Internet Browser Wars

[Michael]

Internet Browsers - which one do you use and why do you prefer that one?

[Michael]

I use Firefox because I love the tab-feature. I hate having a bunch of windows open on my computer - it confuses me. :o

I suppose the other browsers all have this tab-feature now, but that was the one think I really liked about Firefox when I first started using it a while back.

I suppose it is also more secure than IE and that's also important to me.

[dilettante]

I'm also a Firefox fan; it loads faster than IE, freezes less often, and just seems more friendly.

I was excited about Chrome for a little while because it loaded so quickly even on my crummy laptop and seemed all about slick simplicity. Since then I've found that (again, on my crummy laptop) it freezes or crashes with distressing regularity whenever it tries to use a plugin for video, audio, or even just flash animation. If they can fix that problem, I might consider making more use of it, but in the mean time its back to Firefox.

I've never really tried Opera or Safari.

[wphelan]

I used Firefox for several years, but since Chrome has come out I've found myself using it as my main browser. I didn't intend to switch, but after I downloaded it and was glad to see how quickly it functions, I haven't gone back. I also think the default startup page that shows thumbnails of my most visited websites is pretty cool. To date, I haven't noticed any significant crashing problems. I guess I don't really frequent many video or flash-heavy websites though. That could be the reason I haven't noticed.

[partofme]

I have the same problems with Chrome but since I used it for a while it makes Firefox seem slow and I just can't adjust back to it. I do like the spell checker better on Firefox also. The one on Chrome doesn't give as many alternatives for a misspelled word.

[Americano]

Back to Firefox after a brief period with Chrome. I prefer the speed of Chrome but it sucked for copy/paste and spell check features.

[Donkey]

I'm a Firefox guy. I've never tried chrome. I was sort of waiting for the peer-review of it, and based on this thread, it seems I'd probably prefer firefox anyway. One thing I hate is that it takes a long time to open on my computer, but I think that might have more to do with the lethargy and problems on my computer than with firefox. Most of my interneting is email, facebook and message boards, and I've found that the speed with which they load has a lot more to do with the mood of their host server than with my browser.

[partofme]

Another thing I like about Chrome is that it's easier to open a new tab. I also like how when I first open it it shows the web sites I go to most frequently rather than having one home page.

[Helene]

I wouldn't use Chrome for all the privacy invasive features. I'll use Iron though, which is Chrome without all the privacy invasive features. Haven't tried it yet, but I will once I get my google phone.

[Americano]

I wouldn't use Chrome for all the privacy invasive features. I'll use Iron though, which is Chrome without all the privacy invasive features. Haven't tried it yet, but I will once I get my google phone.

What about the incognito feature of Chrome?

[Michael]

What about the incognito feature of Chrome?
What's that?

[Helene]

What about the incognito feature of Chrome?

I'm not aware of this feature. I just know that it's open source and that some guy from Germany took out all the privacy invading stuff and called it Iron. Perhaps another person created another open source solution?

[Americano]

What's that?

"Browsing in incognito mode only keeps Google Chrome from storing information about the websites you've visited. The websites you visit may still have records of your visit. Any files saved to your computer will still remain on your computer.Example: If you sign into your Google Account on http://www.google.com while in incognito mode, your subsequent web searches are recorded in your Google Web History. In this case, if you want to make sure your searches are not stored in your Google Account, you'll need to pause your Google Web History tracking (http://google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54057)"


Firefox has the same capability by using the options feature to erase personal browsing history and cookies upon closing it, but Chrome incognito doesn't store anything for curious hackers to peruse at their leisure. I especially like the feature of being able to drag bookmarked icons to the toolbar for one-click use rather than opening the bookmarks to select a website. If it had a decent spell check and copy/paste I'd go back to it.

[Americano]

I'm not aware of this feature. I just know that it's open source and that some guy from Germany took out all the privacy invading stuff and called it Iron. Perhaps another person created another open source solution?

That's beyond my limited technical knowledge.

[Sucre]

I use both explorer and firefox and have no reason and no preference.

[drgoodtrips]

Regularly, I use firefox and IE (and sometimes Netscape from old *NIX machines).

Generally speaking, I have to use a wide variety when I'm doing web development work. I really don't have much preference. Historically, IE has been bad because they make it incredibly difficult to get rid of your browsing data (the paradigm gives the impression that Microsoft wants to make money selling people software that allows them to view your history against your will). Firefox annoys me because it's prone to memory leaks.

They all have their warts, I suppose, and a browser isn't a particularly significant part of my computer experience. I'm more or less ambivalent.

[JHC]

I use Firefox because I love the tab-feature. I hate having a bunch of windows open on my computer - it confuses me. :o

I suppose the other browsers all have this tab-feature now, but that was the one think I really liked about Firefox when I first started using it a while back.

I suppose it is also more secure than IE and that's also important to me.

That was a big selling point for me when I started using FireFox. Then I got a laptop for work travel and I never took the time to download it again. I have IE 7.0 and love it.

When I finally got around to downloading FF again, I decided I didn't like it anymore.

[drgoodtrips]

"Browsing in incognito mode only keeps Google Chrome from storing information about the websites you've visited. The websites you visit may still have records of your visit. Any files saved to your computer will still remain on your computer.Example: If you sign into your Google Account on http://www.google.com while in incognito mode, your subsequent web searches are recorded in your Google Web History. In this case, if you want to make sure your searches are not stored in your Google Account, you'll need to pause your Google Web History tracking (http://google.com/support/accounts/bin/answer.py?answer=54057)"


Firefox has the same capability by using the options feature to erase personal browsing history and cookies upon closing it, but Chrome incognito doesn't store anything for curious hackers to peruse at their leisure. I especially like the feature of being able to drag bookmarked icons to the toolbar for one-click use rather than opening the bookmarks to select a website. If it had a decent spell check and copy/paste I'd go back to it.


I just downloaded chrome and am trying it out now because Firefox has been increasingly arousing my contempt lately. It appears that they build a progressively larger memory leak into each new version.

It appears that "incognito mode" is a way to make the browser not cache a particular site that you visit. It doesn't have anything to do with the browser reporting info about you to some usage tracking server. It's what you might use if you wanted to watch porn and not have it pop up in the auto-complete when your wife was looking for things on ebay... :rofl:

I'll pop around the tech forums I frequent to see about this idea of chrome somehow tracking your usage like spyware. That seems rather dubious to me, given that I have a suite of utilities that monitor incoming and outgoing information on all my machines, such as Zone Alarm. If the browser were connecting to some server to send information "behind my back", I'd probably have seen it do that by now.

[The Drunk Guy]

Until I got my new laptop about six month ago, I used IE because it was what I was used to. But, all the computers at my work used Firefox and, when I got my promotion and started using the computers more, I really liked what I saw. It's much faster and much (MUCH) cleaner even with several add-ons. I also switched my search engine from Yahoo to Google for the same reasons.

Another thing I like about Chrome is that it's easier to open a new tab. I also like how when I first open it it shows the web sites I go to most frequently rather than having one home page.

Firefox has an add-on for that. Not sure what it's called, but a friend of mine has it.

<edit> Found it and added it. It's called Fast Dial.

[Zarquon]

I use Firefox for the security and the apps.

[Michael]

According to the server report for this website, Firefox is about 40% of the market, IE is 35% and Chrome is about 20%. The other 5% is split between about five options.

[Donkey]

According to the server report for this website, Firefox is about 40% of the market, IE is 35% and Chrome is about 20%. The other 5% is split between about five options.
Wow. How the mighty have fallen.


Edit: Oh. Did you mean for DWF? Nevermind...

[Michael]

Wow. How the mighty have fallen.


Edit: Oh. Did you mean for DWF? Nevermind...
Yes, that's DWF's server report of actual usage here. ;)

[Donkey]

Yes, that's DWF's server report of actual usage here. ;)
I was gonna say, I bet the majority of people are still slumming it with IE.

[drgoodtrips]

Since this was originally posted, I've pretty much stopped using Firefox except for debugging web apps. I use chrome almost exclusively these days because its architecture is vastly superior to any other popular browser, from a security standpoint. There's a new sandboxing feature for it in the works, called NativeClient, and when that becomes widely available as a plugin, chrome will be tough to compete with.

[Donkey]

What is sandboxing?

Chrome will work on ubuntu, right? Maybe I'll give it a shot when I go home tonight.

[drgoodtrips]

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-install-chromium-google-chrome-in-ubuntu-using-deb-package.html

Yeah, it should work, though I haven't tried myself. For the odd use of Ubuntu at home, I still take the default browser. Firefox, I think, unless it's konqueror.

Sandboxing is a term for limiting the access the browser has to your system. The web browser has evolved (rather poorly) over time. It used to host just static content. The browser would read html pages that you retrieved over the internet and render them for you. But, eventually, it evolved to do a lot more, obviously. When you watch a movie in the browser, for instance, here is what really happens:

Your browser parses the html and renders it for you. It then sees that a movie is being hosted on some server. So, it calls a program installed on your local computer (called a 'plugin') to handle the movie. Your web browser implicitly trusts these plugins and allows them to execute whatever they please. So, if I write "drgoodtrips's malicious code" and host it on some server as a target for one of your plugins, your browser will unquestioningly go ahead and execute the plugin. If I've successfully figure out a weakness of the plugin, I can do arbitrary things on your PC that a browser wouldn't normally allow.

For instance, the old adage is to beware of when your browser asks you if you want to download/run "drgoodtrips.exe". Do so only if you trust it. However, the plugin paradigm is an end-run around this. I can trick your plugins into executing malicious code without you ever giving permission or being aware of what I'm doing. The browser doesn't interpose at all on this - it just says, "sure, whatever you want, plugin."

This is where the idea of sandboxing the browser comes in. A sandboxed browser is a normal browser, but the OS or sandboxing program effectively puts a wall around it that says, "you don't need to do anything on the computer". This prevents "drgoodtrips's malicious script" from doing anything with real teeth to it. It could crash your browser, but it won't be allowed to open up listening ports (aka "back doors"), delete your files, look at personal info, etc. The downside is that this may cause some inconvenience, so the development difficulty is to provide the security while minimizing the inconvenience.

At the moment, chrome is in a rather unique position to do this. Chrome actually separates the execution of the page instances (i.e. tabs) from the execution of the browser itself. This is why one of your tabs can crash in chrome without the whole browser going down. And, given that it operates this way, chrome can introduce a degree of separation between the browser and the plugins. Firefox/IE/Safari/etc cannot do this. "Drgoodtrips's malicious" code would just execute as part of the browser itself.

[Americano]

Since this was originally posted, I've pretty much stopped using Firefox except for debugging web apps. I use chrome almost exclusively these days because its architecture is vastly superior to any other popular browser, from a security standpoint. There's a new sandboxing feature for it in the works, called NativeClient, and when that becomes widely available as a plugin, chrome will be tough to compete with.

As MS owns the US market of operating systems included with new hardware systems and includes only IE, that leaves a fight for remaining market share between Firefox and Chrome. As I recall Firefox's founder was financially folded under Google's wing to help Chrome get to market.

Didn't the EU legally break MS's monopoly on including only IE in their operating systems? Using your professional opinion of Chrome being potentially bullet-proof I'd think Chrome's next step is offering market disruptive low fees to hardware assemblers and capture some of that market. Google's advertising expansion to offset Chrome operating costs could make IE cry.

[Michael]

I just downloaded chrome and am trying it out now because Firefox has been increasingly arousing my contempt lately. It appears that they build a progressively larger memory leak into each new version.
Seems like every piece of software has this problem (Microsoft has it in spades!).

Everyone I know who doesn't reboot their machines regularly has all kinds of crashing software problems. My software never crashes, but I reboot daily.

[drgoodtrips]

As MS owns the US market of operating systems included with new hardware systems and includes only IE, that leaves a fight for remaining market share between Firefox and Chrome. As I recall Firefox's founder was financially folded under Google's wing to help Chrome get to market.

Didn't the EU legally break MS's monopoly on including only IE in their operating systems? Using your professional opinion of Chrome being potentially bullet-proof I'd think Chrome's next step is offering market disruptive low fees to hardware assemblers and capture some of that market. Google's advertising expansion to offset Chrome operating costs could make IE cry.

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if google's next focus was on trying to displace IE marketshare. Problem is you have a lot of company intranets written with crappy server side code that only IE can run. So, IE is heavily entrenched in corporate environments. I don't know if it's worth it for google to try to retrofit that crap or not.

[drgoodtrips]

Seems like every piece of software has this problem (Microsoft has it in spades!).

Everyone I know who doesn't reboot their machines regularly has all kinds of crashing software problems. My software never crashes, but I reboot daily.

I reboot my Windows machines whenever the Windows updater wants to - every week or two. I reboot Linux machines every few months (except my homeserver, which I almost never reboot). Both OS are good enough not to have a serious crash. Applications sometimes crash, but I just kill of the process and restart it.

[Americano]

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if google's next focus was on trying to displace IE marketshare. Problem is you have a lot of company intranets written with crappy server side code that only IE can run. So, IE is heavily entrenched in corporate environments. I don't know if it's worth it for google to try to retrofit that crap or not.

I'd think the global consumer market for all devices far larger than company intranets and that's where the bulk of Goggle's advertising is directed.

[drgoodtrips]

I'd think the global consumer market for all devices far larger than company intranets and that's where the bulk of Goggle's advertising is directed.

Perhaps, if you throw web devices in there. But, when you consider that the consumer market is divided (with IE being most popular) and corporate environments are lockstep IE, google's got an uphill battle. Even if they muscle Firefox out of the market altogether and take IE's share on consumer electronics, you've still got the entrenched corporate market place which, frankly, dictates a lot of people's personal use.

[Americano]

Perhaps, if you throw web devices in there. But, when you consider that the consumer market is divided (with IE being most popular) and corporate environments are lockstep IE, google's got an uphill battle. Even if they muscle Firefox out of the market altogether and take IE's share on consumer electronics, you've still got the entrenched corporate market place which, frankly, dictates a lot of people's personal use.

Valid points. There are some very keen minds managing Google and I find it difficult to believe they just wanted their own browser to have a browser. I can't help but wonder where it fits in their business plan.