Topic: Interesting browser stats

[scottws]

I just checked OW.net's Google Analytics stats.  Internet Explorer is the fifth ranked browser here, at least according to visits.  It only has 4.51% of the visits.  Firefox has the largest share by far with 74.33%.  Another thing I found interesting is that Chrome is beating out Safari.  Opera is second with 8.34%.

[idolminds]

Speaking of, Firefox 3.6 released today. Guess its got some javascript speed improvements, and now Personas are built in. And I actually found one that wasn't ugly as sin.

[Ghandi]

I can't say that I'm surprised. IE sucks, after all. We are all aware of that (for the most part).

I'm curious who will be winning 5 years from now.

[W7RE]

I keep wondering if there will come a day when most stuff won't work in Opera anymore, and I'll be forced to switch to a different browser.

[idolminds]

Aww, crap. The new built-in Personas kind of messed up the cool part of the old system. Personas now install as themes, even though its really just the default theme with the background image. This is ok in one way, but it removes one really nice "feature" they used to have.

See, in the old system you could apply a persona over just about any theme. This was very useful for picking out new custom buttons to match. But now you can only use the default buttons. Which sucks since my persona is mostly black with red highlights, but the buttons are green. I found a theme that recolors the buttons to red so it would look awesome but I cant use the two together. Blast!

[Cobra951]

Personas?  That's news to me, whatever it is.

I use FF just about exclusively.  IE is a last resort if a page refuses to behave in FF.  An odd thing happened when I had to let Linksys support drive this laptop remotely.  Neither FF not IE would let them do it.  Fortunately, Safari is also installed here, and that worked.

[beo]

it's all about chrome as far as i'm concerned. lean as hell. at work, however, i'm stuck on IE - version 8 really isn't all that bad.

[scottws]

IE8 is a bloated piece of crap.  IE7 would be better if it had the more standards-compliant engine that IE8 uses.  As far as Chrome goes, I hate it.  The look of it just turns me way off.  Firefox all the way.

It's interesting, the company I work for now deploys Firefox.  This is because it's a 60% Mac OS X environment, so to standardize the browser they chose Firefox.

[Schlotzky5]

I love chrome. Its just so fast. The tabs bar took a little getting used to, but I can deal with that because it uses a fraction of the resources of FF.

[W7RE]

Because of this thread I installed Firefox and Chrome. Chrome seems like the fastest, but has the least options. I guess I'd have to just spend a lot of time with one to get used to it, but neither has all the options I like in Opera.

Neither has most recently used CTRL-Tabbing (tab to my MRU tab, not the first in the list), and neither has mouse gestures. I found a Chrome Extension for mouse gestures, but it apparently only works on some types of sites for security reasons. Also this is nitpicking, but neither has the cool panel flyout that Opera has.

[scottws]

Because of this thread I installed Firefox and Chrome. Chrome seems like the fastest, but has the least options. I guess I'd have to just spend a lot of time with one to get used to it, but neither has all the options I like in Opera.

Neither has most recently used CTRL-Tabbing (tab to my MRU tab, not the first in the list), and neither has mouse gestures. I found a Chrome Extension for mouse gestures, but it apparently only works on some types of sites for security reasons. Also this is nitpicking, but neither has the cool panel flyout that Opera has.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/12
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/29
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6366

[Schlotzky5]

What sort of mouse gestures do you use?

[idolminds]

I use FireGestures. Works well for me.

[Ghandi]

The main reason I use FF is for the addons. NoScript and Adblock in particular are addons that I can't live without.

[Raisa]

I use FF and Chrome too.. i like FF best though.. like Ghandi, my addons are important!!

[W7RE]

I'm giving Firefox a try. I got Firegestures and configured it how I wanted. Unfortunately it won't let me set down as "open new tab" and "open link in new tab" at the same time. That means "open new tab" gets pushed to down-up, and "duplicate tab" gets pushed to down-up-down. I'm expecting a lot of gesture mistakes in the next couple days, lol.

[Ghandi]

You can always just right-click a link and choose "open in new tab", and use ctrl+t for a new blank tab.

[Cobra951]

The main reason I use FF is for the addons. NoScript and Adblock in particular are addons that I can't live without.

That makes 3 of us (along with Raisa).  I'm curious about Chrome, but I'm hooked on the very selective FF with these addons.

[Quemaqua]

There are a number of FF-specific addons I need as well, such as Rikaichan.  I don't like Chrome just because it's Google and I don't care for some of their business model and for how much power they've amassed.  One Microsoft is bad enough.

[scottws]

I don't need Firefox.  The only add-ons I use are AdBlock Plus, Firebug, and FireFTP.  Those last two I rarely use.  But I still stick with Firefox mainly because it's the most widely supported, standard-compliant browser.  IE8 is standards-compliant now, but because IE7 and especially IE6 weren't there are still lots of sites out there that feed up special code to IE that actually ends up messing up the layout and function and you have to use that IE7 compatibility mode thing.  And while I don't use a lot of Firefox add-ons, I appreciate that they are there and I have the choice.  You don't really get that with the other browsers.

I did install Google Chrome on my work MacBook Pro yesterday.  It is noticeably faster to open and load pages than Firefox, and it definitely looks better on Mac OS X than it does on Windows.  Seems like there might be some promise to it.

[Cools!]

I prefer Camino right over Firefox on the Mac. It uses the same engine as Firefox but is much faster to load and use. Dunno, but Firefox on the Mac is sluggish as hell. The only bad thing about Camino is that it doesn't have support for Firefox plug-ins, but then again I don't really use any in the first place.

My preferred browser is still Safari though.

I have no respect for Chrome cause Google basically took Safari's rendering engine (WebKit) but didn't even have a Mac client available at launch. I know Google is trying to be all nice and for open source and whatever, but for a company of their size they could've at least for once released a finished product from the start on all major platforms. I get it when a small company doesn't have the time or resources, but Google is huge and can easily hire more programmers to get it done.

[Ghandi]

How do you deal with the ads? Maybe I'm just use to the absence, but whenever I see ads I can't deal with it.

[Cobra951]

Same here.  One of the first things I did on Sandy's laptop was get Adblock and the free filters subscription.  All it took was msn/hotmail without it to motivate me.

[scottws]

I have to be honest.  Sometimes I feel guilty by using AdBlock Plus.  Ads are the primary revenue stream for many websites and basically AdBlock Plus denies them that revenue in many cases.

That said, I don't feel bad for the ones that use all kinds of crazy flash ads that slow my browser or whole computer down and have audio on mouse-over.  Those people are the main reason I started using AdBlock Plus in the first place and they can suck it.

[Schlotzky5]

I dont mind looking at ads. I've spent so many years with them that they don't bug me anymore. Pop-ups seem to be going the way of the dinosaur simply because every browser out there does a pretty decent job of blocking them. The only ads I dont like are the ones for weight loss rules with pictures of fat people. I used to hate evony ads, then I read this and now I laugh every time I see them.

http://www.bruceongames.com/2009/07/15/more-about-evony/

[scottws]

Ugh.  I hate Google Chrome.  It's speed is truly impressive, but I hate how it makes pages load all "bouncy".  Like these forums compress down and expand up a few times before finally loading and looking alright.

[W7RE]

Ugh.  I hate Google Chrome.  It's speed is truly impressive, but I hate how it makes pages load all "bouncy".  Like these forums compress down and expand up a few times before finally loading and looking alright.

That's weird. Opera does that a lot, but Chrome isn't doing it to me.

Basically I tried out Firefox for a day or two,a nd now I'm giving Chrome a whirl. I think I'm liking Chrome better just for it's speed.

[wizall]

I'm trying Chrome out now. I do like its speed. I've been using Firefox, and while I like a lot of the features, the memory usage constantly buttfucks my aging laptop. I'll try this for a while.

Oh, and the Mariah Carey theme is pretty legit.

[W7RE]

Oh, and the Mariah Carey theme is pretty legit.

ROFL. I checked out a few of the themes but settled on "greyscale" because everything was annoying.


I just wish I could have Chrome erase my browser history and typed links on exit (maybe there's an extension for that). It's not cool when I want to show someone something and questionable URLs start popping up as suggestions.

[Cobra951]

Firefox has private browsing.  IE 8 has something similar.  In FF it's under Tools, and you can also add a button for it.  When you do, your tabs go away, and you get a blurb about it.  Do whatever you want in the browser now except download, and when you leave private browsing (the same way you came) you get your old tabs back, and it's as if you never left.  No evidence is left behind.  That's what they claim anyway.  I don't know if anyone has done good independent testing of how well it works.

[Ghandi]

You can also set FF to clear your history when you exit. I'm surprised Chrome doesn't allow it.

[Schlotzky5]

Chrome has a mode called incognito. If you right click a link you can open it in a incognito window and it doesnt save any cookies or history or anything. You always know if youre incognito because theres a shady looking dude to the left of the tabs.

This is the description from Chrome:

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
Websites that collect or share information about you
Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
Surveillance by secret agents
People standing behind you

[ren]

Firefox is my favourite browser but I'm ok using all of them. At work I use IE8 and on my netbook I use Chrome since it has the smallest visual footprint.

That wasn't always the case though. Before Chrome had extensions it was useless and before IE had tabs it was useless.

I have to be honest.  Sometimes I feel guilty by using AdBlock Plus.  Ads are the primary revenue stream for many websites and basically AdBlock Plus denies them that revenue in many cases.

That said, I don't feel bad for the ones that use all kinds of crazy flash ads that slow my browser or whole computer down and have audio on mouse-over.  Those people are the main reason I started using AdBlock Plus in the first place and they can suck it.

I'm the same way. I run Adblock with a filterlist and then allow ads from all the pages I visit that don't have annoyingly intrusive adverts.

[W7RE]

This is the description from Chrome:

Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:
Websites that collect or share information about you
Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
Surveillance by secret agents
People standing behind you

AKA "this mode won't keep you out of jail" hahaha

Also, the guy in the corner reminds me of the Gamespy logo.

[scottws]

Yeah the InPrivate/Private Browsing/Incognito modes are just there so your significant other can't find out how much porn you look at.  They can't be counted on for anything else because most employers of any decent size almost certainly watch your web traffic.

[Ghandi]

I just added a bunch of extensions to FF, some of which seem promising. I thought I'd share.

Adblock Plus: Element Hiding helper
Hides text ads (or any element you want to get rid of on a site). Install and hit ctrl+shift+k. Works like a charm.

BetterPrivacy
Helps protect against non-detectable cookies. Click the link for a description.

Bugmenot
Bypasses compulsory web registrations

Force-TLS
Force-TLS allows web sites to tell Firefox that they should be served via HTTPS in the future; this helps secure you from accidentally negotiating an insecure session with certain sites.

Saw it and figured why the hell not.

FoxyProxy
Proxy tool for FF

Key Scrambler
Encrypts your keystrokes. There were mixed comments on this one. I haven't had any problems so far, though.

My-Spambox
Creates a temporary email address for 12 hours that forwards to your real email. Good for when you need verification but don't want to use your real email.

Redirect Cleaner
Been using this for a while and it's great. Removes redirects from links. Simple, light and useful.

Targeted advertising cookie opt-out (TACO)
"Stops behavioral advertising by 90 different companies who quietly track you as you surf the Web."

[gpw11]

You know, the only add-on I have for firefox is Chatzilla.

[Xessive]

Internext Explorer 9 Beta is now available for download.

[scottws]

Does it promise to be even more bloated than IE8?

[Xessive]

Meeeeeh..

So far it seems a bit more streamlined. It looks like a cross between Chrome and Safari with a hint of Firefox. It also seems to load pages much more quickly than before.