Your preferred web browser?

[Archenoth]

Hey all..!

What browser do you use? And why do you prefer it over other browsers?


I personally use Opera.
I use it because Opera is a very fast browser with shortcuts for absolutely everything has almost everything I need built right in to start with, yet it still manages to be smaller than all of the other browsers.
Here are some of the things it has built-in:

• Syncing browser data between all of your computers
• adBlock is built right in
• It has a nice E-Mail client
• It includes an IRC client
• It has many built-in development tools (Full web debugger suite) Webkit does this now too though...

And some shortcuts it has

• Speed Dial bookmarks (Bookmarks assigned to keys, so pressing [Ctrl] + [7] brings me to Pokecommunity)
• It has mouse gestures, so I can control most common browsing with the mouse with very little movement.
• It has mnemonics (So typing "w linux" in the search bar will search "Linux" on Wikipedia)
• Roller functionality (Things like holding left click and tapping right click to go forward a page)

tl;dr I use it because it is small, fast, but has every feature under the sun including your kitchen sink

There is more, but I could literally ramble all day about reasons, that wouldn't work very well for this thread.


What about you guys? What do you use? And why?


Edit: Oh dammit. If a moderator sees this could you please change "Internet Explorer 8" to just "Internet Explorer"?
And anyone voting for Internet Explorer, just choose "Internet Explorer 8"... I originally had two different groups of Internet Explorer options, and removed one.

Edit 2: Thanks..!

[Gerri Shin]

I use Safari, mostly because of familiarity, though I do like that it's quick and compatible with all of my built in multitouch gestures. I use Firefox as a back up just in case I run into any hiccups with safari, but I feel that FF is much slower than safari in my experience.

(Firefox is much better and my main browser when working in Windows and Linux)

[Xulek]

Nowadays I prefer using Aurora, used Safari a few months back but after a while I went to Aurora since I didn't like the flash player on Safari crashing every 5 minutes or so.

[Patchisou Yutohru]

Safari is my go-to browser, but I use Chrome every now and then as well. I don't really have much of a reason, but both of those two natively support the trackpad multi-touch gestures in Mac OS X, which are tremendously useful.

[Shinigami_]

used to be a major Firefox user, however that changed when Chrome came into the picture..I simply just love how insanely fast it is, really. helps me cut down the time it takes in doing certain things; especially where college is concerned since some of the courses I take are online.

[Rest]

I use Chrome, it's sleek, clean and fast. :3 I have a habit of using Safari when I'm on a Mac though, as I'm more accustomed to that.

[SNOR(es)LAX]

I used to use Firefox, than Chrome came into the picture and I have been using Chrome ever since... I like the old icon btw.

[Ash493]

Chrome. I've been fan of Firefox for as long as I remember, but once Chrome started, I've been slowly starting to use Chrome and now it's the only browser I'm using =)
It can be adjusted to the way you want :D

[PsychopathicMidget]

Currently, I'm using Firefox Beta and as a backup a nice little browser called 'Maxthon.'
On linux it's release Firefox and Midori/Rekonq as a backup.

The thing that makes firefox stand out from the crowd is the sheer number of useful addons, and the variety avaliable.
I've nothing wrong with chrome, it's just that it opens a lot of processes and it makes them hard to manage from the task manager :/

Maxthon is quite nice as a backup as it's simple to use and has built in mouse gestures making it very much a plug n' go, so to speak.

[♪Twiggy♪]

I have been using Internet Explorer since I was young. 6, 7, 8, 9, I have seen them all. Now I'm on 9, and I guess there's something that I like about this browser.

• Tab grouping: Without the need of add-ons, opening a new tab within a page will put the tab in the same group. One can also rearrange tabs easily.
• Pinned sites: It gives me one-click access to sites with specific functionality available with a right click, on my taskbar, without starting the actual app itself.
• Graphical speed: While it's getting a bit old in terms of scripting speed under most cases, it does not matter much in the real world. Rather, graphical performance is where it's at in real-world situations (since you are always having to render the page every time something changes (like scrolling)), and suffice to say, Chrome doesn't cut it at this enough.
• Adblock support: It's not obvious, but with the introduction of Tracking Protection Lists in IE9, it can be configured to block ads easily, and they are automatically updated. Just chuck in the Fanboy Adblock List and call it a day! (Yeah, if you used AdBlock Plus, you'll know what's that.)
• Developer tools: It's probably the only browser I have that gives me access to the older versions of the same layout engine. That way, I can check how sites look in progressively older versions of Internet Explorer.
• The new tabs page: It starts out with 10 sites, but with some registry tweaks, it can be made to show up to 25, if you have the screen height to do so. I have it at 15. It's still a lot more than what Chrome usually has, and it's better than Firefox at that regard - it has none, so to speak, at the moment.

Believe it or not, but a lot of Internet Explorer's perceived shortcomings are because users haven't really tried exploring the world of add-ons and other things. I currently have an automatic spell-checking add-on installed that does the red lines and all that.

P.S. Internet Explorer 8 was really slow!

[Curious.]

I used to use Internet Explorer, and had been for all my life, but ever simnce it had issues loading pages. (Script errors) which I was unable to fix, I moved onto firefox which is amazingly fast compared to that old thing. :>

Never looked back.

[Archenoth]

That's pretty spiffy, Pudz. :D

Originally Posted by ♪Twiggy♪

Believe it or not, but a lot of Internet Explorer's perceived shortcomings are because users haven't really tried exploring the world of add-ons and other things. I currently have an automatic spell-checking add-on installed that does the red lines and all that.

P.S. Internet Explorer 8 was really slow!

Yes, Internet Explorer has improved a LOT, no doubt... But it isn't the most standards compliant thing in the world. It makes styling and page building difficult. I test a lot of my webpages with IE. So, it still has a little ways to go. But it is getting there.

[BZW Golem]

I use Opera, I guess the reasons are perfectly explained in the first post XD

So to post something interesting.. I will show a little comic which I found in the internet :3
this whole story, excepy the reddit part (I don't use reddit XD) is really similar to mine:

Spoiler:

[Archenoth]

You should check Reddit out..! It's nothing short of awesome!

And yep... That comic sums things up pretty nicely! Also, it's compatibility is great now since they actually were the ones who proposed HTML5.

High five fellow Opera user! o/

Here is another one that describes common browsers based off of D&D alignments. (Click for the full size)

[♪Twiggy♪]

Originally Posted by Archenoth

You should check Reddit out..! It's nothing short of awesome!

And yep... That comic sums things up pretty nicely! Also, it's compatibility is great now since they actually were the ones who proposed HTML5.

High five fellow Opera user! o/

Here is another one that describes common browsers based off of D&D alignments. (Click for the full size)

So true. You know, there's always this one thing to make fun of

What's the middle one? Also, I do think that some parts of the chart are just... well, not quite there now.

I personally love Opera on my phone.

[Archenoth]

Originally Posted by ♪Twiggy♪

What's the middle one?

Which middle? Konqueror? Flock? Or Internet Explorer (Modern)? :V

Also, I do think that some parts of the chart are just... well, not quite there now.

Oh..?

[♪Twiggy♪]

Originally Posted by Archenoth

Which middle? Konqueror? Flock? Or Internet Explorer (Modern)? :V


Oh..?

Ah, Flock! I think I have never heard of it, but I do know about everyone else.

Looking at the logos, I have begun to think, when was this made? XD

[Archenoth]

According to Tineye and Alexia statistics... Sometime around December of 2010.

[♪Twiggy♪]

Originally Posted by Archenoth

According to Tineye and Alexia statistics... Sometime around December of 2010.

Goes to show how much the landscape can change in little over a year. Hmm...

[Archenoth]

I still know people who use Netscape and IE6. :o

And everything else is actually quite modern except for Flock. (Which is Gecko-based)

[Hikari10]

I use Google Chrome cos I find it easy.

[Zet]

I use Internet Explorer 9 since it's the safest browser to use(it blocks 99% of malware while other browsers only block about 10%!).

[Archenoth]

Actually the safest browser is Google Chrome due to it's sandboxed nature. There was a report about IE being the safest, but that was funded by Microsoft.

I was really disappointed that Microsoft did that. I had my hopes up about IE after reading the report until I found out.

And for being safe against hijacking, you should check out the results of the most recent Pwn2Own competition results. (A hacking contest)
Though I will admit that they used IE 8 in that competition, apparently most of the improvements in IE 9 were in it's GUI.

[Zet]

Google's sandboxing is always bypassed... and even Google funds tests :P

[Archenoth]

Well, look at this vulnerability database...
This is a list of exploits and shellcode for things that people find using things like metasploit, or Hydra, or security audits like injection and fuzzing... If you search up Chrome, the latest exploit you can find that people found was for Chrome 8, they are on Chrome 17 right now. That isn't true for any other browsers, even my beloved Opera falls way behind Chrome. IE 9 has exploits.

I've found some internal ones myself, things like hijackable frames. (Though that isn't downright shellcode like this site lists)

Chrome literally has no exploits. Every other browser does. I'm not saying it's flawless, but no one has found anything yet.

Do NOT ask me how to use those, I will not tell you because I doubt it would be for anything ethical, and because it is directly in violation of the forum rules.

Edit: I should note that this is not in any way showing people how to hack or crack, nor is it illegal, these are source files that are there for analysis to judge the security of programs and require a set of skills of that of a hacker to actually use. (And if they had those skills, they would be able to find this code easily themselves)

I figured I should post this before people get the wrong idea.