Topic: Browser Poll 2003 (Read 22822 times)

xen-uno · « **on:** November 06, 2003, 05:14:15 pm »

When JohnT said "If you're using a non-IE web browser, the next build of MC (9.1.298 or greater) should fix this for you" in this thread, it seemed like an ideal time to ask...

...so give it up!

10^-27

PS: If you want to elaborate...please do.

TimB · « **Reply #1 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:15:06 pm »

Fireboid for me.

-=Tim=-

LisaRCT · « **Reply #2 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:18:28 pm »

Since I read your advise to try Firebird in another thread a short time ago I have never looked back. If MSIE was not integral to Windows it would have been uninstalled.

crowfan · « **Reply #3 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:24:03 pm »

I'm using MyIE2. It's unbelievable.

Based on IE, but soooo much better.

crow

jleerigby · « **Reply #4 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:26:02 pm »

I'd be lost without IE. Easy and intuitive IMO. Tried Netscape and immediately hated it. I do worry about MS dominance and it can't be healthy but you have to admit that their UI's are very well thought out. Anyone who uses Access or Word would have a hard time letting go.

xen-uno · « **Reply #5 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:26:26 pm »

Good girl! (Lisa)

If no one has any objections then I'll make this sticky for a couple weeks so that we can get an accurate count.

10^-27

PS: I'm real curious about the JRiver staff's preference. So come on JR...stand up and be counted (and state your reasons).

Phil Lee · « **Reply #6 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:31:27 pm »

I've voted Firebird although I use IE6 too.

Mike Noe · « **Reply #7 on:** November 06, 2003, 05:56:35 pm »

Was in the process of evaluating Firebird....MyIE2 is has swept me away...thanks Crowfan.

Rob L · « **Reply #8 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:01:27 pm »

But IE doesn't *do* anything, and want it does do, it does annoyingly!

The only time I tend to use IE is if a page doesn't work properly... and then I usually find that it doesn't work in IE properly either, or they were purposely excluding other browsers because they knew that they'd got better security and would suppress popups, etc.

Jaguu · « **Reply #9 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:08:47 pm »

Sorry for the guys who propagated Firebird on this forum and sorry for me who listen to them. Unfortunately I listened to your propaganda, downloaded Firebird 1.7, installed it, played for 2 hours and sent it to recycle bin again.

1) It is much slower than IE6 on WXP-SP1 on an Athlon 2100+ pc, especially the loading of pages with many pictures.

2) It is not capable of doing a clean and proper import of all of IE's favorites.

3) For a lot of web-sites (especially Microsoft, but also others) you cannot use Firebird, so you need to keep IE anyway. But for such a case I expect an automatic synchronisation of cookies and favorites between IE and Firebird. If such a product wants to gain market share over IE, this is to me is a basic requirement.

4) There are definitely good ideas implemented in this product, but far-off of being a replacement for IE right now.

Rob L · « **Reply #10 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:24:10 pm »

Hm... Firebird isn't actually a release product yet and doesn't claim to be. The difference in version number compared to IE (0.7 v 6!) makes that pretty obvious.

However, I'm frankly amazed you think it's slower than IE. I'm not making it up when I say that on no machine I use (and I use dozens of them for work and at home) is IE anything like as fast as either Firebird or Mozilla (which actually I'll carry on using for now because the mail client is essential for me).

As for sites it doesn't work with - there really *aren't* that many. It DOES work quite happily with a load of sections of the Microsoft website (particularly after all the publicity that MS were explicitly making their website incompatible with other browsers), so I don't know why you'd be having trouble with it unless it's a particular section I've never used....

Phil Lee · « **Reply #11 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:27:39 pm »

Having just installed MyIE2 I may need to change my vote. I'm very impressed so far.

Sauzee · « **Reply #12 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:29:50 pm »

I urge anyone who has never tried my IE2 to give it a go. I did and never looked back.

There are a lot of tabbed browsers out there but none of them have the range of features of MY IE2.

It's also freeware, unlike some of the other IE based tabbed browsers.

LonWar · « **Reply #13 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:30:22 pm »

I also use MyIE2.

Just a GREAT browser

xen-uno · « **Reply #14 on:** November 06, 2003, 06:35:18 pm »

Jaguu > downloaded Firebird ... sent it to recycle bin

Phil > I may need to change my vote

Let's keep it clean here, boys.

jj.oneil · « **Reply #15 on:** November 06, 2003, 07:23:11 pm »

I tried MyIE2 but i prefer Avant. Same thing really, repackages multiple IE windows in one app but Avant did some things better than MyIE2 but i can't remember what now. Horses for courses.....

JJ.

crowfan · « **Reply #16 on:** November 06, 2003, 07:33:43 pm »

MyIE2 is great....my favorite feature is the ability to set the browser to *automatically* clean history and cache when I close the browser, but leave my cookies alone (so that I don't have to sign in to Interact every time I visit

)

Mike Noe, you're welcome

crow

xen-uno · « **Reply #17 on:** November 06, 2003, 08:27:50 pm »

kiwi · « **Reply #18 on:** November 06, 2003, 09:57:41 pm »

Quote from: JLee on November 06, 2003, 05:26:02 pm

I'd be lost without IE. Easy and intuitive IMO. Tried Netscape and immediately hated it. I do worry about MS dominance and it can't be healthy but you have to admit that their UI's are very well thought out. Anyone who uses Access or Word would have a hard time letting go.

I've used Word for many years... but this past January, I switched to OpenOffice and haven't looked back. Sure, there are a few rough edges, but I figure that it needs people using it to beat^h^h^h^hsand those edges out.

Sure it doesn't have ALL the features that word has, but I never used 90% of those features. If I wanted to have something look good, I'd just dump it into Pagemaker and use that.

Quote

However, I'm frankly amazed you think it's slower than IE. I'm not making it up when I say that on no machine I use (and I use dozens of them for work and at home) is IE anything like as fast as either Firebird or Mozilla (which actually I'll carry on using for now because the mail client is essential for me).

I agree. Firebird is much quick on every system I've used it on (from 200MHz up to 2.4GHz.) About the only thing that it's not as quick at is loading up, and that's because you are comparing a program loading up to one that is stored in memory. M$ already has IE running, so it loads really quickly. I believe that there is an option to allow you to have FB load into the sys tray at startup... and/or to have it stay there once you've loaded it, so subsequent loads are quicker.

Quote

There are a lot of tabbed browsers out there but none of them have the range of features of MY IE2.

FB's extenstions fix that, grab the Tabbed Browser Extension.
http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions/

Other extentions of interest:
Flash Click To View - Flash load as just a button, when you click it, the flash download and run. Nice way to get rid of flash adverts.

Slashzilla - Slashdot from the sidebar.

Things They Left Out - Additional options.

The thing that I like about FB is that it's fast and clean and you can add functions only if you need them.

Also, FB has live searching of Bookmarks and History, from the side bars.

kiwi

Thunderbird1 · « **Reply #19 on:** November 06, 2003, 10:47:04 pm »

Crowfan:

Based on your post above, I downloaded MyIE2. I've played around with it for a while now and all I can say is...THANKS for the tip. Major props to you for the lead. It's an awesome browser!

Thunderbird 1 FAB

P.S.: Double props for the Go Minnesota, Boston, Florida signature in October. If my team's out of it, there's nothing in sports like watching the NY Skankees lose...except perhaps watching the Dallas Cowboys lose.

dragyn · « **Reply #20 on:** November 06, 2003, 11:17:31 pm »

I've been using MyIE2 for a long time.

Things I like about it is the quick save for images, mouse gestures, content / popup filter, and plugins like Flash Save, Right Click, Highlight, Weather, Hotmail, and Google Power Search. "Drag and search / open links in a new window" is handy too.

I tried Firebird and still have it on my system but the only thing I don't like about it is the tabs and the way it shows some links (like the ones in this forum).

sraymond · « **Reply #21 on:** November 07, 2003, 12:13:38 am »

I've been using MyIE2 for about a year now (maybe a bit less)... but it causes a bit of havoc with my password manager program (Password Officer). I tried Firebird two weeks ago (because of the many recomendations here), and I haven't been using MyIE2 much at all since then.

The Firebird extensions are very comprehensive. There's almost nothing that I'd like to do but can't. The interface is very good. And there are many "little things" that make me very happy. For one, I love the fact that I can copy a URL in a newsgroup that has been wordwrapped, and Firebird properly strips the CR/LF when I paste it into the address bar.

I don't like Firebird's built-in XSLT processor and I haven't gotten SVGs to display in Firebird yet. But other than that, three thumgs up! Thern there's also the hassle that Microsoft apps want to open IE (or MyIE2) for internal hyperlinks... like Messenger and Outlook. What a PTIA.

It amazes me that such a huge company can't fix the obvious feature holes in their browser. I guess this is a great study for the dangers of a monopoly.

I think I'll support Firebird just because it's good (great) *and* open source.

Scott-

nameless · « **Reply #22 on:** November 07, 2003, 12:27:52 am »

Count me in as another MyIE2 user (and I've tried them ALL).

Wile E. One · « **Reply #23 on:** November 07, 2003, 12:50:55 am »

I used to use Netscape...then moved to Mozilla... and now I'm in love with Firebird.

Based on the number of people raving in here about MyIE2, I decided to download it and give it a shot... I figured that since I have to have IE on my system, it might as well be the best it could be. And while I have to say that MyIE2 is MUCH, MUCH better than regular IE... I don't find it nearly as intuitive or, to be honest, as customizable as Firebird.

On my system, Firebird loads faster, and MyIE2's tabs are driving me nuts! I hate that I can't get the tabs to open in the background (which is one of my favorite things about tabbed browsing). Also, I find that when closing a tab in Firebird, it always does a nice job of taking me to the next tab... either right to left... or left to right...depending on which tab I'm looking at. None of MyIE2's options (previous, next, default) can do this.

Oh, and Ctl+N is supposed to open a new "window"... not a new tab.

I'll keep playing with MyIE2 for a bit longer, to see if I can get used to it... but it's going to have to work pretty hard if it's going to convince me to switch.

EDIT: Actually... I find it interesting to see the various proportions of people who use each browser. I suspect this is related to how computer literate the MC crowd is vs. the "general public" (for lack of a better term). It would be interesting to know if the proportions in the poll results are similar to the page hits for JRiver, or for a site like Google.

nameless · « **Reply #24 on:** November 07, 2003, 01:06:06 am »

Both of the aspects of tab behavior that you've mentioned are configurable.

Go into MyIE2's options, and select "Window" in the left side. Select the appropriate option (I use "Previous"). You seem to indicate that this doesn't work, but I don't see why that would be. I mean, when you close a browser tab, you can either go to the tab that was opened next in the sequence, or previous in the sequence. Unless Firebird has a "Read my mind" option, I don't see what MyIE2 can be doing differently than Firebird.

By deselecting the "Activate new window" option (which is found in the same aforementioned location), you can get tabs to open in the background. There are other ways to toggle the same option as well.

Wile E. One · « **Reply #25 on:** November 07, 2003, 01:37:29 am »

Quote

By deselecting the "Activate new window" option (which is found in the same aforementioned location), you can get tabs to open in the background.

Thanks! Worked great.

Quote

You seem to indicate that this doesn't work, but I don't see why that would be. I mean, when you close a browser tab, you can either go to the tab that was opened next in the sequence, or previous in the sequence. Unless Firebird has a "Read my mind" option, I don't see what MyIE2 can be doing differently than Firebird.

Ah... but it is different.

An example:

I have a string of tabs open...

1....2......3.....4......5......6.......7....

If tab 1 is the MC9 forum, and 2 through 7 are threads of the forum. I want to read all of the threads, one by one. I usually open tab 2, and when finished with that thread... I close the tab. In Firebird, I find myself looking at tab 3 (which makes me happy...no unnecessary clicking). In MyIE2 (using the 'previous' or 'default' options), I see tab 1 again...the MC9 forum (which doesn't make me happy). However, using the 'next' option shows me tab 3, so all is well.

An alternative might be that I would like to read from thread 7 to 2. In Firebird, I read and close tab 7 and I see tab 6 (again, I am happy). In MyIE2, (using the 'next' or 'default' options), I see tab 1 again... the MC9 forum (I am not happy). Using the 'previous' option works great (and I am happy).

However, you may see the problem. In Firebird, no matter which way I want to read the threads, it works. In MyIE2, I can only go one way or the other... but not both.

I believe that the logic that Firebird uses for tabbed browsing is as follows:

If the current tab is not the rightmost tab, then move to the right when the current tab is closed. If the current tab is the rightmost tab, then move to the left.

Of course, many people would probably say "Aww, who cares?" or "THAT'S the thing I hate most about Firebird!"... but like favourite audio encoders and favourite cars, everyone is entitled to an opinion... and it is JUST an opinion.

Like I said... I'll keep fiddling, and keep reading what everyone says they like about it. If it grows on me, maybe I'll switch... and maybe not.

nila · « **Reply #26 on:** November 07, 2003, 03:16:04 am »

Was using Mozilla for a while and loved it, loved the tabs, loved the lack of having to install it, loved a lot about it.

Designed a site and LOVED how it looked in Moz. Unfortunately I forgot to check the site in IE after that (Obvious stupid mistake I know) and then showed it to the customer and it looked terrible in IE which doesn't properly adhere to CSS Standards.

As a result I've moved to my IE2 and LOVE it.
Moz is a great browser but as a developer I have to use whatever the majority of people use and so I have both on my system but mainly use IE as most people use it and so my sites have to be designed to look best in that!

DJ_Hazelwood · « **Reply #27 on:** November 07, 2003, 03:31:47 am »

I've just downloaded and tried MyIE2 ...

... i think it will get my favourite browser.

retrospek · « **Reply #28 on:** November 07, 2003, 04:07:46 am »

I use AVANT BROWSER which I love.

It is based on IE so tends to work with most pages on the internet...

Mark.

Ce.D · « **Reply #29 on:** November 07, 2003, 05:17:25 am »

Personally:
1. 45% Opera (I love tabs and gestures and all)
2. 45% IE (couldn't find a way to make Opera open another *window* when in tabs mode; since I use virtual desktops, this really bugs me)
3. 10% I like FireBird but had issues with CSS formatting (although the features used were W3C/CSS-1 compliant). I would otherwise make it my 100% preferred browser (since it has what *I* need from both Opera and IE and is so fast!)

Professionally:
As a web developper, I aim towards being compatible with IE, Opera and Mozilla (IE5-like generations).

hit_ny · « **Reply #30 on:** November 07, 2003, 05:30:50 am »

i would go with Opera, it made a huge difference over IE. Tabbed browsing makes participating in forums a lot easier.

THe only thing i need to figure out is how tomake it open windows one at a time, between sessions or after a reboot.

Currently it tends to open up all of them simultaneously and exceeds my dial-up speed very quickly. SO pages need to be manually refreshed afterwards.

THe other great feature about opera is the ease of displaying pages with/or without graphics. ( type g ) THis speeds up browsing a lot. I display pages on this forum w/o graphics and its really fast even over dialup.

Can IE2 or firebird do the above ?

NoCodeUK · « **Reply #31 on:** November 07, 2003, 05:37:52 am »

I ticked Firebird as this is my Browser of choice although I seem to end up using IE a lot as the mouse seems to gravitate to its icon. Old habits die hard

As for web design I design using only standards compliant code and can get the page to look exactly the same in Firebird, Opera and IE. Just takes a little tweaking. The great thing is because IEs CSS support is so ropey and does not support child selectors you can actually add in CSS specifically for Gecko based browsers which IE will ignore as it does not support it. I have used this to create a site using just CSS and named DIVs that acts like a frame based site in Gecko using fixed positioning and as a norma table based site in IE. Best of both worlds...all users see all my content, the sensible people using Gecko see it in the best possible way

Adam

TimB · « **Reply #32 on:** November 07, 2003, 07:46:33 am »

Boy are we NOT an average audience.

-=Tim=-

Rob L · « **Reply #33 on:** November 07, 2003, 08:17:20 am »

Seems pretty representative to me...

xen-uno · « **Reply #34 on:** November 07, 2003, 08:54:08 am »

hit > THe other great feature about opera is the ease of displaying pages with/or without graphics. ( type g ) THis speeds up browsing a lot. I display pages on this forum w/o graphics and its really fast even over dialup. Can IE2 or firebird do the above ?

There are all sorts of extensions for FireBird (hit the link and see what's available). The default behavior is pop-up window blocking. Image, In Line Ad's, and Flash can be blocked as well. In some cases they are still DL'd...just not displayed.

10^-27

crowfan · « **Reply #35 on:** November 07, 2003, 09:03:44 am »

Quote from: Thunderbird1 on November 06, 2003, 10:47:04 pm

P.S.: Double props for the Go Minnesota, Boston, Florida signature in October. If my team's out of it, there's nothing in sports like watching the NY Skankees lose...except perhaps watching the Dallas Cowboys lose.

Thanks Thunderbird1, I wasn't sure if anyone noticed that!

Looks like we have a Giants fan in the hizzouse! You guys killed me this past weekend (I was there to see it all firsthand, and it hurt). But that's OK, because the Yankees still lost

crow

V-Man · « **Reply #36 on:** November 07, 2003, 09:10:56 am »

Anyone tried iRider? It looks very cool indeed, though it's not free. There's a 21 day trial, I plan to give it a test drive though I'm a bit busy at the moment so will hold back for a few weeks.

nila · « **Reply #37 on:** November 07, 2003, 09:40:33 am »

Hey Adam, I'd be interested to see that site

Got a link?

Wobbley · « **Reply #38 on:** November 07, 2003, 10:16:18 am »

I've just tried MyIE2 and...I LOVE IT!!! Thanks for the recommendation!

Wobbley

Thunderbird1 · « **Reply #39 on:** November 07, 2003, 10:47:52 am »

Crowfan:

Quote

Looks like we have a Giants fan in the hizzouse!

I realize this is a bit off topic, but there's actually a Niners fan in the house. And also a fan of any team that plays the Cowboys!

BTW: I'm still working witth MyIE2 and it continues to impress. Second round of props to you, Crow.

crowfan · « **Reply #40 on:** November 07, 2003, 10:58:29 am »

Quote from: Thunderbird1 on November 07, 2003, 10:47:52 am

I realize this is a bit off topic

Yeah, sorry about that everyone

Quote

but there's actually a Niners fan in the house. And also a fan of any team that plays the Cowboys!

ahh, I guess I'm so used to the Giant fans here in NY hating on the Cowboys, I just assumed. Go Niners! (except when playing the Jets of course

)

Now, to get us back on track:

MyIE2 also has tons of great skins on their site. It's nice to change it up once in a while! Skinning seems as active over there as it is here

crow

LonWar · « **Reply #41 on:** November 07, 2003, 01:17:49 pm »

Then you will love MyIE2.

Give it a try, It just improves IE6.

nameless · « **Reply #42 on:** November 07, 2003, 01:29:38 pm »

Quote from: Wile E. One on November 07, 2003, 01:37:29 am

Like I said... I'll keep fiddling, and keep reading what everyone says they like about it. If it grows on me, maybe I'll switch... and maybe not.

Hey, to each his own. I try hard not to be a software chauvanist (except where Media Center is concerned, of course.

)... I've swayed from one browser to another too many times to be.

The truth is, my real preference is with Opera 7. I very nearly switched to it recently, and the only thing that stopped me was a bug where I'd try downloading binary files, and get a browser page full of ASCII text instead. There was a workaround, but I'm not interested in paying money to put up with issues like that.

rocketsauce · « **Reply #43 on:** November 07, 2003, 01:53:45 pm »

The main reason that I started searching for an alternate browser to IE6 is a known bug (I'll post the link if I can find it) that causes the browser to freeze when you have it set to prompt before setting a new cookie.

My default browser now is Firebird. A few reasons are (in no particular order):

tabbed browsing - yeah, I know that Opera, MyIE2, etc also have tabs, but this leads me to my next point...
customizability - FB comes with a basic set of options and advanced options are added by installing extensions. Opera, MyIE2, etc have all those options built in by default and I don't need or use about 98% of them. With FB extensions I can install only the advanced options that I want
a very simple, plain interface
it avoids some of the more obvious security issues (such as activeX) that are a risk when using IE or any of the IE frontends
standards compliance - yeah, once in awhile you run across a page that doesn't display correctly because it is using IE-only code, but using IE I came across just as many pages that didn't display correctly because the site used 100% standards compliant code
built-in popup blocking

Rob

hit_ny · « **Reply #44 on:** November 07, 2003, 02:08:07 pm »

Quote

hit > THe other great feature about opera is the ease of displaying pages with/or without graphics. ( type g ) THis speeds up browsing a lot. I display pages on this forum w/o graphics and its really fast even over dialup. Can IE2 or firebird do the above ?

There are all sorts of extensions for FireBird (hit the link and see what's available). The default behavior is pop-up window blocking. Image, In Line Ad's, and Flash can be blocked as well. In some cases they are still DL'd...just not displayed.

Thx for the poniter...will check it out.

Just wanrted to say Opera already blocks graphics, this includes all sorts of them.

What i want to know..is there a way i can load a style sheet that could block out all the distracting stuff. I realise that this is site specific, but there are certain sites that i browse on a regular basis.

SO basically only show the graphics that are relevant to the page...kinda lke smart browsing of sorts. i would examine the page source and then wrote some sort of style sheet that loads automatically when i hit that site.

any ideas anyone ?

fretwalker · « **Reply #45 on:** November 07, 2003, 03:10:09 pm »

1 · Opera (fast, beautiful (Occhi Blu Scheme) & full of features)
2 · Firebird
3 · MyIE (if the engine wouldn't be from MS it could be my No.1)
4 · MS IE (just for compatibility reasons)

In this order...

kiwi · « **Reply #46 on:** November 07, 2003, 04:13:25 pm »

Quote from: Thunderbird1 on November 07, 2003, 10:47:52 am

I realize this is a bit off topic, but there's actually a Niners fan in the house. And also a fan of any team that plays the Cowboys!

My feelings too! Go niners! Go whomever is playing the Giants!

Though, I also have to cheer for the Raiders as it's great to see Jerry Rice still doing amazing things out there.

kiwi

JimH · « **Reply #47 on:** November 07, 2003, 07:03:34 pm »

I just downloaded Firebird (thanks to you) and took a look. It looks very good. I had some trouble installing (zip file and flash) but it's fine now.

Here's a thought. What about a version of Firebird that has an installer and comes with MC and is as compatible as possible. What do I mean by compatible? Installs flash better. Has the Toolbar set for MC and other destinations you recommend. Has a set of bookmarks that reflect the well read MC audience. A spell checker for the chalenged.... You name it. Maybe we do it.

sraymond · « **Reply #48 on:** November 07, 2003, 08:03:04 pm »

Quote

What about a version of Firebird that has an installer and comes with MC and is as compatible as possible.

I like it, Jim. The internet is definately a form of media - and if you want to be true to your slogan of "All Media. One Interface"...

Or were you pulling our leg?

Scott-

Michael Horton · « **Reply #49 on:** November 07, 2003, 08:08:03 pm »

Quote

I just downloaded Firebird (thanks to you) and took a look. It looks very good. I had some trouble installing (zip file and flash) but it's fine now.

Here's a thought. What about a version of Firebird that has an installer and comes with MC and is as compatible as possible. What do I mean by compatible? Installs flash better. Has the Toolbar set for MC and other destinations you recommend. Has a set of bookmarks that reflect the well read MC audience. A spell checker for the chalenged.... You name it. Maybe we do it.

um . . . . that'd be swell

INTERACT FORUM

Poll

Which browser do you use the majority of time?

Author Topic: Browser Poll 2003 (Read 22822 times)

LisaRCT

jleerigby

dragyn

sraymond

nameless

nameless

nila

V-Man

nila

nameless

sraymond