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Don't worry... IE will have a pop-up blocker sometime next year. For those of us who have joined the 21st century and use a good browser, popups aren't a problem.

Security warning: you are about to go to an address containing a username:

username: www.paypal.com
server: rc6.org

Are you sure you want to go to this address?

(don't know about Opera)

Here is Opera's rendering mode "strategy."

Having recently made an excursion into the world of XHTML 1.1 web design, I have to say, it demands so much of your code, you'll never look at tag soup the same way again. But it's worth it. It took a while, I adjusted, and will never give an (X)HTML document that doesn't validate* to the browsing public again. I strongly urge all of you to put forth the effort to check your pages and read up about web standards (here) as well.

If only there were some way to get the same from the 8,419,528,073 animated GIF-loaded, Frontpage Express, Geocities-hosted messes elsewhere on the web.

*: Don't forget to check your CSS for validity as well. :)

It's faster, doesn't have the clunkiness of an app that's designed by a large group of people, and is just plain smooth in operation

Download here

It's also worth checking out rijk's page, especially Hugin and Munin.

It's also worth checking out rijk's page, especially Hugin and Munin.

Opera is on Linux! I'm using it right now under Mandrake.

PS. Just ignore the rants on various Mozilla sites about how Opera's SSR is "nothing but CSS", as it is insignificant or useless. Sure, it might be a simple idea, but why didn't someone else come up with it first then? Also, just because an idea is simple doesn't mean that it's bad or useless. It is, in fact, a good idea, one which might finally kill off WAP (about time). Just had to get that off my chest...

The designer hardcoded a fontface because CSS doesn't automatically resize columns like tables do.

Er, 'fontface'? WTF is a 'fontface'?

As for CSS resizing automagically, resize in relation to what, pray tell? A box with width: 30%; resizes in relation to the viewport, a box with width: 15em; resizes in relation to font size, as of CSS 2.1 a box with float: left or float: right and no width resizes in relation to content (most browsers--including IE/Win--do this anyway) and table-layout will get you table-style layout with whatever tags you like. MS just didn't feel the need to support it in IE 5/Win or IE/Mac so people don't use it much. That's Microsoft's fault, not the W3C's

Because CSS was designed by doofus eggheads and not experts in solving real world web design problems.

Ian Hickson edited the CSS2.1 spec, and he's been 'solving real world web design problems' since at least 1998 when I worked with him at the Web Stanards Project. Hakon Wium Lie edited CSS 1, 2 and 2.1 and has been working on Opera since 1999, earned an MS in Visual Studies from MIT and wrote his thesis on electronic display of newspapers. TantekCelik is responsible for the widely-lauded Tasman rendering engine used in IE 5.x/Mac. These people do use this stuff in the real world, and if you don't like the directions they're taking your'e free to join the www-style discussion list and let them know.

Which then forces me to do a bunch of work

One line of CSS is 'a bunch of work'? I suppose you find tying your own shoes a pretty onerous task as well?

or accept undesirable browser settings

Let me get this straight: you're hacked because the site doesn't use your settings for font size and face, but setting your browser to override the site's settings with your choices is 'undesirable'? Huh?

While you're waiting for Apple to patch this why not check out Mozilla Firebird 0.7 for OS X.

It is a great, feature rich browser. Of course you could also check out Mozilla 1.5, Camino, Netscape, iCab, Omni Web, Opera, or even IE 5 or MSN for the Mac

All of these can be downloaded from their respective sites, or from the Internet Utilities section of Apple's Mac OS X Downloads page.

What surprised me most was the URL of the story!

I remember using Excite as my search of choice for full-text searches, back before Yahoo! started charging for everything, including directory listings. Then, there was Webcrawler, once the home of the canonical robots.txt standard.

I even remember back in the day, when not all AltaVistas were created equal.

Then came Google's PigeonRank system, and it's been downhill (or uphill, whichever you see as a positive metaphor) ever since.

So the Excite.com link was a trip down memory lane. Not that I'm expecting the Good Old Days to return; when I tried to access the home page with my Opera browser, I got an error message: "The browser you're using is not allowing you to sign in to Excite." Don't worry, Excite.com... I won't be trying again.

There's also more volunteers than the early days, not just with coding and testing, but with user support too, such as the excellent Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird Help sites.

But in reality to the end user, it does not matter how many people are developing it, it's the quality of the product that counts, and I think that with recent releases there's nothing that can beat Mozilla in all round usefulness. If you've not tried it for ages then it's worth a try now, features like type ahead find, tabbed browsing and of course pop-up blocking make it an excellent product and make using IE a painful process. The fact is on any platform IE looks like the third rate choice, if you don't like Mozilla then there's always Opera, although personally I hate the interface to it - but others will disagree, choice is good, and having a situation where more people try alternative browsers is good for making sure we don't get tied into a Windows (i.e. IE) only web.

Opera Software, the makers of the Opera browser, have known this for a long time, which is why they include (by default) a 'super-search' option in Opera that searches both Google and All-Of-The-Web simultaneously and opens the results in two side-by-side windows. If you have Opera just type 's search term ' into Opera's address bar and see...

Maybe they can finally support PNG images properly... they've only been an Internet standard for seven years.

Throw in built-in SVG support, too, so we can actually start using them (Internet standard for two years now). Maybe then Mozilla/Firebird, etc. will sort our their library licensing issues and support SVG out of the box, too.

Too few articles mention all three and articles mostly fall into one of two categories: Usually the articles praise Mozilla and Opera for features, usability, flexibility, support of standards, stability, security and multi-plaform support. Or they go on about the problems specific to MSIE, while implying that MSIE is the alpha and omega of web browsers, and finish by giving the bad advice to sit still and obediently wait to buy the next upgrade, service pack, bug fix for MSIE. At the same time, users and administrators tied to MSIE are prevented from learning unresolved problems. There are also further costs if company data, such as customer lists, are compromised as a result.

Clearly censorship is not the optimal long term nor even short term solution. IT staff can save time and money now by migrating their users to Mozilla and Opera.

Well I hope they don't buy out Opera and take over their Opera web browser for Symbian. One of the reasons Opera is so great is because it is independent.

IBM is an Opera partner, actually...

> > This isn't much different from Mozilla's "Master Password".

> Or from Apple's "Keychain." Or even from Gator, for that matter...

or Opera's Wand.

Don't forget Opera, which has configurable pop-up options built in -- accept, refuse, open in background, open requested only. I always run with "open requested only", so I have yet to see a Pop-Up I didn't like.

Except when my wife is running her virus portal, I mean IE browser.

With the introduction of Google Rads in Opera 7.2x, it became evident that Google does/will not display ads when surfing gun-related websites in Opera -- instead, Opera displays its default "Buy Opera Today!" banner. Examples include prominent gun-makers like Remington, Smith & Wesson, and many more. Similarly, Second Amendment news sites also seem to thwart Google Rads, like Firearm News.

Dude, I've got an Ultra 10 in front of me. It runs the officially supported Netscape 7 (SUNWns6b) and Mozilla 1.x (SUNWmoz). IIRC, Opera is available for it as well. And if you like pain and anguish, even Internet Exploder runs on it! (Tried that once on an Ultra 5. Damn Microsoft software screwed up my CDE desktop profile.)

The basic point is that there's no reason why you should still be using Netscape 4.x on Solaris. If your admin won't install something better, install it in your home directory. Take control of your profile man! If enough people run a better browser, eventually the admin will get tired of resources being used up by multiple copies and will install it as root for you! :-)

Today I cleaned a friend's computer from something which I haven't seen before (btw, it is already mentioned in four other comments here).

His IE always showed "here4search.com" as starting page which always reappeared after manually resetting it. Having seen similiar things before I tried AdWare and checked for some unsual things in Autostart. But after rebooting... it was there again!

This here4search.com-thing is part of the CoolWebSearch trojan and can be detected by Hijack This! and (which is even better) can be removed easely with CWShredder.
Nasty thing, but it was gone afterwards.

I surely do not need to mention that you should install some tools like a decent spyware killer (like AdAware), a decent virus killer, a small personal firewall and some other browser/mailclient than the duo infernale IE/Outlook, if you insist on running Windows.

> is there *nix spyware?

Yes, Opera.

The AC is probably right, though I wouldn't know for sure, since I wouldn't be getting pop-ups even if /. had/has them. Either way, if you don't have it, I would recommend getting Ad-Aware or Spybot (haven't used it personally, I hear it's better but there's more danger of messing up your system if you're not sure what you're doing). Then go download Opera or Mozilla and quit dealng with the pop-ups!

What utter crap. Mozilla has been my default browser for a couple of years now. i use it on both my dual boot Windows 2000 and RedHat 9.0 (Xinerama enabled) with no issues whatsoever, including sharing the email folders, bookmarks, cookies, blocked cookies/images and more.

I also use MozillaFirebird (when i am in the mood) on the same machine with no lockups. See for yourself

On the other hand Opera 7.11 - 7.20 used to crash on my Xinerama setup. See these threads on the My.Opera forums.

Cheers,

What utter crap. Mozilla has been my default browser for a couple of years now. i use it on both my dual boot Windows 2000 and RedHat 9.0 (Xinerama enabled) with no issues whatsoever, including sharing the email folders, bookmarks, cookies, blocked cookies/images and more.

I also use MozillaFirebird (when i am in the mood) on the same machine with no lockups. See for yourself

On the other hand Opera 7.11 - 7.20 used to crash on my Xinerama setup. See these threads on the My.Opera forums.

Cheers,

Granted, other browsers also have popup killers these days....

At any rate, I hope the guys who settled have a good attorney who'll see them through getting a cut of the chapter 11 payout when the hearing comes.

But they have effectively branded it. Check out a couple of icon sets at kde-look.org and tell me how may you see coming with IE icons! Of for a quiter example check out Opera. Browsers are like everything else, we want to feel like where using the fastest and the best, branding adds sex appeal (and can increase usability!), just like with everything else.

To me the definition of Spyware is any program that spies on it's users for any reason. Targeted adds is just one example. If a program is watching what I am doing and reporting it back to anyone, whether I knowingly installed it or not, it is Spyware. Here's the Jargon File definition.

Adware is software that displays adds as a way to provide the author with a source of revenue. Again, the Jargon File definition.

The Jargon File definitions aren't as clear as mine, but they do support mine.

It can be argued that most Spyware is also Adware, but there are examples of Adware that is not Spyware. Opera and Eudora are both programs that I consider to be Adware, but do not consider to be Spyware. For the sake of companies like this, it isn't fare to lump the two together. I will be writing to both of them encouraging them to speak out on this issue and maybe even sue Gator for tarnishing their reputations.

Gator is trying to clean up its reputation by confusing the issue. This isn't fare to legitimate Adware authors, and I hope someone sues over it. Gator's reputation is well deserved and bullying sites because they state the obvious, only serves to further tarnish their reputation. I make it a point to remove Gator from any computer I work on. This isn't going to change that. If anything it's going to make me insist on it's removal even for users who think it's useful in some way. There is nothing Gator offers that users can't get someplace else, without the Spyware.

No one has said that all bundling is bad. Popup blocking should belong in a browser, and there is no reason why Microsoft couldn't add more features to their browser. If they hadn't already secured a monopoly in the browser market and couldn't care less about innovation...

But the kind of bundling which kills off competition, with products of lesser quality bundled with the operating system just to push dangerous competitors out of the market, that is the bad kind of bundling.

Microsoft should never have been allowed to secure a monopoly in the browser market anyway, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have made it a separate download with lots of useful features (rather than a basic browser which doesn't do much and which is very vulnerable to pages that want to exploit security holes, flood you with popups, and so on).

By the way, Opera is a closed-source/commercial browser with a popup blocker (and countless other features that make your everyday browsing faster and more convenient) built in. And actually, Mozilla/Firebird has borrowed a lot of features from Opera. built in popup blocking was first seen in Opera, for example.

Also, bundling applications is far from "the Microsoft way". You are giving Microsoft more credit than they deserve. It is not like they were the first to bundle applications!

In this Linux-only household the browser of choice is Opera!

The ONLY time I use Mozilla is for the few times I have to access my bank's website and mess with my accounts online. As my bank is stupid beyond words, their website is Netscape only.

For everything else, I use Opera.

However, there are lots of pages, including banking sites, that refuse to load properly or let you continue

Vote with your feet or wallet, which is what I did. I had a bank try that and I walked across the street and got better interest rates and lower / fewer service fees plus web access.

You gotta wonder about how secure the MSIE-only sites are anyway. I investigated getting a loan from a third bank, which turned out to be in on the Windows/MSIE MLM scheme, and left a clean e-mail address. Within days that address was getting spam with subjects like "Home Loans" or "Prospective Buyer"

Having pre-installed MSIE onto machines is the only reason it got market share. Unlike five years ago, there are now several very good browsers. If people actually had to choose and install / order a web browser the large majority would go with mozilla or opera

Parent is refrence to Opera's Swedish Chef Bork! Edition that is used to call attention to unfair MS page serving on MS sites. I think.

"I'm buying a new mid-grade laptop computer, which I plan to dual-boot between Windows XP Home and Mandrake 9.x. Before its arrival in a few weeks I'm trying to think of what 'essential' software I'll need to make a usable home system. In general I'd like to spend as little money as possible (free is good). As far as my needs, think 'typical family PC' without an emphasis on gaming. I know I can get something like Open Office for word processing, presentation, etc. needs, but is there such a good thing as a good free virus checker? A good free email client? A handy web browser? What would you consider the top 10 (or so) pieces of software for a new home system, bearing in mind that I need software for both the Windows and Linux side of things?""

These are the files I keep on my "Esential CDs" that I bring around to help out other non-techs (Windows users) people. (Of course because they are financially broke after paying $200 for their Operating System, they want everything else to be free.) ;-)

Anti-Virus: The best free antivirus program I have found AVG Anti-Virus 6.0

Office Suite: (Word Processing, SpreadsThe quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
The quick brown fox jumped off the edge. The quick brown fox ran off with all his toysheet, Slideshows, etc.)
Open Office 1.1

CD/DVD data/audio Burner: (and doubles as a CD image creator .ISO and .CUE)
BurnAtOnce 0.99a

CD/DVD image loader/emulator (perfect for people who often misplace their CDs): (loads .ISO, .CUE, .CCD, .CDI etc. files without burning them)
DAEMON Tools 3.41

MultiMedia Player (Mpeg, Mp3, AVI, etc.)Winamp Classic 2.91

or for audio only Foobar 2000 0.7

Zip Extractor:Ultimate Zip or7 Zip 3.11

Download Accelerator:Star Downloader v1.42

Internet Browser: (other than IE) Mozilla 1.4 or Opera 6.20

System Statistics: (Motherboard, Memory, BIOS, Video, Software info, etc)AIDA32 3.80

E-mail (other than Outlook Express)Thunderbird 0.2 or Pegasus Mail 4.12

Spyware/Adware killer:Ad-aware 6 or Spybot Search & Destroy 1.2

Pop-up Killer/Browser Enhancer (for IE)Google Toolbar 2.0.102

PDF document reader:Adobe Acrobat 6.0

FTP program (other than IE and the command line FTP)Winsock FTP LE 5.08 or FileZilla 2.2.1

Internet Chat Programs (other than Windows Messenger)Gaim 0.70or Trillian Basic 0.74E

Firewall Software:ZoneAlarm 3.7.211

or if you have Highspeed Internet, a spare 200mhz PC, and two network cards laying around...ClarkConnect 2.0

CD Ripper / MP3 Creator CDex 1.51

Graphics Editor (other than Paint) The Gimp

Graphics viewer (other

• The Bat! mail client (shareware)
• Opera browser/mail/newsclient (adware), much more lightweight than Mozilla
• 40tude Dialog newsclient
• Total Commander file manager (shareware)
• eMule peer-to-peer client (open source)
• ViM
• editor (open source)
• GhostScript and GSView for PostScript and PDF rendering/conversion/manipulation (open source)
• ActivePerl, ActivePython, ActiveTcl for scripting
• 7-zip packer

1. foobar 2000 for music playback without Winamp's awful tiny unintuitive UI and with plenty of features to keep any audio-lover happy.
2. Media Player Classic - A great, lightweight but featureful WMP6-alike.
3. For more advanced users, PenguiNet - a lovely Windows SSH/telnet client. Not as lightweight or free as PuTTY, but more intuitive, and has my name on it :)
4. Something addictive.
5. Opera and/or Firebird.. must wean all those users off IE.
6. DScaler - I'm yet to find a better TV Card app. Lightweight, stable, and Free.
7. DigiGuide - Excellent TV guide, in the UK at least.
8. WinRar - as vital for Windows as gzip is for *ix.
9. Nero - Must-have CD-RW software.
10. Ad-Aware and friends.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

I muchly prefer Opera for browsing Has a simple mailclient built in too, and is free for personal use. What more can you want? Avilable for Windows, Linux, MacOS, OS/2, Solaris, FreeBDS (I thought that was dead?), QNX and EPOC.

Irfanview - hands down the best image viewer out there for Windows. Free. Windows only (but will run under Wine if you want)

Gimp - if you want to edit images. Free. Linux and Windows.

MAME - for games, period. Free. You can buy some ROMs, or *ahem* ask around. Windows and Linux. (Xmame)

CDex - for CD ripping in Windows. Free. Windows only, but several good ripping programs are available for Linux. (search freshmeat)

GNUWin - a collection of free apps for Windows. Worth the download.

Audacity - if you want to create/edit sound files. Free. Linux and Windows.

Winamp - for listening to audio files. Free. Windows only. I like XMMS for Linux over Freeamp.

Opera - web browsing, email. Free. Windows and Linux. I prefer it over Mozilla, but not by much.

My suggestions for the Windows side...

For email I'd definitely recommend Eudora as it can be used free (ad based, but small add window) and isn't suceptible to propagating the many viruses that target Outlook.

As someone previously mentioned, I'd also recommend Opera, again, ad based, but a solid browser and mouse gestures rule!

Someone else also mentioned AVG for antivirus, probably the best option for free antivirus.

CDEX is a great MP3 ripping program that I've always used.

We can't forget Sonique and WinAmp for playing your MP3's. I prefer Sonique but that's just me.

Then of course there's Winzip, Adobe Acrobat, QuickTime, VNC, and ZoneAlarm or BlackIce (all available at download.com). These are all (except perhaps VNC) must have utilities for a Windows box.

Although others have said Mozilla as a web browser, I feel that it's too bloated and slow. Try K-Meleon or Opera instead.
CDEx is a great open-source program for ripping your legally-owned CD-audio tracks. Rip them to OGG and feel your 1337ness potential expand.
Try using ZINF instead of WinAmp (bloatware ... I haven't cared for WinAmp since early 2.x) for your sound-playing abilities. The skinning abilites are also a lot better on ZINF, plus it supports more formats than WinAmp does.
If you're not looking at getting the entire OpenOffice.org suite, you can get just AbiWord, which is a great word-processing program. OpenOffice.org, however, is really full-featured and I would say almost a must.
People have already mentioned the free anti-virus software from AVG, but it doesn't hurt to have backups, such as the free online scan from Trend Micro.
As someone else also mentioned, ZoneAlarm is also a great thing to have.
Trillian and/or GAIM are great instant-messaging.

Taking a look through SourceForge and Pricelessware are great places to go and explore on your own as well.

Well, for Browser or Mail, I highly recommend both Opera or Mozilla. Both will handle Mail and Browsing quite well, and a few other nifty things too.

I have used both, and there are features in both that I like... both are free, although one will display ads (Opera) until you purchase a copy.

I strongly suggest downloading a copy of both, and seeing which one you prefer.

If you want Graphics software for any arty things, try the GIMP, or if you want something a little more painty (ie; emulates real painting and drawing materials) Open Canvas is good. I guess it depends what your needs are when it comes to editing or creating pictures.

To fully enjoy the ESRB web site, you'll need a more recent version of your web browser.