Alternate Browsers besides Firefox

zachoccio · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:07 am

I recently posted on a topic "Firefox" in which ButtdanceHR tried to get convinced enough to use Firefox instead of IE, and I thought about how most people think Firefox is the only good alternate browser. That is simply not true. Are you using an alternate browser to IE or Safari that isn't Firefox? I am using Opera right now.

zachoccio · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:16 am

Chameleon is not that good or anything, it was just the first alternate, so I thought I'd ask. It did have tabbed browsing though, which was a big innovation.

Jello B. · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:19 am

zachoccio wrote:

it was just the first alternate...

How can that be possible when IE wasn't the first browser?

InterruptorJones · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:49 am

Magna Carta wrote:

Wasn't Netscape the first graphical browser? Or that other browser of which I don't know the name of?

Wasn't the first browser, however, a text-based browser, like Lynx?

Wikipedia knows.

The first web browser was Tim Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb in 1990, and no, it was not text-based.

Lynx didn't come along until 1992, just before NCSA Mosaic, which was the direct predecessor to Netscape Navigator, and arguably the first "mainstream" web browser.

Oh, and Magna Carta, Opera's W3C standards compliance is superior to both Firefox and Internet Explorer's, and it's on par with Safari and Konqueror. It also has full DOM compliance. This has been the case for several years. You can read more about Opera's standards support here. (For the record, I use Firefox.)

Code J · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:03 am

I have four browsers on the Mac: Firefox, Camino, Safari, and *sigh* Internet Explorer (I keep it on there for the vintage appeal). So I usually just pick between the three (I don't use IE). Whichever I'm in the mood for, they're pretty much the same to me.
But on my laptop, strictly Teh Fox.

J-Man · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:53 am

Magna Carta wrote:

I've tried Opera, but it's horrible compliance to W3C standards and it's bad DOM support made me turn back.

Uhm, have you tried the latest version?

Anyway, I've said it before, I use Opera. Have used it for five years or so.

And no, I haven't tried Chameleon either.

InterruptorJones · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 2:48 pm

Magna Carta wrote:

It's marginally better (lol, margarine), but it still has too many problems with displaying codes.

No, it doesn't--not if your code is written correctly.

Quote:

Plus, it's too much of a resource hog, and it's got too much unneeded features.

By all accounts Opera takes considerably fewer resources and is noticeably faster than Firefox, even more so once you've loaded a few extensions in Firefox.

InterruptorJones · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:09 pm

Magna Carta wrote:

They are written in compliance with XHTML Transitional 1.0 standards.

Okay, just because your code validates--this is not a difficult feat--doesn't mean that Firefox is displaying it right and Opera is displaying it wrong. Like I said, Opera's standards support is superior to Firefox and Internet Explorer. This is a fact. Like I said, I use Firefox myself and love it, but if your page is rendering "wrong" in Opera, the problem is on your end, not theirs.

Quote:

I don't have any extensions except for Fasterfox and FireFTP, and, and it weighes less that 17,000K. Opera loaded and it took around 30,000K. That may depend on your computer, however.

Well, that's fantastic for you, but try this: Load 15 tabs in Firefox. Not blank tabs, but real tabs, say, slashdot.org, del.icio.us/popular, cnn.com, this forum, the Wiki's main page.. you know, real live complex pages. Now browse around for about an hour, building up a nice history in each of those tabs, and then tell me how much memory Firefox is taking up. Now try the same thing in Opera. Oh, and take a couple screenshots of the Processes tab in your Task Manager for us.

Look, I'm not saying that Firefox isn't a fantastic browser--it is. I use it about 10 hours a day (and get paid to do it--yay!). But this mindless, uninformed fanboyism isn't doing anybody any favors. Love the browser for what it is--a great tool for getting stuff done on the web--not this fantasy ideal that you've built up from reading too much spreadfirefox.com. For all its brilliance, Firefox has flaws, lots of them, and if we pretend they don't exist Firefox isn't going to get better and that nice upward trend in its market share isn't going to last.

zachoccio · **Posted:** Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:42 pm

Jello B. wrote:

zachoccio wrote:

it was just the first alternate...

How can that be possible when IE wasn't the first browser?

Sorry, I didn't word that well. I meant post IE(Windows) and Netscape(Mac, there was no safari yet by '99) domination. I didn't mean "the first browser after the first which was IE". I assumed nobody else would count World Wide Web and Lynx because not many people I know even had internet access in '90 or '92 unless they worked at or went to the university. As for NCSA Mosaic, it was the first browser I used, but by 1994, a year after it was released, I remember using Mosaic Netscape at home and at school which soon became Netscape because of that legal battle over the name.

Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Alternate Browsers besides Firefox

Who is online