Google Blogoscoped

Forum

Your Browser Personality  (View post)

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

Sunday, August 20, 2006
17 years ago5,850 views

It's definitely written by a Opera user...

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I'm a developer and I use IE6. I think around 80% of visitors to the sites I develop use IE6, so it makes sense that I should use the same. I don't think that reflects my personality.

(I'd rather use IE6 and know why I'm using it than use Firefox for the sake of trying to be a geek...)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I could probably list as many things I dislike about Firefox as IE, especially those nasty bugs. The one thing I really prefer about Firefox is that as a (relatively) minority browser, less security exploits target it. (If Firefox becomes a 90% market share browser let's see how many exploits it will have.)

Now I've gotten kind of used to Firefox (especially the neat extensions and such), though at one time I was ready to switch back to IE7 because of certain bugs that never got fixed in any release, nevermind them being in Bugzilla for long time (I'm talking pre-1.0 final).

Then again, after seeing IE7 I'm sure *not* to switch. The one thing IE6 got right was being very much integrated in the OS, including shortcuts, interface design and so on. IE7 – the Beta I saw – is trying too hard to be cool but loses its big bonus, being simple to learn & use.

Opera, on the other hand, I always disliked because of its interface, though it has lots of nice features and is very innovative in certain areas, and always had great CSS support. I kinda think Opera should put all of its efforts behind the mobile browser market and forget about the desktop; on Windows, the "alternative browser" crown seems to have moved to Firefox a while ago. The mobile market on the other hand might be growing and is still open to competition. Opera Mini is nice, but still has many obvious things it lacks...

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I rather think it was written by a Safari user to be honest. Or someone who knows exactly waht Safari users are like.

I use Firefox because I consider it to be the best browser using the Gecko engine, and therefore displays most sites without flaw. I have in the past dabbled with Opera, and Safari. They are both very nice.

I am surprised to hear you didn't like Opera because of its interface, I think it is probably the nicest looking of any of them. And it is definately the fastest. Web 2.0 basically kills it though since no one has the time to develop for such a minority space.

Sam Davyson [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I would quite like to use Safari a little more, but I cant work out how to get YubNub (http://yubnub.org) in it.

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> I don't think that reflects my personality.

I think it does. For example I'm a webdeveloper and I use Firefox for normal browsing and Firefox/IE/Opera/w3c-validator for testing reasons.

There are many reasons for me to use Firefox. In fact for me it would be nightmare to use IE.

One thing is the user interface. I couldn't live without tabbrowsing. Some smaller Firefox futures and my favourite extensions are also very important. And of course security.

The other thing is that Firefox really makes Web the better place. It already did. When I started to use Mozilla Suite, couple of years ago there was real danger of Internet Explorer becoming the only webbrowser. A huge amount of site blocked other browsers or were broken because of webmasters mistakes (and the fact that they didn't know the HTML specification and where editing their tag soup just to work in IE). This was a real blocker for people who wanted to switch to other system than Microsoft Windows. Now nearly every website works with browsers on every platform. It's because Firefox has a big user base and web developers have realised that there is more then big blue "e".

IE's rendering engine is really outdated. IE 6 was released in 2001 and it was very outdated even than. It doesn't support any moder web standard.
It really stops the evolution of the Web, makes the web experience worse and web development harder. There are many neat futures that developers would love to use, but they can't because of outdated IE.

But that's changing. Because of Firefox's competition, Microsoft were forced to changed their plans. IE 7 was supposed to has only few changes in comparison to IE 6 and be available only to Vista's users. But Microsoft had to change it's mind. They put back together Internet Explorer Team (there wasn't any for couple of years!), which make some important changes in the rendering engine (not enough, but they promise more...) and announced that IE 7 will be available also to users of earlier Windows versions.They also added a pop-up blocker to version 6. So Firefox users, just by using alternative browser and creating real competitor to Microsoft's product, made a real difference. They are changing the Web experience not only for themselves but also for IE's users.

So. As you see. You use IE because you don't like to do things "for the sake of trying to be a geek" and I'm and and idealist and Open Source freak, I like more useful UIs and I definitely have better software taste ;P It says a lot about our personality.

DISCLAIMER: Know I that me english speaks not. Sorry.

Brinke Guthrie [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Am I the only one who gets bothered with how FF renders some pages?
And how can I get Opera to show up in the Gmail notifier?

Ramibotros [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Philipp, i find it so weird that u dislike opera for its interface. It has tons of skins and the interface is extremly customizable. It's almost like winword, u can move any toolbar anywhere u want. i like my current opera interface because it gives more space for the page rather than the toolbars. however, u can set up opera to look almost like any way u would like to see it. Or do u have specific interface issues u don't like? Anyways, i think if an application performs as the best, i would never ditch it for the interface, i care less about these things :)

Manoj Nahar [PersonRank 4]

17 years ago #

One of the stumbling block for me to move to opera was and is the keyborad shortcuts are not mapped like other browsers.

Shortcut keys in firefox are mostly same as IE. I have given up using Opera as don't want to remeber one more set of shortcut keys.

I guess this might be one of the user interface issues philipp is talking about.

Tony Ruscoe [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Ludwik Trammer said:

<< I couldn't live without tabbrowsing. >>

I can take it or leave it. The buttons in my taskbar are pretty much tabs anyway.

<< The other thing is that Firefox really makes Web the better place. >>

Agreed. But it will still be a better place even if I don't use FF.

<< You use IE because you don't like to do things "for the sake of trying to be a geek" ... >>

That's not exactly what I said. I use IE because I find it's more useful to see things through the majority of my user's "eyes" (read "browsers"). It suits its purpose for the moment. I have no good reason to use Firefox, other than because there's so much peer pressure to do so. (Of course, I do use it sometimes, but it's not my default browser.) Maybe when IE7 comes out, I'll switch to FF because it would be less of a leap for me (especially based on what Philipp has said about IE7). The sad thing is that probably 80% of my users will then be using IE7 and that's not going to be easy to change.

I have no doubt that the people here who use Firefox have legitimate reasons and know the benefits, but many people will switch to Firefox just because they think they should, yet they don't really know why.

Tadeusz Szewczyk [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

This post is just sooo true. I am exactly that kind of Firefox user he describes, although I prefer opera for some tasks...

Although FF 1.5 fixed some main problems I had with it, it is still not suitable for the average user. Sometimes you have to be tough to work with FF. If Opera would allows extensions with a clean implementation it would surpass Firefox.

Also FF lost some of it's main advantages over time, e.g. being small. With all my extensions it loads for minutes before it's open.

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> but many people will switch to Firefox just because
> they think they should, yet they don't really know why.

And I'm very happy about it, because I now why they should switch and how it'll benefit ME ;)

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

You are a developer by day and open source developer by night. Either that, or a huge Firefox fan. You are all over Bugzilla reporting all the issues you encounter with the browser. You have probably summited at least one patch to an open source project at some point in your life. You love to tinker with your applications, and you don’t mind running beta software on your machine. After all, it is fun to discover new bugs, and to work little kinks out of the new cutting edge programs.

^^

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> Or do u have specific interface issues u don't like?

Where do I start, there's so much... :)
Note that I don't keep track of Opera anymore, so many of these issues may or may not be solved or partially solved by now.

- I dislike MDI (multi-document interface) for browsing. I never use tabs, and I also don't like Opera's MDI approach. I have a OS for that. This is personal taste of course.
- I don't like an ad running in my browser.
- Opera's options dialog are too complex.
- I think Opera's look-and-feel isn't beautifuly (again, personal opinion).
- I don't like how when I start Opera, there's no URL bar. I need to click "New page" for it to appear. (I'm sure this can be changed in the options or through certain user behavior etc. etc., it's just that this is what I'm currently seeing.)
- I don't like cluttered interfaces, e.g. the Opera "Home index contents ... newsfeeds..." bar.

An even bigger problem with Opera might be that you're on a minority browser so you might get some rendering problems on certain sites...

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Philipp – almost all things that you are talking about have changed in version 8 or 9. Check Opera 9. It's a really good, fast browser with simple interface and great futures. And no ads. I use Firefox because it's OpenSource, has great extensions and I'm used to it, but Opera is a great piece of software.

stefan2904 [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

me too. i use firefox because its fast, clear interface, open source and a very high number of nice extensions...

NateDawg [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

IE 6.0 – way behind the times
IE 7.? – I don't like WGA
Opera – Got turned off by the adds initally and have never looked back
Firefox – Love the plethra of extensions (Love adblock) and tabs, it is my browser of choice; only wish they would fix the memory leak
Safari – Don't own a mac
Konk – I use windows more than Linux

SCJM [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I used to use firefox, but it uses too much memory. IE6 for the win.

Inferno [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I guess they are very right when I read 'bout FF2

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> I used to use firefox, but it uses too much memory. IE6 for the win.

If you care mostly about memory usage try Opera...

(And of course you have set browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to "0" in Firefox's about:config?)

Philipp Lenssen [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> (And of course you have set browser
>.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to "0" in Firefox's
> about:config?)

Is that like the ultimate speed hack for Firefox?

Ionut Alex. Chitu [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

I've got some low-memory tips for FF:
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/04/reduce-memory-usage-in-firefox.html

Mrrix32 [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Using a certain search engine begining with "G", I find that:

-1
Automatically determine the maximum amount of pages to store in memory based on the total amount of RAM (Default)
0
Do not store any pages in memory.

Any positive integer
Maximum number of pages to store in memory.

Ludwik Trammer [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

> Is that like the ultimate speed hack for Firefox?

It just disables future that cause the high memory usage. Yes – it's not a bug, it's a future ;) Firefox by default keeps up to 8 pages from browsing history in a computer's RAM. It gives you fast back and forward buttons, but use a lot of memory. The setting disables this behavior.

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html

Sohil [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Firefox is a good browser but extensions are what make it great.

tryingtonbenice [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #

Any way you cut it there are people who really use browsers for the Internet, and there are people who use browsers to check their email.
You do more on the Internet and do more in your head and you'll ask for more from your browser.

If you use Ff and have loads of extensions running (coz you know you can't live without them) then kudos. But out the box, Ff it's a browser that's not too scary for people familiar with IE.

I use Opera: cool out of the box, *real* history navigation and the ability to position almost anything anywhere (and yes there are tabs, sessions, gestures, etc.). Yes, occasionally some moron will code a site that is so kludged to work on IE it runs nowhere else but I encounter these very rarely nowadays.

And if you started with the ad supported version of Opera: yes the ads were not ideal, but years before Ff, it had all the power of its best extensions already. To see the ad supported version and dismiss it says something about you.

Happy surfing :)

NateDawg [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

[put at-character here]tryingtonbenice – "To see the ad supported version and dismiss it says something about you."

Gee, thanks.
Maybe you mistook what I meant by that statement. Way back when I was searching for a better browser (than IE). People recommended Opera (the full version,ad free) but metioned there was a free version with ads I could try. I tried Opera out, even set up a few bookmarks. Don't get me wrong, even the free version with all it's ads was pretty slick, but I'm cheap and couldn't find myself paying for a web browser. That's when I stumbled upon Firefox. Firefox might have not been as robust, but I could customize it till I was blue in the face and it had the right price :) I've now made Firefox such a intregal part of my browsing experence I can't see myself swapping back to opera, despite it's price change :D

tryingtobenice [PersonRank 0]

17 years ago #


Sorry NateDawg, didn't mean to be harsh – maybe i didn't see Ff early enough to be able to compare it to early Opera.

I must confess to a dislike of the default Ff because it looks so much like IE. I think that has helped it gain share with regular people but it also doesn't distinguish it. Fortunately, the good thing about Ff is all the extensions, and that allows users to construct their own sense of a good interface.

- fixed the typo in my name :$

NateDawg [PersonRank 10]

17 years ago #

Sorry about the typo tryingtobenice :)- (I hate when I do that :)

Forum home

Advertisement

 
Blog  |  Forum     more >> Archive | Feed | Google's blogs | About
Advertisement

 

This site unofficially covers Google™ and more with some rights reserved. Join our forum!