, i don't like the interface of Firefox and i simply don't want to bother with any other browsers because Opera works just fine for me.

[Dragon Angel]

I mainly use Firefox, unless I absolutely NEED to run Internet Explorer for a very good reason. I might try to use Chrome at some point in the future, but for now, I am pretty satisfied with what I have (that, and Firefox has a wonderful extension for selectively filtering Javascript from websites of my choice - called NoScript - is there an equivalent of it for Chrome? If there is, then I may have more motivation to try Chrome out).

[Singular Intellect]

I use Internet Explorer 8. Never had any issue with it, tried Firefox and Google Chrome, but didn't like either one.

[Ypoknons]

Firefox, IE, Chrome and Opera depending on... my mood or the website. I'm serious, I hardly use bookmarks.

[Picard]

I use IE 8, and rarely Google Chrome or Safari. I also downloaded Netscape Navigator and Flock just to get feel of them (I think they're not used anymore). I don't use Mozilla, beacouse there is nothing that is important to me that Mozzila has and IE does not. But I thing that way IE manages tabs was decisive - it groups them and gives different colors to different groups - plus that in Mozilla you have to decide on exit will it open that browsing session again, while in IE you do it when you open IE next time.

[Sarevok]

Firefox because it has tons of plugins. I can save youtube videos, block stupid ads, and change my browsers UI however I want. Firefox blows every single browser ever invented like a nuke in a city of cardboard building.

[Dave]

Firefox exclusively of late, though I enjoyed using Chrome. I'm using Firefox more for technical reasons, since my main computer runs fast enough not to worry much about UI hangs in Firefox, and my netbook, running on a 4 GB SSD, doesn't have room for Chrome.

The thing I miss from Chrome are the "Close child tabs" and "Close tabs to right of this tab" options. I just haven't bothered to find a plugin for that.

[phongn]

As a web developer: all of the major ones (IE6-9, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera). Personally, Chrome.

Konq and IE are both years ahead of the competition, IE, of course, being the big innovator in the field, and konqueror historically being written by people with a bit of a clue. While the new versions of Konqueror suck as much as every other WebKit browser, the old one was so far ahead of its time that updating is unnecessary.

How are these statements true?

a) Process isolation. Konqueror doesn't force you to use a single process for separate windows, and separates plugins into their own thing, so crashes don't take all your stuff down. Chrome called this their killer feature: Konqueror has had it from the start.

Yes, but all the major browsers have it now to one extent or another. Furthermore, Chrome's killer feature is not just process separation but a complete security model.

Firefox is the anti-process browser. It refuses to open a second process even if I run it from another terminal! What a fucking piece of garbage.

Order Firefox to load another profile and it'll happily load a second session. And what's your bugaboo about running many processes?

b) A UI that doesn't suck monkey balls. Make no mistake: the default Konqueror UI is pure, unadulterated shit. But, it lets you customize it, so within a few minutes, you can turn it into something quite usable.

A UI that is is terribly outside the box but can be "customized" has already failed.

Firefox is moderately OK here, but Chrome and Opera are completely unredeemable.

How? Because you can't customize them? Hint: I can throw computer-proficient but technically unsavvy users in front of Chrome and they have no trouble using it. That's a success.

c) Built in file manager! Even if I wanted to switch, this is a nice thing to keep around.

Uh, who cares? Really?

d) Sites work in them reasonably well. My old konqueror and IE6 are starting to show some trouble on some sites, but those sites suck donkey ass anyway, so they can burn in hell for all eternity. They work on the ones that count - much better than their old competition, and in about 1% the memory usage of their newer competitors.

IE6's memory use is tremendously misleading. And IE6 is terrible because I cannot do things in it that a modern browser could (e.g. canvas, modern Javascript, modern CSS, proper PNG support) and nevermind its impotent security model.

EDIT: There are a few hacks that get things working like canvas (via a javascript-powered canvas to VML interpreter) and I can work around some of IE's foibles but the point is that tremendously complicates my work.

[General Zod]

I use Firefox almost exclusively. I've monkeyed around with other browsers before but none of them feel as solidly designed or have as many useful plugins. Opera has too much noise going on in its menu, IE is IE, Chrome is a bit too unpleasant and I don't really use Linux, so no Konqueror.

[salm]

I´ve been using Firefox for several years now and used to be very happy with it.
Since a couple of months ago Firefox started to get annoying and randomly hang very often. I´ve installed new versions and reinstalled Windows since then and it still happens.

I switched to Safari for a while and actually liked the UI and the lack of random hanging pretty well but there´s one key issue with Safari and all the other Browsers: Unless i´m mistaken there´s no decent Adblock Plugin.

That´s why i´m using Firefox again.

[Dahak]

I use (and have been using for years) Opera.
It does everything I need or want out of the box without needing to tinker around with plug-ins or shit.
And having the e-Mail client built in is a win-win for me.
I don't like the UI of Firefox all that much and can't be bothered with plug-ins here and there.
Chrome is usable, but not my preferred one.

[2000AD]

Started with IE but switched to firefox a while back an never looked back. Been hearing that other browsers are starting to improve over firefox but right now I'm fine with it, if it ain't broke don't switch it.

[Resinence]

Safari, reason: Compiled ECMAscript, no tabs above the address bar like that other browser with this. It lets me easily turn off Flash and Java applets so they stop raping my computer. Safari Reader. Safari development tools > firebug. I am an old konq/khtml user because the Gecko and XULrunner codebases make me rage... Man mozilla used to be cool...

Also I agree with XIII, IE6 isn't that horrible really, it simply ignores anything it doesn't support and aside from PNG support will degrade gracefully by itself. Well, unless you are anal and try to hack your site to look pixel-perfect in every browser, what insanity. It even runs Objective-J apps haha, I mean what other browser has survived so long and remained usable?

[phongn]

As for innovation, remember who started the whole async thing? Who made popup notifications not excessively annoying? The others might have a longer list, but IE has the useful ones.

Sure. I should've mentioned that Microsoft innovated so long as there was competition; once Netscape was dead and buried and Mozilla taking their sweet time to do anything the IE project was as good as dead and buried. By the time Redmond realized that competition returned they started getting seriously behind (IE7 was merely a "catch-up" effort, IE8 has some novel tab and process handling). IE9 will be a good browser but I'm not sure how innovative it will be compared to its competition.

I expect my application to come up when I order it, and I shouldn't have to say "please". (Note I'm ok with having to say "computer, override the safety protocols, authorization janeway pie zero one one", but "please" is out of the question.) If you can't do that, I'll find someone who will.

My response can be summed up as OBEY! EXTERMINATE: EXTERMINATE; goto EXTERMINATE;

You come off as a fundamentalist, you know that?

I can't fucking stand the attitude behind those programs.

I find it operates as the vast majority of users expect it to. Given a multithreaded architecture and the way the majority of users operate, why shouldn't you marshal a new thread to run another window and/or tab? Certainly, given the cost of processes-versus-threads on earlier computers it's not an unreasonable assumption. Given the enormous resources of a modern computer, sure, multiprocess is tenable (though the issues with plugin rendering across processes is nontrivial).

And what's your bugaboo about running many processes?

Why don't you just use DOS? Maybe some of us would like to get our money's worth out of these fancy new operating systems.

Non-sequitor. I at no time have advocated a return to single-tasking.

How? Because you can't customize them?

Because they are fucking ugly and retarded. If you put the tabs above the address bar, you're a fuckwad who needs to eat a bullet, simple as that.

Undefended assertion.

"Ah, but you could use a separate browser, then load up konq for the rare times when you want the gui file manager!" Yeah, but then I'd have to wait for it to come off the hard disk instead of the RAM cache. I'd like to finish the task before the sun expands and swallows the earth.

Or I run an OS that has a GUI file manager resident like every major OS on the planet? Or get one that doesn't have huge startup costs? It's not like I wait when I click on the Finder or on Explorer. I don't even recall waiting when I loaded File Manager in the Win16 days.

And IE6 is terrible because I cannot do things in it that a modern browser could (e.g. canvas, modern Javascript, modern CSS, proper PNG support) and nevermind its impotent security model.

So let the IE6 users get by without those things. It's called "graceful degradation" and is supposed to be integral to the web. It has a solid enough foundation that it'll get by. If you need some minor hacks, they are usually just that - minor - and easy to separate out thanks to conditional comments, so it isn't a huge hassle to massage it into degrading adequately.

For some of the tasks I do I can gracefully degrade (e.g. if I don't have rounded-rects in IE6-8 it's not the end of the world, though you'd think that talking to a lot of designers and artists). But for others it's a serious block. For example, one part of the project I'm on renders a simplified model of the Compact Muon Solenoid and also displays particle collision events. We permit the user to to rotate the model in 3D space. Graceful degradation is impossible for such a tool if we are to keep any sort of interactivity. Another project gets data from LIGO and we permit users to interact with the data coming out of it via various charting tools: the only reason we can do it low-latency is because someone wrote a canvas-VML translation layer for IE (before we had complete roundtrips to the server to re-render, which annoyed users to no end).

[phongn]

Who the hell expects to click an application, and instead of seeing that app, see a message saying "I'm already running, so fuck off with your request"? Really?

I suppose part of it is that I tend to run newer versions of Windows, OSX, GNOME, etc. so when I click the application it opens a new window or switches to it instead of giving me an inane "sorry, you lose" prompt

It takes more effort to code and slaps the user in the face. If I wanted to reuse the existing copy, why would I go spelunking through the start menu for it when I could have just clicked it on the taskbar? Do regular users actually do that regularly?

Regular users do all sorts of insane and crazy things. You have to code around them

Oh, amen. I got in a flamewar this weekend with someone who wanted to use images for a navbar... made from text. My comments about what they could do made my comments in this thread look humanitarian.

Designers want to have everything look pixel-perfect across every browser and operating system. It's in their nature - and why do you think they love Flash? It lets them do that.

That looks awful, and breaks the site. Other than that retarded request, it scales beautifully with font size and window changes... put that in, and it is utter crap. The text link looked almost exactly the same, but waaaa what if my user doesnt have the font installed or wanted to override my illegible stupidity?! CAN'T HAVE THAT waaa!

At least the damned font problem is solved now. Finally we are freed from the shackles of the Microsoft Core Web Fonts (which are actually very well made but they get a bit old).

Meh, let it not work for us ass-backwards folks. (Or, my preference, write it as a desktop app. They seem underrated these days.) But anyway, 99.9% of sites don't have such requirements, and for them, IE6 does its job pretty well.

It'd be much faster as a desktop app but we have to do it over the Web. Graceful degradation is also all well and fine... except degrading for IE6 sometimes means "write a lot of new special CSS and hope it works"

[Marcus Aurelius]

Or I run an OS that has a GUI file manager resident like every major OS on the planet? Or get one that doesn't have huge startup costs? It's not like I wait when I click on the Finder or on Explorer. I don't even recall waiting when I loaded File Manager in the Win16 days.

As I suspected, you do have a bad memory. Hell, starting the fucking Explorer took some time on early W2k era hardware despite being mostly resident. Starting the fileman on a typical Windows 3.1 hardware was far from instant. You are probably remembering some 1995ish NT 3.51 with a fast Pentium or even PPro under to hood with SCSI disks. I am pretty sure starting the Konq on 4-core i7 with an SSD system drive does not take very long either.

The OP's question: I use Firefox. I tried Chrome a while back back did not see any reason to change. I have also tried IE 8 on my Windows system, but it has nothing over FF 3.x. I am also forced to use IE 6.0 at work for some database interfaces which do not work properly with anything newer, but that's the least problem with them.

For DIII: we will make you use emacs/W3 for browsing, you infidel! And you and all you vi heretics should use ed as text editor. If you love it some much, why don't you go right back to the original?

[Losonti Tokash]

I use Chrome. I like it cause it runs faster than Firefox, crashes less, and I like the UI/window/whatever more than IE or Firefox. Any time I have to use a different browser, the windows all feel cramped and full of useless garbage.

[eion]

I use three.

-I use IE by default
-I use Firefox when I'm remoting to my file server
-I use Chrome when Google demands it

[Mad]

I've relatively recently switched to Chrome (beta channel) as my primary browser. I use the most recent version of Firefox for some tasks and IE8 for web app development at work.

I switched to Chrome from Firefox because of Chrome's sandboxing (security) and process isolation (reliability).

[phongn]

Does the css font-face work in newer IE? I got an email from the client last night saying he wants to replace my beautiful header buttons* with images, since he wants to pick a unique font. Gah, but he signs the checks, so I looked into it. Loaded up a test page in IE8 though, and it didn't seem to work for me.

IE has supported remote font loading for quite awhile via EOT and all major browsers coming up will support WOFF. There's also the TypeKit tool but that costs money.

I'm considering having the server side code do image replacement, so I'd at least write plain text while still keeping to their demands, but that really isn't satisfying since images suck, being slow and poor to resize. (My guideline for a website: the fewer images it loads, the better.)

Obviously the solution is vector paths in Canvas, SVG or VML

As I suspected, you do have a bad memory. Hell, starting the fucking Explorer took some time on early W2k era hardware despite being mostly resident. Starting the fileman on a typical Windows 3.1 hardware was far from instant. You are probably remembering some 1995ish NT 3.51 with a fast Pentium or even PPro under to hood with SCSI disks. I am pretty sure starting the Konq on 4-core i7 with an SSD system drive does not take very long either.

I recall many tasks that took forever, but the file manager wasn't one of them (granted, our family's Windows 3.1 machine was a 486DX with 32MB of RAM, which might have something to do with it :p). Never ran NT before 4.0, as it happens and certainly never had SCSI disks at home even if I desperately wanted them. But I don't recall any file manager taking any time to load.

[Isil`Zha]

Firefox all the way. I only use IE if I absolutely have to (ActiveX) - even then, Coral IE Tabs for FF works 99% of the time. Even better is that recently, AD Block+ and cookies from FF now work when using an IE tab.

Other than not crashing not nearly as often as IE, the biggest appeal is the massive amount of plugins, many of them I find to be invaluable, now:

Tab Kit (Tab groupings, tab protection, among various other options.)
Ad Block+ - Huzzah! Most ads don't even get their placeholder left behind.
NoScript - Security purposes (I don't always have it on.)
Lazarus - Recovers filled in forms if you accidentally browse away, have a crash, a security timeout, etc. Handy.
It's All Text! - Use any word processor you want for any text box in FF (such as this one.) Just hit "save" to update the text box.
Developer Add-on: Several useful features.
Firebug: Again, several useful features.
Session Manager: Save sessions, including all tabs and multiple windows. Recovers everything in case of crash, etc, or you can save sessions to go back to later.

There's just tons of add-ons to customize the look of FF as well.

All that being said: I'd use Chrome if it had all the add-ons like FF.

[Isil`Zha]

Oh I'd love when I'd make a long entry (typically a post on a forum) and then after hitting post... "ERROR: FORUMS CURRENTLY DOWN" - hit back... post is gone!

[The_Saint]

Opera... the end.

Sure the open source and community nature of Firefox was nice when 1.x and 2.x shat all over IE but since Opera 9 having everything built-in and a streamlined interface that makes an equivalently useful Firefox look like IE5 with every installable tab ever made running. Cluttered interface my arse... anyone who uses the interface as an argument against Opera is talking shit.



Vim for the win.