Browser Wars

So, given that this forum seems to show up weaknesses in browsers, I decided to take a look at the state of browsers in General. I have been a long time user of Firefox, mostly because it is an open source community developed project. But, I am not stuck on any one philosophy other than: 1) Does it work? 2) Does it work well (that is, meet standards and pass tests)?

Today pretty much all the browsers pass the standard Acid 2 and 3 Tests. This is a good thing. It means that pages should render much the same on all browsers. But that is not the only test. Speed is also a factor, as is stability. So here is the browser ranking I have based on as much objective criteria possible in my computing environment.

#1) Firefox 10: Firefox is still the best choice out there. It is the fastest to load pages, fastest to render pages, has fewer outstanding security issues than its next closest rival , Internet Explorer, and has a plethora of extensions and plugins that pretty much allow it to do anything a browser can do. It is also very stable. I have registered zero crashes with Firefox 10. However it does have issues with forms, esp. ASP based, but fortunately the majority of the world knows better than to use ASP (unlike here).

#2) Apple Safari 5: Safari is actually kinda cool. It, like FF and IE, is a mature browser with years of development. It is based on the Webkit engine by QT/KDE and Apple (and now Google). It works with all common plugins, and has a few really cool extensions and awesome standard features. Each year that has passed since the late 2000's has seen me become more and more impressed with Apple software products. They really work well. It would be #1 except that in Windows, its very slow to render images and video. My only complaint is its not theme aware, and has one or two bugs that are irritating.

Oh, and this post is being written in it. Safari may well replace Firefox as my default browser.

#3) Opera 11: Pretty slick browser, but is not terribly stable and can be exceedingly slow to both retrieve and render pages (sometime failing to render the page properly, thus requiring a reload). It has most standard plugin and extensions, but many of them are broken, or so bug ridden as to be useless. It has a lot of features that, frankly, I do not understand (why would I want widgets tied to a browser?)

#4) Internet Explorer 9: Fast and ubiquitous. Ugly as sin with some really dumb feature implementations. It can do a really lousy job of rendering pages, and even with the extensive "compatibly list", fails more often than it succeeds in rendering sites as designed. I do not like this browser. Never have, and its not because I have any philosophical problems with Microsoft (which I do not). It just doesn't work and often crashes (taking the task bar with it).

#5) Google Chrome 18: The fact that its on Version 18 speaks volumes. Google hasn't a clue what its doing, and it shows. Chrome is a cheap ripoff of technologies developed by KDE and Apple. I cannot support this application (or android) in good faith. If Windows is a cheap knockoff of Apple, then Google is a cheap knockoff of Windows. If you care at all about your privacy, then stay far away from Google and its software products. Need I say more?

There are other browsers out there, but they are mostly just variations of the above browsers, customized for specific needs.

Needless to say, this is my experience, on my rigs. Your experiences may differ, as may your needs and browsing style. Fortunately, the five major browsers listed above have pretty much everybody covered in that department.

Cheers
Shad

Personally I like Comodo myself, it's pretty quick and it scans sites for viruses and if you click a site it thinks could be unsafe it'll warn you before hand. It doesn't crash often either, it's pretty stable~

Home sick.. bored...

foxwolfen


If you care at all about your privacy, then stay far away from Google and its software products. Need I say more?

I've never been too concerned about most of those privacy concerns but I definitely don't feel too comfortable using Google too much these days. I don't know, it's becoming much too "clever" for my taste. Plus I've had all sorts of bugs in Safari w/ the search field clearing itself when I only one to add a word to my search or always going back to the first search I performed when I hit the "back" button instead of re-loading the previous page. So I guess it's both more clever and much dumber. And I'm not switching browsers, I love Safari.


Do you guys have any other search engines you'd recommend?

If you don't use Google, what do you use for a search engine? I mostly use Google but sometimes use Lycos or Yahoo, unless of course I know exactly where I am going. I use IE9 for some stuff and FF 3.6.24 for this forum, it works without a hitch.. I set this forum as my homepage on FF and Google as my homepage on IE but Google bothers me a little bit too. I don't use any of their addons, browser, or anything else they offer. Thanks for the info.

Julien

Ok I did my first search using the Bing search engine directly from Safari.

I typed Superior Drummer. I must admit that Bing is incredibly convenient - it laid out all the torrents, cracks and such all in a handy sidebar to the left and pulled mostly illegal content (even my Russian isn't that rudimentary) though this may be due to the fact that I didn't change the regional settings. I still find the related search funny though...

foxwolfen


#3) Opera 11: Pretty slick browser, but is not terribly stable and can be exceedingly slow to both retrieve and render pages (sometime failing to render the page properly, thus requiring a reload). It has most standard plugin and extensions, but many of them are broken, or so bug ridden as to be useless. It has a lot of features that, frankly, I do not understand (why would I want widgets tied to a browser?)

Curious by what you mean by "not terribly stable"? 

Most of the problems I have with it come down to a few "overly-scripted" sites, or if I'm refreshing a bunch of pages simultaneously, which certain sites (like this one) don't like.

Don't know about extensions, as I don't use them much.

I try to stay away from Facebook, so that may be (and I can't help you there).

But one secret in Opera is sometimes sites will have browser specific JS (they check what browser you're running and execute different JS accordingly), so you have to tell Opera to "Mask as Firefox" or "Mask as IE" for some sites' JS to work correctly. You can set this (along with lots of other good stuff) for each site from the "Edit Site Preferences" menu (R click, F12, or under Tools-Quick Preferences).

I generally keep JS, cookies and plugins turned off globally and only enable them for specific sites for speed and security reasons.

There's only been a few sites that really don't work reasonably well with Opera. I've also tweaked a lot of stuff in it (there's a lot of advanced and/or "hidden" options if you enter opera:config in the address bar), so that may make a difference. 

But to a certain extent, to get a the most out of Opera, you have to spend some time tweaking it.

Shad, I've been using Chrome for about four years now.

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