Best Browser?

[dwlpl]

We have Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Are there others?

Also, which one is the best with regard to performance, speed and general operation without 'freezing'.?

[g4phil]

http://www.faststone.org/FSBrowserDetail.htm


FastStone 4in1 Browser is a tabbed Web Browser with a built-in Web Server, a fully functional FTP Client and a drag & drop Image Viewer. It enables users to surf the web, run a web server, transfer files between his computer (client) and servers, view and capture web pages within one single application. It is a fast, stable, skinable and 100% Free.

[Avtrician]

Anything not Microstuffed.

Mozilla is good too

[Mac the Knife]

Originally Posted by g4phil

FastStone........It is a fast, stable, skinable and 100% Free.

While it's "better" than IE, FastStone uses the IE engine and is really just a better skin for Internet Explorer. It still has all the underlying glitches and security vulnerabilities of IE.

Though I use Firefox because I'm so used to it, I think Opera is actually the best and fastest of all, with the benefit of an integrated email client.

Opera is completely free too.

[planecrazy.eu]

Well my favorite is FireFox, i think it kicks IE's butt! But software is always about personal needs, get the one with the features that you will use, and not full of features you wont. I have only used Opera on Linux, but prefer FireFox...

[Tinstaafl]

I prefer Opera, using in both Linux & Windoze. I also used Links - a Linux text based browser - when in a shell. I put Opera on PCs at work too. I'm trying to convince the boss to avoid IE because of the security issues with it but it's hard going.

Tried to explain that the nice interoperability & root privileges between IE/Windoze/Office/everything else are part of the reason for the network's woes. Even after a number of virus/adware/spyware infections & machines that crawl he's wedded to WinXP & IE.

Wish I could convince him to dump M$. There's only one or two bits of software we use that's Windows specific. Even then there's Linux equivalents that I think would suffice.

[asuweb]

Anything is better than IE.

Personal choice is FireFox, been using it for years and have never looked back. Have used various other browsers with Linux, all have there own unique features.

Opera is a good browser, but am so used to FireFox, I'll stick to that for now.

[Tarq57]

A lone voice ?

I actually like IE6. Never had a problem because of it that wasn't of my own, semi-ignorant naive and lets-try-to-tweak-it making. When I tried Firefox and Opera (not together) I just had a heap of application errors that I was too thick to solve. So I've lived with Microsoft's program, and find it works just fine.
Important to have good protection on the computer, and to keep the updates/patches up to date.

[Mac the Knife]

Originally Posted by markjoy

When I tried Firefox and Opera (not together) I just had a heap of application errors that I was too thick to solve. So I've lived with Microsoft's program, and find it works just fine.

Hmmm... I think you've been unlucky. I put Opera on my wife's PC - no application errors and she loves it. I've installed FF on lots of other people's PCs, including my son's (he's never seen IE, lucky chap) and if there were heaps of application errors I'd certainly have heard about it. I've only had routine questions about how do I make it do this or that.

Ho hum...

Mac

[OneWorld22]

I just got an iMac and Safari is very good. But I also downloaded Opera and Camino (a Mozilla platform) and both are excellent. Super quick and take up less RAM then Safari...

I onlu used Opera on Wintel machines and this Mac version is exactly the same, was able to import all my e-mail messages and bookmarks and contacts with no problem whatsover.

[Tarq57]

Mac the Knife

Yeah, I think you're probably right. Unlucky. But I still don't fully understand why everyone hates IE so much.

[Mac the Knife]

Originally Posted by dwlpl

We have Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. Are there others?
Also, which one is the best with regard to performance, speed and general operation without 'freezing'.?

There are plenty of other browsers apart from the Big Three (or four, or five)

Off-by-One - http://offbyone.com/offbyone/ - is an excellent and very fast mini-browser that's really small.

" The Off By One Web Browser may be the world's smallest and fastest web browser with full HTML 3.2 support. It is a completely self-contained, stand-alone 1.2 MB application with no dependencies on any other browser or browser component. For Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows XP"

Arachne - http://home.arachne.cz/ - is a fullscreen graphical browser that runs on DOS compatible OSes. An alpha version for POSIX-compliant systems like Linux is also available. Arachne is even smaller at under 1MB

"But I still don't fully understand why everyone hates IE so much."

Lots of reasons.

IE 6 is now ancient and lacks all sorts of abilities that more modern browsers have like tabs and so forth. MS just sort of assumed that because of their huge domination of the market that people would just have to like it or lump it, since after they had crushed Netscape no one would ever bother to compete anymore. Firefox has given them a nasty surprise.

Corruption of Web standards. The WWW consortium is the OS agnostic body that determines Web standards for writing pages in HTML. From it's outset, IE has ignored W3 standards and tried to replace them with proprietary MS standards - so that web pages written to display correctly in IE would not display correctly in any other browser (and vice versa). MS wanted web page authors to use the MS dialect exclusively, so that no other browser would work properly. Web designers who wanted to reach other platforms had to produce two pages, one that would display correctly on IE and one that would display correctly on everything else, which was a great chore (which was what MS intended). IE is now "better", but still far from standards compliant (AFAIK Opera is the only one that really is).

MS did something similar with Java. They licenced Java from Sun and then proceeded to produce their own, different Java run-time engine that was incompatible with the Sun JRE. So that apps written in MS-Java wouldn't work properly with Sun Java. The idea was that MS would use their huge dominance of the browser market to supplant the original Java with their own proprietary Java, which they could control. The reason they were scared was that Java is essentially OS agnostic, and thus applications written in Java would work just as well under UNIX or BeOS or Windows or whatever. And with applications becoming increasingly Web-centric they couldn't tolerate that. And of course anyone wanting to write in MS-Java would have to licence the MS-Java SDK from them, instead of the Sun SDK. Sun sued, and won after a long court battle - MS eventually dropped MS-Java.

IE is horribly insecure, though to their credit they have hardened it substantially recently. One of the worst holes was allowing Active-X controls to be installed with little warning to the user. And since most Windows users, by necessity, run with Administrative privileges, installed Active-X controls could do anything they liked to the users system.

And then of course the spyware nature of IE, which allows MS to keep tabs on every website you visit and what your system is up to - folks don't like the implications for their privacy.

[potkettleblack]

I think I have had one of those watershed moments having just now installed Firefox and learnt about tabbed browsing. What a brilliant concept being able to have instant access to all the websites I access regularly. Wow. Cheers folks!

[asuweb]

Great post mac.

[Tarq57]

Mac the Knife
I understand enough now. Thanks.
Very tempted to try FF, or one of the others, again.