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Main - msg db 'Computer Address',0xa - Browser Wars™
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What is your favourite browser?
Opera
Firefox
Chrome
Safari
Internet Explorer
Other (no derivative of the main 5)
Multiple voting is not allowed. Changing your vote is allowed. 16 users have voted so far.

Kiyoshi
Posted on 03-22-12 09:50 PM, in Link | ID: 10221
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Posted by Ailure
The browsers have been copying from each other for a long time now. Nothing new. ;)
Posted by Kiyoshi
I'm getting tired of linking Firefox Myths :P
A source from 2006 is not very relevant. Keep in mind is that when Firefox userbase grew the most too. Chrome didn't even exist yet! I looked up the Firefox myths page and eh, if you use that source in any kind of browser wars debate then sorry it's just too outdated. It was correct in 2006 but not today.
It was made to counter the fanboys. Even Firefox users get tired of fanboy arguments some times.
And if you actually take the time to read it, you will see most of what is there is still relevant, just not the parts that specifically mention the outdated Firefox versions.
And then still, many switched around 2005 by believing the myths, and still cling to it like a religion nowadays.

Before the thread derails even more; as I stated before, I am trying to encourage people to try different browsers, and post their findings here. Why I link to Firefox Myths, is that I am tired of countering the 7-year old fanboy arguments every time :P

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Ailure
Posted on 03-23-12 08:04 AM, in (rev. 4 of 03-23-12 09:17 AM by Ailure) Link | ID: 10287
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The problem is that most arguments you used against Firefox was quoting the parts of Firefox myths that was grossly outdated. And some of the myths seems to be crazy fanboy ones that I hadn't heard myself (like Firefox having lower system requirement). Besides I have a hard time to take that page seriously after the "Firefox is a religion part" especially considering I seen Opera/IE/Chrome fanboys as bad.

Funny though, I have a system like that with IE 6. It's not a very pleasant browsing experience though.

Actually, since I feel like it I will counter most myths, the ones I don't note... well consider that I agree with them:
Myth - "Firefox and Mozilla are the same thing" - Example
Reality - Firefox started as "Phoenix" in 2002, an experimental redesign of the Mozilla Suite browser component. It officially became known as Mozilla Firefox in 2004. The name "Mozilla" in this case refers to the Mozilla Foundation/Corporation which develops Firefox and developed the Mozilla Suite. Official development of the Mozilla Suite ended in 2005 but continues as a community-developed product known as SeaMonkey.
Note: Fair enough, even if this is a bit to the point of nitpicking. I think most of us didn't confuse the Mozilla suite with Firefox though (hell I admit I hated the Mozilla suite), and looking the post he links... I guess the user in question meant to say "similar enough".


Myth - "Firefox is Completely Free"
Reality - "The truth is, while Mozilla Firefox is open source, it is not entirely free. Several elements are restricted by the EULA, including the trademarked Firefox name, artwork, and the proprietary Talkback crash reporter."
Note by me: This is true! However it's why browsers like Iceweasel exist, which is basically the Firefox browser without the brand. It's not really that much of an issue, although it's why Firefox forks have the generic globe at worst. I don't really consider it a problem, since if you fork you probably want to use a different name in the first place.

Myth - "Firefox is spelled 'FireFox' and abbreviated FF"
Reality - Firefox is spelled F-i-r-e-f-o-x - only the first letter capitalized (i.e. not FireFox, not Foxfire, FoxFire or whatever else a number of folk seem to think it to be called.) The preferred abbreviation is "Fx" or "fx".
Note: I don't remember seeing anyone spell it "FireFox", Actually to be honest I hadn't seen the Fx abbreviation used in years, so I guess it fallen out of use.

Myth - "Firefox has lower System Requirements than Internet Explorer 6" - Example
Reality - Internet Explorer 6 has much lower minimum System Requirements than Firefox'
Reality by Ailure: The article quotes system requirements to which I almost have a identical computer to! Almost, I have more memory (32 MB)! But it's very sluggish to surf with, so yes it runs but it's not very well (to the point that the system requirements should at least been late-Pentium gen level). Problem is that system requirements are kinda set what the vendor is comfortable with so it can vary a lot. Did he even try to run Opera on a 486 at the time?

Myths - *Something about memory usages*
Note - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108-13.html During use it seems that about all browsers are about the same. Opera is actually the worst at freeing up memory (see the -39 tabs graph). Nearly all modern browsers caches aggressively though if you have a lot of RAM, and why shouldn't they?

Myth - "Firefox is Bug Free"
Myth - "Firefox is Stable"
Note: This would be a myth with any software. ;)

Myth - "Perfomance
Note: The browser that can claim being fastest switches constantly. It's a perfomance race between the browsers, which is a good thing for us consumers (assuming that.. they are not sacrificing speed for security).

His note - Internet Explorer 6 is still actively supported by Microsoft.
Counternote: IE6 is under extended support! But that's basically the software equivalent of it being on lifesupport, and it's intended for companies who insists with legacy. Microsoft themselves however wants you to use their latest software version of IE which... is understandable!

Myth- "Market share"
Note: Some of those myths is true now! Firefox have reached 25% marketshare before, and still is in some places (it lost some to Chrome). Depends on region a lot. Worldwide currently, Chrome, Firefox and IE have a quarter of the market each. My prediction is that mobile browsers will only increase for awhile too so that's a factor, and IE seems to be steadily going downwards in user share.

Myth - "Security"
Note: At the time the Firefox adoption was crazy. So with a increased userbase, the number of reported exploits increased. Actually for a well-tested browser that only had security updates over the years, 158 exploits is still a lot. Interestingly the "vulnerabilities" he links as unfixed are also listed as "not/less critical" by Secunia, meaning that even they consider it low priority to fix.

Myth - "Firefox is More Secure because it does not use ActiveX"
Note: Why is he defending ActiveX? It's always been really badly sandboxed unlike let say... a Java applet. I'm it's a tech that have died out.

Myth - "Firefox Extensions are Safe"
Note: It's near impossible to make a extension/plugin system safe if the extension/plugin is rogue. So that's true for anything with said functionality. Even with only HTML/CSS/JS access,you can still mess up stuff pretty bad, with some clever tricks you can easily make a password sniffer with HTML injection

Myth - "Firefox is a Solution to Spyware".
Note: This is related to the "Firefox is bugfree" myth. In other words, applicable to any software really that isn't properly sandboxed.

Myth - "Anti-phishing"
Note: No idea honestly how it's now. Other than Google are really good itself at warning about those pages anyway.

Feature myths:
Several of those are wrong and just gives away the author as a Opera fanboy. Opera is not the first tabbed browser, it was early but it wasn't first. Netcaptor was the first browser with tabs. Infact I'm pretty sure most of those features was in the various IE-based browsers that there were tonnes of in the 90's. :P Actually thinking on it, I sworn I read about one of the earliest 90's browsers having tabs (pre Windows 95 era).

Standard support:
All current browsers have incomplete standard support. And sometimes they support stuff before it's even standard (which was the case for HTML5 tags).

ACID tests:
Firefox passes them all. But ACID have been criticized for testing edge cases and not really being a useful benchmark, more of a bragging right.

Web Page Compatibility:
Oof, this is a case by case basis. Rule of thumb, if the site is standard compliment then blame the browser. Otherwise blame the page ;). Not as much of a problem anymore as recent versions of IE9 is at least supporting more recent stuff, and it's discouraged to design layouts around browser quirks.

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knuck
Posted on 03-23-12 09:20 AM, in (rev. 2 of 03-23-12 09:22 AM by knuck) Link | ID: 10288
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Opera. Fastest page rendering, better options.

Firefox is a memory hog, slow to render, has an awful UI since version 4, breaks compatibility every single update... Just saying!

If you want to know what feature is coming up in next versions of Firefox just use Opera. The Mozilla Foundation loves stealing ideas from it. ;)

The only reason Firefox is popular over Opera is because back when IE6 began to suck, Opera was paid and the free version was ad-based.

Nicole
Posted on 03-23-12 12:57 PM, in Link | ID: 10293
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I have never had compatibility issues with Firefox, despite the "rapid upgrade" thing. o_O (Assuming we're talking about add-ons)


Kiyoshi
Posted on 03-23-12 02:02 PM, in Link | ID: 10297
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Posted by Nicole
I have never had compatibility issues with Firefox, despite the "rapid upgrade" thing. o_O (Assuming we're talking about add-ons)
Add-on hell, only exists on Firefox thanks to XUL.

Posted by knuck
If you want to know what feature is coming up in next versions of Firefox just use Opera. The Mozilla Foundation loves stealing ideas from it. ;)
Chrome and even IE had some innovations as well, like out-of-process-plugins and Hardware Acceleration on desktops.

Posted by Ailure
Besides I have a hard time to take that page seriously after the "Firefox is a religion part" especially considering I seen Opera/IE/Chrome fanboys as bad.
Any browser as a religion is always bad. Once again, this is targeted at the aggressive "Rediscover the Web" marketing campaign.
One thing I find very peculiar, is the added pickyness I see in Firefox fanboys. I never hear a Chrome (or Chromium if you will)/IE/Opera fan say things like "open-source is better" without reasoning why, or the classic "I am staying at this lower version of my browser", which ironically shows they are unhappy with the company making their browser, still they are not switching.

Posted by Ailure
Funny though, I have a system like that with IE 6. It's not a very pleasant browsing experience though.
It sure isn't, but it runs nontheless.

Posted by Ailure
Myth - "Firefox is Completely Free"
Reality - "The truth is, while Mozilla Firefox is open source, it is not entirely free. Several elements are restricted by the EULA, including the trademarked Firefox name, artwork, and the proprietary Talkback crash reporter."
Note by me: This is true! However it's why browsers like Iceweasel exist, which is basically the Firefox browser without the brand. It's not really that much of an issue, although it's why Firefox forks have the generic globe at worst. I don't really consider it a problem, since if you fork you probably want to use a different name in the first place.
Similar things can be said about Iron for Chrome. It's an effect of open-source.

Posted by Ailure
Nearly all modern browsers caches aggressively though if you have a lot of RAM, and why shouldn't they?
That has indeed changed through the years a lot.
I like it when memory-intensive apps cache when there is memory left, Windows Vista/7 does this with SuperFetch, which makes launching frequently used apps a lot faster, and I heard Photoshop caches stuff as well.


Posted by Ailure
Myth - "Performance
Note: The browser that can claim being fastest switches constantly. It's a perfomance race between the browsers, which is a good thing for us consumers (assuming that.. they are not sacrificing speed for security).
Yes but it's always a race between Chrome and Opera. It took Firefox until version 7 to get an even decent speed. Try out some benches yourself at http://peacekeeper.futuremark.com. What you will mostly see is Opera being fastest at graphics, while Chrome is fastest in string manipulation, and supports proprietary codecs.

Posted by Ailure
His note - Internet Explorer 6 is still actively supported by Microsoft.
Counternote: IE6 is under extended support! But that's basically the software equivalent of it being on lifesupport, and it's intended for companies who insists with legacy. Microsoft themselves however wants you to use their latest software version of IE which... is understandable!
Nobody should use IE6 today.

Posted by Ailure
My prediction is that mobile browsers will only increase for awhile too so that's a factor, and IE seems to be steadily going downwards in user share.
The drop IE was in has been leveled off quite nicely. You will see it rise when Windows 8 comes out, with Metro IE10, and desktop IE10 (which is actually pretty good in HTML5 and CSS3 support).

Posted by Ailure
Myth - "Firefox is More Secure because it does not use ActiveX"
Note: Why is he defending ActiveX? It's always been really badly sandboxed unlike let say... a Java applet. I'm it's a tech that have died out.
Firefox's XUL extension platform did not have proper sandboxing either. The plugin system did, I will give you that one. On IE5 ActiveX was a big problem, on IE6 unsigned ActiveX controls were blocked, and later we got the information bar that made you choose (although then sites started persuading users to give permission).
But the real problem here was Windows 98, which had no access control lists in its filesystem.

And once again: NEVER RUN A BROWSER WITH ADMIN RIGHTS!

Posted by Ailure
Note: It's near impossible to make a extension/plugin system safe if the extension/plugin is rogue. So that's true for anything with said functionality. Even with only HTML/CSS/JS access,you can still mess up stuff pretty bad, with some clever tricks you can easily make a password sniffer with HTML injection.
W3C extensions are still a whole lot safer than XUL entensions which can inject program code directly and basically mess up your entire system.

Posted by Ailure
Several of those are wrong and just gives away the author as a Opera fanboy.
This is an Opera fanboy at that time :P

Posted by Ailure
Opera is not the first tabbed browser, it was early but it wasn't first.
While true, it was the first one of the big 5. And I think the author's point here is to counter the fanboys saying Mozilla had invented it.

Posted by Ailure
Firefox passes them all. But ACID have been criticized for testing edge cases and not really being a useful benchmark, more of a bragging right.
You're kidding, right? Really, Opera and the webkit engine could do this back in March 2008, and the test had to be changed several times because Mozilla kept criticizing it! Then finally on 17 September 2011, that's 3,5 years later, the test was changed to make Firefox pass. IE happily along with it. So you see, MS and Mozilla are developing at the same speed nowadays ;)


Posted by Ailure
Oof, this is a case by case basis. Rule of thumb, if the site is standard compliment then blame the browser. Otherwise blame the page ;). Not as much of a problem anymore as recent versions of IE9 is at least supporting more recent stuff, and it's discouraged to design layouts around browser quirks.
Too bad XP only runs IE8, and still many users use IE on XP. Sometimes even still IE6...

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Nicole
Posted on 03-23-12 02:10 PM, in Link | ID: 10298
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Posted by Kiyoshi
Posted by Nicole
I have never had compatibility issues with Firefox, despite the "rapid upgrade" thing. o_O (Assuming we're talking about add-ons)
Add-on hell, only exists on Firefox thanks to XUL.

What add-on hell? Like as I said, I have never had the slightest issue with Firefox add-ons. Maybe I'm just not using the wrong ones, but still.

And the key difference between ActiveX and Firefox extensions is that for the most part you should only get your Firefox extensions directly from Mozilla's repository itself, whereas ActiveX plugins came from arbitrary sources.


Ailure
Posted on 03-23-12 02:20 PM, in (rev. 3 of 03-23-12 02:21 PM by Ailure) Link | ID: 10300
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The only addon problem I had in Firefox was when I forced addons that didn't support the current Firefox to be turned on. But that's kinda going towards the "You messed with it yourself, it's your own fault for breaking it" territory, complete with tonnes of warnings to do not do that. And usually it doesn’t totally break the browser so you can still manage to disable the troubling addon. It's been awhile since Firefox last broke plugins between version changes though (between version 3 and 4).

Kiyoshi: Forgot to mention but it's possible to run Firefox 2.x on Win NT 3.5 (which is from the time that the firefox myths page was created). Of course that's not exactly the first OS I would go for.

(His GUI gallery is great, just watch out for his almost near irrational hatred for IE that even I find over the top :P).

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Kiyoshi
Posted on 03-23-12 03:11 PM, in Link | ID: 10302
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Posted by Ailure
It's been awhile since Firefox last broke plugins between version changes though (between version 3 and 4).
W3C plugins like Chrome and Opera use, and newer versions of Firefox can use as well, are made so they won't break. They can't inject code like XUL extensions so they are limited in what they can do, which is both a good and bad thing (but mostly good imo).

Posted by Ailure
Firefox 2.x on Win NT 3.5
That's because its predecessor Netscape Navigator did. As well as Opera 3.62, which still works on XP so try it it's fun :P

Posted by Nicole
And the key difference between ActiveX and Firefox extensions is that for the most part you should only get your Firefox extensions directly from Mozilla's repository itself, whereas ActiveX plugins came from arbitrary sources.
Both can be installed from any source, this counts for all browsers. There were even contaminated versions of legit Firefox plugins, so good that Firefox itself could not see the difference. But yeah, MS and Mozilla themselves won't give you the rogues :P
I know Opera gives an additional warning if you try to install an extension from outside.

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knuck
Posted on 03-23-12 03:27 PM, in (rev. 2 of 03-23-12 03:32 PM by knuck) Link | ID: 10303
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Posted by Ailure
The only addon problem I had in Firefox was when I forced addons that didn't support the current Firefox to be turned on. But that's kinda going towards the "You messed with it yourself, it's your own fault for breaking it" territory, complete with tonnes of warnings to do not do that.
You do realize that, by default, if you design a plugin for, say Firefox 3.6.25, when you update your FF to 3.6.26, it would be automatically disabled, due to incompatibility.

By default, once Firefox updates, even if they don't change the plugin API (they always do though ;)), the add-on author still has to "update" his add-on to "support" the newer version (it's a one character change really). Meanwhile your add-on is broken.
That's how I recall anyway, I never updated past 3.6.

Nicole
Posted on 03-23-12 03:30 PM, in Link | ID: 10304
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Posted by knuck
Posted by Ailure
The only addon problem I had in Firefox was when I forced addons that didn't support the current Firefox to be turned on. But that's kinda going towards the "You messed with it yourself, it's your own fault for breaking it" territory, complete with tonnes of warnings to do not do that.
You do realize that, by default, if you design a plugin for, say Firefox 3.6.25, when you update your FF to 3.6.26, it would be automatically disabled, due to incompatibility.

Modern versions of Firefox assume compatibility, though... (which is usually a safe assumption nowadays, and I think they do try to detect those cases where compatibility would be broken)

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