Mozilla 0.9.8

[Buck]

I'm impressed at how well Mozilla 0.9.8 runs under Windows2000 and WindowsXP. It runs quite a bit quicker then Netscape6 (although I like the GUI best), but not as fast as IE6.

Which browser do you use Most? The poll doesn't specify release versions, but you can still let us know.

BR

 

[Buck]

Presently, I've had to pick IE to be honest. But I just changed two of my systems over to Mozilla, and I will see how it holds up as my primary browser.

BR

 

[Handruin]

For the past couple of years it's been IE all the way.

 

[i]

For the past few years it's been Mozilla all the way. :wink:

 

[Tannin]

OS/2 Browsers:
Used Web Explorer for about two years. (There was no Internet Explorer then, and Netscape was messing about in the 1.x and 2.x stages.)

Then switched to Netscape Navigator/2 2.02. The OS/2 Netscape version numbers are weird: think of it as equivalent to Windows Navigator 3.5 or so. Follow-on products to this were not great. Communicator always sucked. I occasionally use Communicator/2 4.61, never Communicator for Windows.

The current Mozilla is pretty good. It still has some rough edges, but it's vastly improved over previous betas, and it is my primary ECS browser now.

Opera for OS/2 is terrible! Worse than the the early Mozilla beta were. Supposed to be a beta, more like an alpha.

 

[Tea]

Windows Browsers

Navigator 4.x for a long time. Note: Navigator, not the bloated horror they call Communicator. Geadually found myself using Internet Explorer 5 more and more, and it's probably fair to say that it became my primary Windows browser about a year or so ago. Netscape 6 probably had something to do with that. NS 6 was so horrible that it killed any little lingering thought I had that they would improve on Navigator 4.08 sooner or later.

So it was IE. Most of IE is pretty good, but (excuse me while I shout here) I WILL NOT PUT UP WITH BEING TREATED LIKE A BLOODY IDIOT ALL THE TIME! Sooner or later, IE was going to go.

Favourites I am not a bloody six year old! They are called "bookmarks" and I want bookmarks in my browser.

about:blank Why can't I have a plain blank screen when I want a plain blank screen?

Homepage issues Am I so bloody stupid that I can't be trusted to understand the difference between a start page and a home page? What if I want to always start with a blank page, but I want to be able to click "home" and go to my preffered home page?"

"The page cannot be displayed" I don't want to see that stupid bloody error page ever, ever ever again! Why you can't you just give me an alert box "page not found" or some such, and leave whatever content was up there before, because I might not be finished reading it.[/i]

Inability to save web pages without buggring them up. When I click "file: save as" I wan't to save the bloody file. I want that file, not some buggered-up Microsoft-sanitised version of it. If I click "File: save as" I want that exact page, nothing else.

On-line off-line issues Explorer is comprehensively unable to cope with dial-up users. Example: I cruise on over to Storage Review, open up six or eight pages I want to read in different windows, leave them ethere while I do something else. I log off to save hourly charges, or perhaps just because I want to use the telephone. Come back a little later to read the pages, and they are all gone - replaced by "server not found" error messages and that horrible bloody white page I complained about already. None of the other browsers do that, only IE. I've quite frequently gone awawy for a weekend or longer and come back to my OS/2 box to find 17 browser windows open, all showing exactly the same content they had last Friday.

Redirections If I type a URL incorrectly, I don't want to be taken to NinebloodyMSN! I want that mistyped URL to stay there in the address field exactly as I bloody typed it, because I want to bloody edit it and get to the place I'm looking for.

Address bar selection issues When I single-click between, for example, "http://www.storagefourum.net" and "/phpBB2/posting.php?mode=reply&t=354" I'm doing it for a reason. (Probably because I want to edit the address field. If I want to highlight the whole bloody address fileld I'll use the mouse or perhaps the keyboard to highlight the whole bloody address field! Me human, you computer. ME BOSS!

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What it comes down to, is that there is no single issue with Internet Explorer that makes it unusable. It is never-ending bombardment of minor issues, each one trivial in itself, that mounts up and up and up into an agonising web experience of a thousand cuts. Using Netscape is like having a March Fly sting you once every few hours. Hurts for ten seconds, then forgotten. Using IE is like sitting in the swamp below the sewage works, quietly watching the turds float by, while the sand flies and mosquitos strip you to the bloody bone. Every few seconds there is another tiny, tiny sting. I hate it!

Thank god I discovered Opera.

 

[Sol]

I use internet explorer because it crashes on average less than anything else I've used. I do have to agree with Teas synopsis however, Netscape may have some issues, and they may never be fixed. At least somone, somewhere probably intends to though. As far as Microsoft are concerened explorer works pretty much perfectly.

 

[Pradeep]

IE6 for me. A while back when Netscape was actually better than IE, I used that. That changed around IE4 or IE5. So much bloaty sluggishness with Netscape compared to IE now.

Tony, you can get rid of that silly auto search crap that MS try to do for you in Tools->Internet Options->Advanced->mark checkbox "Do not search from the Address bar"

 

[time]

Or you can stop wasting time using the piece of decorated excrement in the first place ...

The vast majority of the time, I use Opera. When a site's authors are too stupid to achieve compatibility, or one of Opera's bugs rises up, I use Mozilla 0.98. This works with 99.9% of sites. I have inevitably found that the remaining 0.1% are sites that I really don't want to read anyway.

I have reasons to back up this approach, but let's just say that anyone who actively supports Internet Exploder really needs to think about what it is they are trying to achieve. You're certainly not helping to build a universal communication medium of the future.

 

[Pradeep]

I use IE6 because it renders pages the fastest and most accurately (AFAIK). I don't choose my browser because of political reasons, only for performance.

For global communication, I use Trillian

 

[time]

I use IE6 because it renders pages the fastest and most accurately (AFAIK). I don't choose my browser because of political reasons, only for performance.

I use Opera because it renders most pages the fastest and definitely has the highest effective performance (that is, I get the most done in a certain amount of time). The political side of it is where sites have used M$ tools that break non-M$ browsers and other software.

Almost everyone I have introduced to Opera has persisted, even in the face of occasional incompatibilities. Are you sure you aren't just rationalizing your status quo?

 

[Tea]

Opera 5.x was a pretty nice browser, good enough to make you think about switching.

Opera 6.x is a browser that has arrived. Fast, stable, more HTML compatible than any other browser on the planet (definately including IE), and you know what the really nice thing is?

These guys are working for me. That's the thing, above all other things, that makes Opera so good: the designers aren't thinking "how can we get more hits for MSN?" (MS) or "what can we do to bring in even more extra plugins that you can't get rid of and take forever to load?" (Netscape) or "is it possible to dumb this thing down any further without turning it into a screensaver?" (AOL) or "what other subtle and nasty things can we do to break all the other browsers?" (MS) - they are thinking "what can we do make this thing nicer to use?" It shows, in a hundred little subtle ways.

The better Opera gets, the more people buy it, and they want my business.

Finally, a browser that's on my side.

 

[Pradeep]

OK, downloading Opera 6.1 now, I'll give it a whirl.

 

[Pradeep]

Is it just me or did Opera just install Radiate spyware on my computer? Could have been Gozilla but I'm pretty sure I removed that spyware previously.

 

[Pradeep]

Well apart from the ads, it looks like a very nice browser. Not really worth AUS$80 to me tho.

 

[Mercutio]

Mozilla is my browser of choice and has been since preview-releases in the mid-teens. Killer features like image blocking decide it for me, but the ability to use a standard "bookmark.html" file are also big contributing factors.
For those that haven't tried it, Mozilla is Netscape6+ with all the AOLness taken out. No AIM. No links to AOL. Oh, and no crashing. I can go the whole time between point-releases without Mozilla crashing on Windows or Linux.

Lately I've also been playing with K-meleon, a lightweight browser built around Mozilla's rendering engine. The download is less than 2MB and it integrates both your Netscape and IE bookmarks without combining them. K-meleon does all the same image and popup blocking stuff, but it's a little light on feedback options. Still, it works better on my laptops than Moz does.

Lynx, the textmode browser, is very handy. Browsing can't get any faster than lynx can make it, and I have no problem at all using it for text-heavy pages.

From time to time I'll use Konqueror, the browser integrated into KDE. Usually more out of laziness than anything else. I'm not thrilled by it, although it does a pretty good job of behaving like I expect it to.

IE6. Like Tannin I have a number of objections to it, although one that Tannin didn't mention is the utter lack of feedback from the user interface. What's wrong with working progress bars? About the only time I use IE is to load a page here or on SR with some pictures I want to see (Since Moz and K-meleon both block them).

Opera - I have a registered copy of Opera5 on one machine. It's pirated. I can't justify spending $40 for a web browser when every free alternative is as good or better. My biggest objections here are the stupid MDI interface and the oddball placement of the "browser buttons" (stop is down with each window, but back and forward are up where they belong). I have extremely bad memories about Opera3 and crashing. Opera5 was better, but still crashed more often than any other modern browser I've used. I have it installed. I don't use it, ever.

 

[Pradeep]

Well I just uninstalled Opera 6.01. The POS deleted my quick link icons (the ones in the task bar). This is after I told it not to put it's own icon in there during install. :x

 

[CougTek]

I use Mozilla most of the time, but the build 0.9.9 instead of the 0.9.8 since the new build is less buggy and it has been released something like two weeks ago. It's available in the download section of the front page too (for Winblows and OS/2) if you still haven't upgraded.

I also seldom use Opera 6.01 (I like the look, it's neat) and Netscape 6.1 (to test web sites foe compatibility, it isn't exactly like Mozilla although it's based on it). Very rarely do I use IE. I hate Microsoft and I feel my connection is unsafe every time I use IE. It's just an impression, but I don't trust Microsoft at all regarding their softwares' security. The index.dat thing doesn't help me to switch to Microsoft's Satan's spawn browser.

 

[Buck]

I just updated to Mozilla 0.9.9 and switched the GUI to "modern" (which is the look I prefer, although Netscapes version in blue is more becoming) and things seem to be ok. I had a small glitch with 0.9.8 today. Whenever I would minimize the Mozilla window onto the task bar, it just pop right back up. That got real annoying, so I went for 0.9.9 and all was well. Let's see if that comes back.

BR

 

[i]

The "won't stay minimized" bug is known and is still being worked on. I think it appeared in 0.9.7 (maybe 0.9.8). The suggested workaround when it happens is to right-click on your taskbar and choose "Minimize All Windows". Hardly ideal, but at least it works.

 

[James Kein]

Inability to save web pages without buggring them up. When I click "file: save as" I wan't to save the bloody file. I want that file, not some buggered-up Microsoft-sanitised version of it. If I click "File: save as" I want that exact page, nothing else.

umm... if you look, there is an option when you save as *.html
the option is Web Page Complete when you get the "microsoft crap" you where talking about. When you want the HTML of that page saved EXACTLY as it is, select File>Save As>Web Page HTML Only (*.htm, *.hml)

thank you, thank you verry much... oh, and yes, Opera is GOD!

 

[Tea]

Ha! I never noticed that. When did that come in James K? I don't remember seeing it before, but maybe that's because I was running different Windows versions till just recently. Or possibly because it's difficult to see the dialogue boxes properly through the red haze that Internet Explorer creates across my vision.

 

[James Kein]

Ha! I never noticed that. When did that come in James K? I don't remember seeing it before, but maybe that's because I was running different Windows versions till just recently. Or possibly because it's difficult to see the dialogue boxes properly through the red haze that Internet Explorer creates across my vision.

:mrgrn: :wink:

 

[Buck]

I've moved this poll to the top of the page since browser popularity and usuage has come up again.

 

[blakerwry]

Homepage issues Am I so bloody stupid that I can't be trusted to understand the difference between a start page and a home page? What if I want to always start with a blank page, but I want to be able to click "home" and go to my preffered home page?"

just change your link's target....

start-> run -> iexplore.exe http://www.mystartpage.com

start-> run -> iexplore.exe c:\localstartpage.htm

 

[Buck]

I just started useing Phoenix 0.3 and it seems to be working pretty good under Windows XP. The browser GUI is nice and free of clutter, and the speed seems to pretty good.