Which internet browser do you use?

[Marcus Aurelius]

There was one time that happened to me, but I really didn't want to lose it, so I ended up running tcpdump, hitting refresh to resubmit, and pulling the http datastream out and piping it to a program to recover my precious post... absurd that it was that much of a hassle to just get my crap back.

Here's a protip for you: use a text editor Emacs to compose any long replies or articles you plan to post on the web and cut'n'paste them to your browser

[Covenant]

Opera. I don't use much of the expanded functionality of most browsers (like RSS feeds and stuff) so I like how Opera lets me shrink the UI down to a very tiny size and run it all off of one top bar. I could even remove the bottom bar entirely but I like that Fit To Width button for handling graphics, and I have to do a lot of graphics viewing for art stuff.

Actually, hold on a sec. ...

Oh man, oh shit, that's hilarious. Okay, Opera's UI has always been pretty user friendly, but I just now went into "Can I move some shit around please?" mode and it let me move the "Fit To Width" button up to the top bar.

So I literally have just a top bar, a side scrollbar, and nothing else. Everything else is context sensitive, and I absolutely love the speeddial function that lets me store my favorite 20 bookmarks in a visual format spread out whenever I click the "make a new tab" function.

I do think that it seems to be too goddamn heavy on my computer, but perhaps I am an idiot and don't know what the competition does. Still, I'm a huge huge fan of uncluttered, minimalist UI's for my browsers, and this does the thing.

[Isil`Zha]

There was one time that happened to me, but I really didn't want to lose it, so I ended up running tcpdump, hitting refresh to resubmit, and pulling the http datastream out and piping it to a program to recover my precious post... absurd that it was that much of a hassle to just get my crap back.

Now I just right click and hit "recover form"

Oh yeah, Lazarus saves all the fields from a page IE: If you had an order form with various text lines for address, etc, it fills them all out in one shot.

Here's a protip for you: use a text editor Emacs to compose any long replies or articles you plan to post on the web and cut'n'paste them to your browser

Well, with my "It's all text!" add-in, I can instantly transfer my forms to any text editor I want, and back, both with one click/operation. Or just recover it no problem if I don't feel like using another editor. :p With stuff like forums, I don't really find it to be much of an advantage to use another text editor - then you lose all the forum tag quick buttons (I like VBulletin even better, in that I can actually use shortcuts like Ctrl+I and I get the opening and closing tags entered for me.)

EDIT: A lot of my options, like Tab Kit, are based on how I use my web browser - I'll have 50-100 tabs open at a time, especially at work. Being able to save those sessions and organize the tabs and group them (collapsible) saves me a tremendous amount of time and generally just makes my browsing alll that much easier.

[J]

IE at work, firefox at home. I tried Chrome for a bit and for some reason it reversed the scrolling direction on my mouse wheel. That wasn't fun, so I killed it.

[FSTargetDrone]

Mostly Firefox and occasionally Opera. The only thing I use IE for is updating Windows. I've been meaning to check out Chrome but haven't gotten around to it.

[Dragon Angel]

Sheesh. I would hate to see everyone's opinions here of pico/nano.

(I'm learning vi/vim little-by-little, but I can't get into Emacs for some strange reason. It's probably not my type of text editor.)

And I can understand Destructionator's gripes with Firefox and its "zomg I am a process nazi" attitude. Sometimes, on slow machines (those would be my former netbook, and my mom's desktop), I would close Firefox and reopen it, only to see the "Firefox is already running, please shut it down." message half of the time. On my current desktop and laptop, however, I do not get that problem (presumably because they both possess relatively current hardware), but otherwise I can see it being an issue for some people.

[Isil`Zha]

The biggest problem FF has is memory leaking - if you have a lot of tabs, and leave your browser open for a while (usually days) it'll start running slow, and you'll see it eating up 250 - 500 MB of memory.

You restart, with all the same tabs open, and you're back down to 80MB of usage. I've got a few addons that help to prolong it before it ends up there, but it's still an annoyance.

[phongn]

Many Firefox leaks are due to poorly written extensions, though (plus it aggressively caches)

[Isil`Zha]

Well, I just set my Firefox to remember all my tabs. So I can kill and restart it without losing anything - unless I had multiple windows, which is what Session Manger is useful for.

[Admiral Valdemar]

At home, Chrome after I found my memory issues with Firefox in Ubuntu and Windows XP/Vista/7 were getting terribly frustrating. IE6 at work, because apparently our IT department has enough problems getting Office '07 to play nice with our chemical analysis suites, I wouldn't trust them with giving us Firefox or even IE8. And for on the go, Opera Mobile 10, because it is very schway and less clunky than Nokia Web Browser, less ugly and unintuitive than Skyfire and slicker than Safari.

[aerius]

Netscape Navigator. So I use a 12 year old computer.
I need the damn thing to run Wordperfect.

[phongn]

Netscape Navigator. So I use a 12 year old computer.
I need the damn thing to run Wordperfect.

VM?

[chris0101]

Firefox for sure because of the addons. It's also considered the browser that has security vulnerabilities the most rapidly patched after they are identified.

[Temujin]

As others have said, I use Firefox almost exclusively, except when certain websites will only work properly with IE. Hell, I've even loaded Firefox for use at work.

[ShadowDragon8685]

When I was younger and stupider, I used Netscape Communicator (Nutscrape...) because it was The non-IE, until the last version of it became hopelessly outdated, and I begrudgingly allowed myself to be talked into using Mozilla. Not Firefox, the thing Mozilla had between Nutscrape and Firefox, until that, too, became hopelessly outdated and I wised up and got Firefox.

I promptly loved it and it and have been using it ever since. Plugins, relatively simple to google up what you want to do (like be rid of tabs and open new windows with a middle-click), plugins, schemes I love the hell out of (NASA Night Launch ftw), and plugins. Did I mention plugins? I can't mention plugins enough, most especially Adblock.


I still voted for the 'castration' option, however.

[Whiplash]

Firefox. Its fast, efficient, well organized, often updated, looks nice, and then some. What more is there to say. If Firefox ever gives me an issue I have Chrome on backup, which I might have used for a total of 10 minutes.

[Dahak]

Oh I'd love when I'd make a long entry (typically a post on a forum) and then after hitting post... "ERROR: FORUMS CURRENTLY DOWN" - hit back... post is gone!

Or use Opera, which except in very, very rare moments has all of that text still stored when you go back.

[adam_grif]

I run Firefox, Opera and Chrome. IE is installed on windows machines by default, so it's also here.

I use Firefox 99% of the time, but sometimes I'll run across a webpage that just doesn't like it. So I try Chrome, then if that doesn't work, Opera, then finally, if I really have to access the site, IE.

[General Zod]

What do so many of you have against IE? I know lots of idiots fine, people didn't like 6, but even then, that's the past now; no reason to dislike 8.

I'm slow to forgive, but even I have come to accept firefox as being decent at 3.5. IE has moved just as far.

It's ugly and it doesn't have any of the plugins I use all the time.

[Mad]

What do so many of you have against IE? I know lots of idiots fine, people didn't like 6, but even then, that's the past now; no reason to dislike 8.

I'm slow to forgive, but even I have come to accept firefox as being decent at 3.5. IE has moved just as far.

IE6 was great when it first came out. I used IE over Netscape because IE was so much more responsive. But, over the years, it has become dated and many, many security holes have been discovered in it.

IE8 is much improved and has much better security. It even has some security features that Firefox lacks. And IE8 is certainly has a more responsive UI than IE7. But it's still less responsive than Firefox and especially Chrome.

From a developer's perspective, however, IE is currently a pain to target compared to the other big browsers. IE8 takes a huge step forward with improved standards support (CSS2 finally works!), and IE9 is even looking to have a chance of surpassing the others in some areas (hardware accelerated canvas). But until then, the other browsers still have the edge.

[Dragon Angel]

What do so many of you have against IE? I know lots of idiots fine, people didn't like 6, but even then, that's the past now; no reason to dislike 8.

I'm slow to forgive, but even I have come to accept firefox as being decent at 3.5. IE has moved just as far.

Well, I don't really hate IE - I just much prefer using Firefox over it, despite Firefox's flaws. IE6, yes, did have a great many security holes that only proved to be too much trouble to take, but I agree that IE8 has come a long way out from IE's sordid reputation (OMG Protected Mode Sandboxing? Proactive security!? Impossible I tell you!). But as for me, I am just too accustomed to Firefox to just abandon it all of a sudden. And, well, I like its various plugins, including NoScript and Adblock (which have both probably been more useful than my antivirus as far as filtering malware from the Interwebs goes).

[Marcus Aurelius]

From a developer's perspective, however, IE is currently a pain to target compared to the other big browsers.

That's how I felt about Firefox until 3.5 came out, for CSS2 reasons. They dragged their asses on that shit. IE up until 8 required a hack, but it would work with that extra line for the majority of things I wanted. Firefox 2 just wouldn't; it amazes me that anyone found that piece of junk usable at all.

Perhaps because most people are not Web developers. FF 2 was vastly superior to IE 6.0 from the users' point of view and at least on par with IE 7. In fact, on older hardware at least IE 7 was much slower.

[Xenophon13]

Chrome- it's fast, minimalist, and my brother uses internet explorer.

[Isil`Zha]

Oh I'd love when I'd make a long entry (typically a post on a forum) and then after hitting post... "ERROR: FORUMS CURRENTLY DOWN" - hit back... post is gone!

Or use Opera, which except in very, very rare moments has all of that text still stored when you go back.

Or I'll continue using my plugin - where I can come back a month later after wiping all my browsing history and recover all my forms, anywhere.

[ShadowDragon8685]

When I ran IE6 daily, I kept scripting turned off, except for a handful of whitelisted sites. There's no need to get Firefox and then surf for an add-on just to get rid of scripts and ads.

Turning off scripts and other features like that, though would disable a lot of things I enjoy - like YouTube and it's pornographic clones, or Newgrounds. Whereas AdBlock targetedly annihilates only the adverts. It's the difference between scorching the earth from orbit and a sniper with a laser rifle. Both are definitely effective in killing the thing you want dead, but the sniper is good about not killing the things you don't want dead.

It brings considerable joy to my evil, castration-minded heart to be launching a Flash game and see an empty box wherein the game's shell was trying to serve me some ridiculous toilet paper advert with a gray background saying "Ads support your flash game developers. Turn off your ad blocker."

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