Poll: What browser do you use?

can't we just ask Josh to go through the web server logs for this one? :)

Yes, yes we can....

Josh?
:)

In fact, I think an interesting comparison would be to compare the response to his logs!

netscape seems to just be useless on macs even though alot of pages require you to have it to view stuff ...blah blah blah

Try Mozilla, or Chimera. Very nice browsers.

I've been using Mozilla since it's early stages. The popup blocking alone is a great feature, add in mouse gesture shortcuts, tabbed browser windows, bookmarking, a hell of a lot less security holes big enough to drive mack trucks through... it's the better browser.

If you want just the browser, try the Phoenix browser. It's from the Mozilla project and most of the browser features of Mozilla, plus a few extra toys.

ok, well, ironically i'm not using it this very second, but OPERA is easily my preferred choice (as long as we still GET choices about browsing...) cause it's not a ruse from some crazy-arse conglomerate out for whatever they do these days, i lost complete interest in the browser wars a long time ago. of course, i don't wanna sit here for three years, so i'm going to cut myself off and avoid going off about the net. arggg. i don't think i can even begin to explain myself with that.

Same here =D

Actually, I started using Opera after IE started freezing my computer. A friend recommended it to me - kicks IE's ass

I had to choose "other" for this, because it depends on the platform for me. On my Macs at both work and home I use Chimera, which is by far the best browser for OSX that I have found. On my PC at home I use IE... not because I think it is the best browser ever, but because there are a few sites I have trouble with using Mozilla. Likely they were designed for the lameness of IE.

M

Hmmmm. Chimera is new to me. I usually use IE, but now and then Mozilla works when IE fails me.

See, I used Mozilla for a little while... but I just couldn't get past how chunky it made pages look... and how much like netscape the interface is... which makes me shudder with evil memories of having to actually USE netscape.

Gotta say, though, the popup blocking and tabbing rock, though.

heh.. but what fun would that be? ;) fwiw, we're getting about 10% mozilla hits, and the rest of the top 15 are windows IE versions and assorted other junk (my event scraper and googlebot)

I was an IE fanatic since version 2.0. For years, it was the only reason I kept a Windoze installation around. I've always hated Netscape. Ugh. I tried Mozilla at various stages in its development but I'd always proclaimed it dead in the water due to its extreme slowness, bugginess and ugly look. Then, sometime around 0.99 I gave it another try and haven't switched back since. Ever since they stripped out the debugging code, it's been wicked fast, and under Linux it looks as good as IE if you install nice fonts. It supports all the plugins, too.

The killer reasons to use it in my book are the pop-up blocking (which works great), and the tabbed browsing. The tabbed browsing in particular, when you tell it to bind middle-click to open the link in a new tab and load it in the background, is *SO* helpful once you get used to it.

It took them long enough, but they did it. I urge everyone to try it out. It's slightly less evil than supporting the Evil Empire, and a lot less painful than supporting Opera. :)

I've never tried browsing the web with a Chinchilla...

unfortunately, despite the fact that mozilla will display most pages properly, web designers don't realise this. they also don't understand that they can say "This page might not be displayed properly in a browser that isn't IE," and instead, they completely prevent you from accessing the page, and it seems contacting places is fairly useless because they don't even understand the difference between those behaviours. (the irony is that they had to write more code to detect the browser and load a different page that has no links than they would if they just put a disclaimer on the main page)

so I use mozilla and keep IE around in case a site designed decided that my browser won't work for their page and prevents me from even trying.

I am shocked how much people hate Netscape! Personally I hate IE. I hate the way it looks and I hate how the menus are laid out. Frankly I think this is because I started browsing the web with Netscape 2 and that became the default for me of what a browser should be. As far as being buggy and slow, I find Netscape 7 to be neither of those things. I especially love the feature that lets me delete evil cookies once and have it stick forever.

If you like Mozilla, why would you HATE netscape when it is based on Mozilla? And since they aren't futzing around with netsape on a daily basis like they are with Mozilla, I feel like I have a more dependable browser. But then again as I said in the subject, maybe that is because I'm not a computer geek and don't like software that makes me have to deal with it at anything beyond a simple user level.

I started with netscape too... then gave up around 4.5 because it became such an amazingly bloated piece of crap and crashed all the time.

Here at work, too, they've actually taken it off the new workstation image because it causes too many problems.

Yes, Rufus Wainwright is one of them. Rat assed bastid. I was supposed to see him in concert about a month ago, but, it ended up being Ben Kweller instead. I would have known he was sidelined with bronchitis if I had been able to see his website, but, alas... it's apparently one less artist who wants me to buy his CD's.

His loss.

Though, I really think, though, that you're really being a bit redundant, though.

Though, maybe I am though... hmm.... though, I'm not sure though..

As far as I'm concerned, I don't understand why anyone who's familiar with computers would still *choose* to use Netscape over Mozilla. Is it anything more than Mozilla minus one of its most compelling features (popup-blocking) because AOL didn't want to lose ad revenue? Mozilla has the cookie stuff you mentioned as well.

As for futzing around with it on a daily basis, you only have the illusion of stability. Keep in mind that Netscape versions are now basically versions of Mozilla that were branched at some point in the past and hacked a bit. The reason that Mozilla versions are released more often than Netscape versions is that bug fixes (which are ALSO usually present in the corresponding Netscape version) are released incrementally instead of all at once. If Person A downloads the latest version of Mozilla and Person B downloads the latest Netscape at the same time, one month later Person A can *optionally* download more recent builds that fix bugs, while Person B has to wait for a new Netscape build. There's nothing saying you *need* to upgrade every subversion.. it's just nice if you're into that sort of thing.

well, i use netscape 6, and it works great for me, except that it takes a while to load (even to open a picture file)

If Netscape is like Mozilla, you can set it to load much faster. IE seems fast because it's always sucking up your memory, even if you aren't using it, so when you load it, it doesn't need to do anything. You can do the same thing with Moz/Netscape, it's in the settings somewhere.

i have some pictures of that. link to come.

*replies to self*

HAHAH!
woot
I luff you sheryl.
:)

Actually, because Netscape 7 is based on Mozilla code, it was fairly simple to create a simple installable file to restore the functionality of the popup blocker. (They didn't remove it from NS 7, they just deactivated it.)

it's here, if you're interested.

I used to use Netscape, but IE5 became my friend (because Netscape slowed down... and the library quit using it). Now they've switched to IE6, and I'm looking at the oprions again.

Still... it's better than Lynx. And the station has a browser calle Konquerer which is evil and wrong on many different levels.

i used konqueror for a few months when i was getting truly fed up with netscape on linux. it was definitely an improvement, but it was flaky as hell and there were too many strange things. it had the popup blocking feature, which was what drew me to it, but mozilla (perhaps phoenix is a better comparison) does what it does only better. *shrugs*