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Browser Comparison - Firefox 2 b1, IE7 b3, Opera 9
mikemuch writes "The browser wars have heated up again, with Microsoft putting Beta 3 of Internet Explorer 7 out for all to download (not just developers anymore), Firefox coming out with the first beta of its version 2, and Opera releasing version 9. ExtremeTech has a shoot-out of the three browsers, with feature comparisons and tests of resource usage, startup time, and Acid2 standards compliance. Standout features are Opera's built-in BitTorrent support, Firefox's spellchecker for forms, and IE's Quick Tabs view. Firefox is still ahead in extensions, while Opera has some slick UI conveniences."
If so they have made a remarkable recovery. Instant loadtime for me.
Hardly seems fair to compare different browsers based on beta builds.
I'm having no trouble accessing the article. I'm browsing through it right now....
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Entire report on one page.
Submitter did a nice summary. BTW, another table shows memory usage, and looks like Firefox Beta 2 comes in a bit heavier (compared to 1.5.04) at least for startup and an initial load of six tabs - unknown if the memory leaks that cause this to skyrocket when viewing dynamic sites (such as this) are fixed.
Also talks about the anti-phishing protection, but says they were unable to have this engage, so maybe it's not functional yet? That seems to be an area where more inovation could be done.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
dynamic... loading ok for me too, now.
It's unfair to compare Beta versions with a completed version (Opera), besides IE has been out in Beta for ages compared to a few weeks on Firefox's side. And Firefox 2 doesn't pass Acid 2 because no work has been done on Gecko (it still uses 1.8, the same as Deer Park) Firefox 3 (which will use Gecko 1.9) will pass the Acid 2 Test.
http://sohilsblog.blogspot.com
"Opera has some slick UI conveniences"
I'd say Opera's interface is anything but slick, it's the MySpace of web browsers when it comes to looks. Even IE looks classier than Opera.. (firefox obviously taking the crown).
Honnestly, the only thing that stops me from using Opera is it's ugly interface.
MABASPLOOM!
why eff eye.
The "Features at a Glance" table is very inaccurate with respect to Opera. For one, Opera has very good theme support.
And the author mixes up kb and mb on another page.
I couldn't disagree more. One of the things that kept me with the original Mozilla suite for so long, rather than switching to Firefox was the ability to trigger a search from the address bar. Now that Firefox can do the same (and not waste screen real estate with an unneccesary extra box), I've switched. What do you possibly gain by having a separate search box? I just don't get it.
Now if only they could fix Gecko's inability to render display: inline-block properly, it might become a halfway usable browser. Quite why it's taken so long is beyond me. It's was originally logged as a bug 7 years ago (it's bug 9458, if you want to vote for it). So, Mozilla Organisation, *please* stop adding more and more features that I really don't want, and fix your fscking layout engine. Wasn't that meant to be one of the original goals of Mozilla? To have a browser with a rendering engine that didn't suck? What happened to that concept?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
How can Firefox's spelling checker be a "standout feature" when Opera, Safari and Konqueror already have it built in? It's more of a "catch-up feature" than a "standout feature".
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I've been impressed with what I've heard about IE 7, it really seems like they are making some good moves with it finally. Being a Linux user I'll probably never see it but it seems that I wouldn't be that annoyed using it these days. IE will never be as good as Firefox because of the extensions, there just aren't that many good programmers who would be willing to give up their time to MS for free; so Firefox still has the edge.
I wish they would all get their act together and pass the ACID2 test though.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Not exactly rocket science to add one (Right-click > Customize > Drag the new tab button > Done) but I wonder why it's not there by default.
--- Hell hath no fury like a Heron in a boob-tube ---
One example of not doing this is in the feature comparison table where it says that Firefox can't remember open tabs for the next session. My copy of Firefox not only does that when I want it to, it also has crash recovery so when I restart I can choose to reopen all of the tabs or not.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Disclaimer: No, I haven't RTFA yet.
So they're comparing the first FIRST of Firefox 2.0 to the THIRD beta of IE7 and the RELEASE version of Opera 9.0. Call me crazy, but wouldn't a proper comparison look at all three browsers after they have reached their final release versions?
"So after all this, you make my case for me. To end this stalemate, you must die..."
I am a firefox user but have all three installed. I like the firefox spellcheck since I am a lousy speller and the Opera torrent downloading since there are times legal downloads are only available in torrent and I do not want the full install. For some reason, msie just seems cleaner. Forget netscape.
The only problem I am having with any of the three is with the firefox beta 2.0 crashing with Vista. The last alpha version did not.
Its going to be an interesting battle.
I think one major feature that is lacking in Firefox is good printing support.
Will Internet Explorer 7 run on Windows 95/98/ME/NT4? If not, then MSIE7 won't be "95% of web users"... And with Nintendo going with Opera for both the Nintendo DS and the Wii, Opera's marketshare might soon explode beyond 1-2%.
Just keep that in mind before jumping into the "MSIE7 has nice proprietary features" train.
One thing i still miss from my opera days is the 'paste and go' feature in the address and search bars. It feels natural. very rarely do i paste something in to either bars and not want to just go there. the rare circumstances of not wanting to go there include the need to edit a url or just observe a url when the site has some annoying scrolling thing at the bottom of the window. Bring 'paste and go' to firefox!!
MSIE: Yes
Firefox: No
Opera: No
wtf is a "Favorites button" button? Is it like a bookmark button?
Not really unique. In Opera, just hover over the tab for a second or two...you get a thumbnail of the page.
Constitutionally Correct
It's ridiculous that they defend IE by claiming "no pages seem horribly messed up." Clearly the author is not a web developer. If he were, he would know that the reason the pages display correctly in IE is javascript hacks, css workarounds, web developer headaches, Dean's IE7 javascript library, a separate stylesheet for IE, etc... It's not that IE is inherently displaying the sites correctly, it's that the site developers were forced to make them play nice with IE.
While it's nice that Firefox now has built-in spell checking for forms, it seems like a move in the wrong direction. I mean, a good move in that direction, but still.... I don't mean to sound like an OS X fanboy, but system-level spell checking seems like the right one. Without it, you have to manage separate spell check dictionaries for all the apps that you use. Want Firefox, Word, and any other apps you use all to recognize your name as spelled correctly? Well, add it once to each one.
Well the last war MS won but failed to keep their browser up to date. Thus failed in their primary goal of compleatly controling web standards. With IE 7 it is more of a step forward to following the standards and a step back because they realized they didn't get what they compleatly wanted. Many of the features in IE 4,5,6 which I warned were stupid because of security ended up being bad for security. [Cough] Active X [Cough] But now with .NET making Web Apps more standards Based, things like AJAX being standard, CSS and Javascript there are more robust metods of doing things now and latly IE has been the thorn to web devleopers.
I am somewhat optimistic about IE 7, Vista... Microsoft sience IE 6 and XP has been getting a lot of heat and their stock shows it. Even a company Microsofts size can only make so many mistakes until bulk amounts people start switching. The Aditude has changed a lot sience then too. Before around Windows 95 and 98 Microsoft was (wrongly) considered the Technical Leader and their products were considered to be the best available. Now it is more of a deffeetest aditude of well I am stuck and I don't want to switch and it is not bad enough to switch yet but I am keeping my eyes open. I am not dumb though IE 7 and Vista will not be as great as the PR people make it out to be but it will be better then what they curently have. Much like Windows 2003 Server I havent seen any major problems with it nor do I see people wanting to switch to in in droves.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
You have choices, a Lexus, Acura, and a Ford.
Ford's come from the factory broken, and continue to break down over time, requiring numerous trips to the dealership, so it's safe to say NO!
Acura's are fancy, and have the speed side down, [Think NSX] and the reliability is good, but there isn't much you can do to the car, unless you buy aftermarket accessories.
Lexus's are really nice, and have tons of options. While they may not be as quick as Acura's, their choices and reliability are almost unbeatable!
In the end, it all comes down to what you want and need [Which is NOT the Ford] - so you choose accordingly.
The study i would say is a failure and totally biased against firefox. It should be all "yes"s for firefox.
1) In firefox you cannot make "favorites buttons" but you can make "bookmark buttons" its the SAME THING!! i do it all the time...
2) Also, if you get the extension, you can make the browser remember all the tabs that were open on the last session. I HAVE DONE IT!!
3) There is an extension for searching torrent sites for firefox. i am sure after this study, an extension for bittorrent client is on the way...
In short, Firefox Rocks!!
sorry if i offended someone with the caps.
$$$ from Google, Yahoo &c for embedding their logos in the permanently visible UI.
Next question!
Strictly speaking the comparison table on page 2 is incorrect. Opera does have themes, many of them, albeit the browser isn't shipped with them as such.
As a person who has done some personal testing on the same matter except for Opera I have some comments. It is nice to see the results on a more formal article but I am afraid the depth isn't there. Firefox 2.0 beta is not the same kind of release that IE 7 is. Where as FFox2.0 has been in the works for 6 months. They have been working on IE 7 for what 2 years now. So in that way not really a fair comparison. A better comparison would be to look at the nightly builds and ahead to version 3.0 which will arrive much sooner than any updates to IE7 will.
But I digress. My testing is as follows. Please note that I am currently using Firefox and Flock.
IE 7
-------
Pros:
Much better improvement over IE 6
Tabbed browsing is done very well and better than firefox IMO
Security remains to be seen but hopefully better
RSS integration and better search integration
Cons:
CSS is still broken - IE6 was horrible, IE 7 is just bad
Supports Active X - this continues to be the main reason for their flaws and I don't see how this will change things
Similar load times to IE 6 (isn't this supposed to be better)
Tabs take up more memory
Not liking the New UI (personal)
FF 2.0
-------
Pros:
Like the article says incremental improvements - better search ui, better buttons, rss glow
Better Security until IE 7 is tested
worse -> bad memory management
Cons:
Firefox was at 1.x releases forever and now they decide to do huge jumps
Memory Management is still bad
All Firefox browsers are still part of the same process so when one dies everything dies
XUL, XUL, XUL
So overall IE seems to have fired a good shot but falls short in some aspects especially more complex site rendering. Firefox is good as always and the changes are incremental and good.
So I don't expect too many sweeping changes. IE may get to keep some people who were sick of IE 6 and considering a move but it is not likely to attract the Firefox crows. This could stop some of Firefox's market share gains that it has been enjoying but we will have to see what Firefox 3 does.
Software Defined RFID - The Rifidi Emulator
Whether you accept the validity of the Acid Test or not - I would have thought that Microsoft would have recognised the necessity of just passing that one simple test, even if it was even to have a simple 'if(acidtest)- then display this' in the code.
Everyone knows Opera does it and FireFox doesn't - if IE7 did it as well, however it worked, it would have silenced a lot of detractors, at least in the short term. It suggests not just that they are incapable of achieving proper standards compliance - but that in fact they are totally oblivious to the existance of said standards or the tests which prove them.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
IE 7 is cool. I think I'll switch to it for my Windows computers (despite having used Firefox since its first beta). What I like about beta 3: tooltips that show keyboard shortcuts, in fact an entire list of keyboard shortcuts is available from the option menu on newly opened tab. Also I like the option on shutdown to open up with the current tabs next time.
"But there are extensions for all that!"—In fact that gets me to what I hate most about Firefox. Extension hell. Every time I install Firefox on a new system I have to hunt down a list of extensions for it or my user experience is going to change radically. And all those extensions take up memory and processor time, and often have bugs or security flaws of their own.
Another thing I like about IE 7 is its sandbox mode on Vista. That should, I think, provide several security advantages over competing browsers. (In fact, IE 6 with ActiveX turned off was already reasonably secure.)
And think it is the best browser available. However, everytime I click a link from Slashdot I get an error about "the server being unreachable". Slashdot must not be using the proper standards.
there just aren't that many good programmers who would be willing to give up their time to MS for free
True, but there are a lot of programmers that would do pretty much anything for having 'worked for Microsoft' on their CV.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
DOM Inspector is horribly broken to the point of almost being completely useless in Firefox 2 beta 1. At least it was for me.
It also will crash Firefox very easily.
Oh my, did he really tried the browser? There is themes, skins and a favorite button in Opera 9! WTF?
A freely scalable browser viewport is a killer feature in Opera, IMO. It's perfect for my high-res screen that otherwise makes most web pages very small. If I understand correctly, you'll be able to scale things freely in IE9 with Vista, however.
The IE7 developers have really improved their printing options. This is an area the Firefox team should focus on.
e.g. In Firefox the scaling to fit the page just squeezes the content between wider margins rather than actually scaling the pages.
Just yesterday a work colleague was trying to print off a page that was split horizontally into two frames. The top one had a company logo, and the lower one the table of figures she actually wanted. Printing normally just output the first bit of the lower frame. I had to view that frame only to get the full table in the frame to print.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
You can't place it on the tab bar where it (imo) belongs. This is the reason I still use Moz instead of FF.
The comparison messes up right at the get go, themes firefox yes, IE no, opera NO eh opera DEFINATELY does themes, and you don't even have to restart the browser
I use Opera for some sites that make Firefox crawl after a while. It's alright, but I do like Firefox's UI better, even after customizing both.
The biggest thing is tab handling. I frequently open a bunch of tabs from an index/home page. Then CTRL-Tab to the first one. I have a mouse button mapped to CTRL-W. In Opera, if I CTRL-W, it will take me back to the home page that I opened it from (the last tab that was viewed). In Firefox, it will always switch to the next tab (moves to right), until the last tab (moves to left).
So I customized Opera's CTRL-W shortcut to "close tab, switch to next" or something similar. But if I skip some tabs and jump ahead, I'll reach the end and it wraps around to the first, before I'm done with that tab set. Then I have to switch through a bunch of tabs or just click the one I want again. And even with customization, nothing stops a javascript:close() from switching to the wrong tab.
In other cases, I'm just a little more used to the Firefox UI details, but I'm glad to see they took my suggestion (Opera blog comment) of including images in the Transfers window for 9.0. Now if they could just let me customize the rest to make it a slightly more stable, fast version of Firefox.
> "...Firefox is still ahead in extensions, while Opera has some slick UI conveniences."
In other words, 'business as usual'.
Anyone else notice that Opera used less memory with 6 tabs open then freshly loaded? I'm going to have to change my startup to having a dozen tabs open by default.
Hopefully Firefox (core) never completely "catches up" to all the other browsers. Then it will have every one of their features, and will be much more bloated than it needs to be. That's what the extension system is for: to keep the core somewhat minimal.
been an opera user for years (switched at version 5, dabbled with it in previous versions) but this article is stooopid
opera has had spell check for forms for a while, they also have themes, and while IE had it first (although i dont beta test so maybe opera has had it a while) opera also have a quicktab like feature with thumbnail previews
bah
Their memory usage charts cannot possibly be right:
Memory Usage Loading Six Tabs
Firefox 2 Beta 1: 73K
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3: 70K
Opera 9.0: 52K
IE 6.0: 155K
Firefox 1.5.0.4: 56K
A single image on one of those pages could require more RAM than what the entire program is consuming. That's way, way off. What's even more amazing is, going by their charts, Opera actually consumes LESS ram with 6 pages loaded than when it first starts up! 53k -> 52k
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I'm curious, have you tried creating a seperate stylesheet for printed media? CSS allows you to specify what media a stylesheet applies to (screen, paged, etc). I don't remember the details, just the fact that it allows you to provide to the browser several different stylesheets optimized for different media.
For people who don't like the idea of providing different stylesheets - I agree that providing different stylesheets for different browsers is just a pain caused by broken browsers, and you shouldn't have to do it. But providing different stylesheets for different media is a great idea, because printed pages are fundamentally different, in a lot of ways, than the screen is.
Now, I don't really know how well the browsers actually support providing printer/paged stylesheets - unimplemented features are rather useless, but it might be worth looking into anyhow.
Recall that this is exactly what Microsoft does in all markets. And, sad to say, it doesn't seem to work out too poorly for them.
Products like Word, Excel, and IE were genuinely good pieces of software back when Microsoft was first entering those markets, and had to bend all their efforts toward defeating a real competitor. But once they had eliminated Wordperfect, Lotus, and Netscape as real threats, Microsoft's offerings languished. Updates became more rare, and more inclined toward bloatware features than stability or performance.
This is how Microsoft has always operated, and as much as I wish it were not the case, it has not yet manifested as an exploitable chink in their armor. The most optimistic thing I can possibly think is that Netscape rising from its grave as zombie-Mozilla might keep Microsoft in "competing" mode for a while, thus creating slightly better products than they would have otherwise.
But I honestly don't really think that'll much happen. None of the brood of Mozilla is likely to seriously displace IE, partially because of the fact that Netscape-derived browsers have also been going way downhill for about a decade now. So they're just never going to be the kind of threat that can spur Microsoft into less-sucky mode, much less actually push Microsoft off the hill.
From TFA:
This statement is a little misleading. Perhaps they didn't find themes that change the whole UI, but Firefox fully supports this and there are themes that do exactly this, without the need for proprietary, system-wide applications.
PimpZilla is a good example for this: It even goes so far as to completely re-style the option menus.
parasight.de
The Firefox developpers should focus on fixing bugs and the giant footprint.
Hey statistically speaking if I add that comment on a topic about firefox I have a 0.99 probability of getting +5 insightful.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Can anyone explain why MS cares wheter IE is the dominant browser or not? They don't get any money from the whole thing. What would MS lose if they just had Windows come with Firefox or Opera? Is this whole thing just a mindshare battle? If so, wouldn't it be more beneficial just to make Firefox or whatever part of the Windows suite of apps and make it to where people immediately associate that program with Windows? It seems like MS is wasting lots of money working on IE to no real gain.
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
99% of people will never install any extension ever. The fact that firefox is 100% completely useless until you have spent several hours hunting for, installing, and configuring extensions is the reason I still use opera. Sure, it can do most of what opera can, if I am willing to waste all that time. How about making a "actually fucking useful" version of firefox?
I like Opera. I use Opera. I read the comparison, and Opera looks to come out favorably. Then I read the comments. Firefox compared to IE, again and again. Reasons why Firefox is better. Reasons why IE is better. Reasons why more people use IE. But there are fewer comments on Opera. I can't understand why. It has lots of things that Firefox needs extenstions for built right in (and without significant differences in resources), and some things, like bittorrent support, that aren't available in any extension. It has better standards compliance than the other two. It has Widgets (like extensions) if you want to expand it more. But yet, a 3-way comparison is treated as a 2-way comparison. I thought this would be more of an eye opener, "Wow, I didn't know Opera did all that and did it better than the other browsers!" But instead, the comments read like the posters glanced at the IE and Firefox pages of the article (if they read it at all) and hopped right back on the IE vs Firefox war. I find it sad that a competitive browser receives to little consideration, especially from a group that is supposedly early adopters.
Learn to love Alaska
They don't even mention IE's open search which can allow you to add a site's search engine from that site, the search option will change color when on a page that has it. You can then just select it from the drop down, and even add it permanently if you like. Of course it sounded like they just picked up both Firefox and IE and never used them before. Picture Example: http://img105.imageshack.us/img105/9344/searchvv7. gif
I wonder about how the extensions/add-ins are best handled. Throughout this discussion there a number of people saying "there is an extension to do that"...and then wonder why the average user still hasn't caught on to Firefox. And this is also why reviews like this automatically discard the extensions as not being part of the "base featureset" so they don't count. The average person just won't find/use them. Buttons count...features you have to search through a menu for don't. Same goes for extensions. The problem comes up all of the time where Firefox has a browser that CAN do most things - but will not catch on to the average crowd unless there is an easier way to customize it. Maybe there should be a way to "create your own Firefox". They could create 3 seperate editions - Basic, developer, and home. Or some variation of that with each having the most common menu setup and extensions for that type of user. Then a user would just need to pick which one fits best and download that...or go through a quick series of "would you like to be able to do...?" kind of questions that would lead them to a download that is ready to go all in one. Extensions could of course be modified from there in the usual way but that would allow people to get what they wanted without going through the time it takes to download, browse through all of the extensions looking for things that may be useful, and install. Just download your edition with all of the menus and extensions pre-set up for a typical use in that category. Thoughts?
The current OS before this one.
Given that there were two lines NT and 9x.
Doesn't sound so good now.
why is that PNG IE7 still won't support PNG transparency? Besides of GIF(propietary) there is no other option for transparency in web development...
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
One must, when running Firefox, either remove MS IE totally (not only with MS tools) or preload Firefox in order to compare their memory usages.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
1. microsoft has legitimate uses for the browser, ie, windows update via a browser.
2. mindshare is important. microsoft wants to fool people, especially PHB types, that miscroft === computing. that's tough to do when software you use daily isn't msft centered.
3. this is probably the most important reason for keeping ie... msft can leverage their OS to get ie installed on almost all computers and then can use ie to torture developers, developers, developers into "no mas" land and CODE EXCLUSIVELY FOR IE.
now, most folks on slashdot just curse msft and get cross browser support done, anyway.
but those INDUSTRIES that aren't computer savvy... they LOVE to code for ie.
for example, our local mls software WILL ONLY RUN WITH IE. keeping ie around ensures that all the real estate agents will be locked into windows and msoffice for the foreseeable future.
msft seems to think that making coding for ie substantially different from coding for other browsers is a big win for their, uh, monopoly.
isn't it obvious?
So, after 5 years, Microsoft is finally updating Internet Explorer from v6 to v7 in response to the overwhelming current advantages of using Firefox/Sea Monkey/Mozilla rather than IE. Here are eight reasons that no one should even bother to consider using Internet Explorer 7:
1) Microsoft is only updating IE so that it will be good enough to keep people from going to the effort and trouble of downloading, installing, and learning Firefox. Microsoft will let IE wither on the vine again as soon as Firefox stops gaining market share.
2) Using IE means you are supporting Microsoft's vision of DRM in the future.
3) Microsoft does not support open standards for IE unless they have to.
4) Firefox will be continuously updated and improved with new ideas and features into the future while IE new releases will be infrequent by comparison.
5) Security. Firefox will always be much more secure than anything IE from Microsoft due to all the extra duties Microsoft wants their browser to do for them in addition to browsing the web for you.
6) Microsoft is a convicted anti-competition monopoly. No one should ever let themselves be locked into anything from such an outfit.
7) Firefox runs on most OS platforms. IE 7 only runs on Windows and only on the newest version of that. Do you want to upgrade your OS so that you can upgrade your browser?
8) Features. Firefox has more of everything...and probably always will.
Man, wish I had mod points right now, someone please mod parent funny :)
I don't really care about features (except tabbed browsing, a must-have, but they all have that). I care about standards compliance. Apparently Opera is in the lead here, with the rest nowhere.
... perhaps it's because the majority of Firefox extensions are actually beneficial to the user? That, and the fact that Firefox has a huge repository of nice and useful stuff whereas I can't recall ever having knowingly installed a single ActiveX control (unless you count plugins for Flash and Java).
If getting browsers to pass the ACID2 test is such a huge high-priority item for all you web developers out there, why aren't you pressing harder on the Firefox development team or the IE7 development team to get them to make it a high priority item?
Instead of bitching about it on Slashdot, why aren't you entering (or adding votes for) bugs against Firefox, or sending e-mails to the IE7 development team members (many of whom have public-facing blogs, etc, where you can contact them)?
It won't get fixed by the development teams until they decide it's high priority, and they won't decide that until large percentages of users start bitching extremely frequently and loudly.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I didn't see this mentioned in the comments, and won't be able to read the article until tonight, but one feature I enjoy is Opera's auto "next" feature. I don't know the official name, but basically when you're on a page that has a next button, such as this article, or a Google search, you can navigate to the next page via a "forward" shortcut assuming you're at the most recent page in your browser's history (otherwise you'll just go forward in your history). It somehow automatically locates that "next" link (I'm not quite sure how, and it doesn't work on all pages with "next" links... but it often does). I prefer to activate this feature with button rocking. I don't know if button rocking is improved in Firefox 2, but in FF1.5 to rock two pages forward, for example, you have to press and hold the left button, then press the right button... then RELEASE both buttons, and repeat. In Opera, you can just hold the first button (so the left button if rocking forward) and repeatedly hit the second button. Much nicer, and can make navigating through search results or other pages much more convenient.
Another nice feature is if you're looking at a thumbnail gallery (of uh... game screenshots, you prevert) and the thumbnails link to images rather than another html page or javascript, you can click on a thumbnail and then use your forward shortcut to go to the next thumbnail. You can continue to do this through all of the images on the thumbnail page. Once you get through all of the images, it returns you back to the thumbnail page. Quite nice.
FWIW, Opera can search from the address bar too. It also automates the creation of your own custom searches.
Finally, at version 2, FireFox obeys system-wide key bindings on my Macintosh. This makes it into a usable application, e.g.I can use control-A to go to the start of a text-input box, just like on all other applications.
However, it's not completely perfect ... it crashed as I was typing the first version of this post :-(
http://neosmart.net/blog/archives/157 Quite different results however....
Does Firefox 2 support WebFolders like IE or Konquer?
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
IE 7 supports alpha PNGs! http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/04/26/412263 .aspx
with Microsoft putting Beta 3 of Internet Explorer 7 out for all to download
_All_ of you idiots still running windoze anyway.. Thankfully this virus will not be spread to my Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD boxes.
But all the themes we found merely changed the interface buttons and perhaps added an image to the top menu area; they don't change the window borders the way you can with WindowBlinds. And beware that most themes haven't yet been updated to work with Firefox 2.
That's such a pathetically windoze centric point of view. In the free world, you have a choice of skinable window managers which you can mix and match as you please. "Extreme Tech, where we dare to leave the Start Menu." Kudos to the for noticing this "Linux" thing an including it on a chart. Brickbacks for hanging onto a six year old interface that sucks.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I love Opera, but I find this incredibly fustrating.
I'd imagine the Opera file-chooser looks okay in Windows because it's designed to look exactly like the Windows one. But, when you're using KDE, Gnome or Xfce the file-chooser stands out like a sore thumb and is also much less usable than the KDE or Gtk+ choosers.
Please, for the love of god.
I liked the IE Acid test result. Very picasso.
IE7 beta 3
.Blazing fast. Very sleek and neat on surface.Auto saving sessions combined with blazing fast startup/rendering is easily the most attractive feature. Underneath it though... -Interface for customizing toolbars/search engines is awful .In fact I didn't find a way to resize search bar . Widgets are just toys and I didn't . find any useful ones. But damn its blazing fast
.well better than IE6. They fixed annoying bug with disappearing link addresses in status bar. Tabs are done well (ie they did not screwed anything up) .Tab preview is on par with firefox extension. Other than that.... - Their session save things is annoyance (each time you close browser you have to checkbox and click button -no way to save sessions by default). No real innovation besides tabs and no good "add-ons" (ie7 lsita as addons mostly 3d party progs such as getright ). But well it renders MSDN and exchange webmail access the BEST!
Firefox 1.5.0.4
Opera 9.1
Opera is fast
Firefox.. -well good old firefox I was using since beta and on my linux boxes.Though I stopped recently due to being annoyed by crashes and incompatibility with MSDN. -Well inspired by opera I found extension which saves sessions - remedies crashing problem.IEtab extensions renders msdn well (but not exchange web access). Still pretty slow - but extensions make up for it. Would be my browser of choice if was more stable and ietab is more polished. -Extensions really bring firefox over competition .
IE7..
Tab preview extensions easily better than ie7/opera one
I have been using Opera 9 lately and it feels a little more polished than Firefox. I would say Opera 9 is the best browser out there, but does it matter? Firefox is excellent for 99% of the cases. And soon IE will be on par with both.
I think that all 3 browsers are mature enough so as that their differences are important for computer people only.
Firefox's spellchecker for forms
Well, Konqueror already comes with it -- as well as tabs, Acid2 compliance and integration with KDE's bittorrent client. Haven't you forgotten a worthy competitor?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
IE 7's toolbar placement is kinda' weird right now. Gone is the Windows logo icon that 'glimmers' when a site is being loaded and which takes you to the Windows Explorer website when clicked on. The Firefox-like search bar is a nice touch though but it's still missing quite a few sites (Answers.com, BitTorrent to name a few).
if i block(*) connections to localhost (127.0.0.1) ...
IE and Opera can't open a page unless i give them
a proxy to use.
firefox works fine with localhost blocked, with
or without a proxy set
Opera/IE seem to connect from 127.0.0.1 to remote, while
Firefox connects from the IP address given to computer,
e.g. 192.168.0.1, in my example, to remote.
(*) deny connection from to localhost to remote in
firewall, Zonealarm.
Amongst all the bitching in these articles and comments I have not found out the 2 things that I want to know about IE 7. Does any one have the answerers? 1.Will IE 7 handle PNG's with alpaha channel transparency like every body else. As in no Active x controls and proprietary scripting methods in the html. Can I drop my browser detecting code and separate servings of markup or css based on the browser? 2.The Box Model, is the math 9in IE finally not backwards from every one else, does it now make sense? Will Border not be full scree when I just set them to '30px' Oh one thing I am happy about in Fire Fox that is a long time coming for me is the spell check, I wonder how it will work with online WYSIWIG editors?
An Opera user never has to close Opera.
At least I never do.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Thanks for that tip! For anyone else that didn't quite catch how to, here's a link to a firefox how-to: Firefox quick searches / smart keywords
the patent on GIF compression expired a few years ago. They're free to use now, just another Standard format.
...at what is considered a "feature" these days. If I install the new FF 2.0, I'll have to spend alot of time disabling things... such as Search suggestions now appear with search history in the search box for Google, Yahoo! and Answers.com, New microsummaries feature for bookmarks, Inline spell checking in text boxes, Support for client-side session and persistent storage. Not my idea of features, just Pain-in-the-Arse "whiz-bang" things for people who are not me and future-exploitable security holes. Just MHO.
;-)
PS I am not a cynic, really. I'm a realist (at least in my reality)
opera - surviving more myspace profiles than the competition
I'm going to risk sounding like a smug git here, but you really don't have to write any browser-specific code for these three. I develop for Opera, Firefox and IE simultaneously (and I'm going to include Safari as soon as I can convince the company we need a Mac) and all of my code works without any major differences.
In fact the only browser specific code blocks I have to use (that I can think of), are:
Creating an XML object for AJAX stuff:
if(window.XMLHttpRequest)
this.setXMLObject(new XMLHttpRequest());
else if(window.ActiveXObject)
this.setXMLObject(new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"));
Disabling selecting items with mousedown drag:
style="-moz-user-select: none;" onselectstart="javascript:return false;"
(The style is for mozilla, the javascript for IE. Opera doesn't allow this - I presume for the same reasons that it doesn't allow right click scripting actions by default: it's really irritating when things don't do what you expect them to do, or worse still, when people try to stop you "stealing their code/content", especially when it's so trivial to circumvent. FTR, I use this when I want to drag application elements like XML graphs or images/text blocks in content designers etc. without the cosmetic cost.)
Everything else is achieved using the same code and to be honest, it's very rarely that I come across a site that doesn't work in Opera (my personal favourite), but of course there's always the trade-offs (although it could easily be argued that at least the first four of these shouldn't in fact be considered trade-offs, but simply good coding habits):
1. Your markup and scripting needs to be extremely verbose.
2. You need to be very strict with code structure - the order of both elements and tags is very important.
3. You need to develop for all three from the start and a little at a time.
4. Try to keep code as simple as possible, especially with scripting - performance of javascript rendering across browsers is really variable - transforming multiple layers simultaneously for example can give hideous performance (in IE...)
5. To be really compatible, you can't even rely on javascript being enabled - try to write as much as you can server-side to provide at least some kind of basic functionality (as long as you can afford the load).
6. It's often a good idea to use absolute positioning for elements and can be crucial for transforming in Firefox (otherwise in certain circumstances, you can get a nasty flickering effect as though you're lacking a backbuffer). You also need absolute positioning for dragging.
7. Flash???
Legacy compatibility is another question - I mean, how far back should you go in a bid to support users with older software? I tend to test on the current and previous official releases, but make no guarantees for stuff like Netscape and IE4/5 etc. Then again, if you want things like funky interactive AJAX apps, there's only so much as a developer you can do (and to be honest, supporting five-year old software isn't very realistic in a lot of cases).
On a final note, I don't know how difficult it would be to include Konqueror as well but I suppose I consider the Linux guys to be technically savvy enough to get around any HTML rendering problems that they come across (and you're probably using Firefox anyway). I could make excuses that I haven't got the time to setup and play around with a Linux box, but the truth is that I'm both lazy, and indeed far too cozy in my world of Windows, Visual Studio and dare I say, computers that work how I expect them to.
I see that Microsoft is taking the key features of Firefox and incorporating it into their internal explorer. Many in the tech industry have known for some time that Firefox is a superior product and it is starting to trickle into the average user base. Now that Microsoft is creating their version of Firefox, many people will not bother to switch if many of the key selling points are copied. It will make it that much harder to get users to deviate from the dominant I.E. (Internal Exploder) I'm waiting to see how much of a pounding it will take from security vulnerbilities.
Opera's tab behavior and mouse system is the best for ADD people like me.
When a search query strikes me, as it does often, I reach for the keyboard and hit Ctrl-N, g {search term} enter, and I'm on my Google results page. I can scroll down the page and middle click madly; I end up with my original search results page and all the sites that looked interesting in tabs in the background! If there's only one good result on the page, a right click and a drag down opens it in the foreground. I don't even have to move my mouse to switch tabs! Right click and a turn of the scroll wheel brings up a list of open tabs.
Yeah, sometimes I end up with fifteen or twenty tabs open, but that's mostly Slashdot's fault.
"Unlike the other two browsers in this roundup, IE7 has an RSS button that's always there below the address bar. If a site contains a feed, the button turns orange and lets you subscribe."
Um. So does Opera.
Fran
:):):)
1st 1st Poster of the new Millennium!