I have to run a lot of browsers on a lot of platforms, but I choose Firefox to do my every day surfing due to the simple fact that its the *only* browser available that renders CSS accurately and exactly as it should be. Others get close (IE being the furthest away) but Firefox is the only exact renderer.

it is certainly great to see that so many of you are this interested and almost compassionate about what browser you use.
i still believe mozilla firefox is best, and i think (i have a very small harddrive currently) that using multiple kinds of browser, eg. opera, netscape navigator, simply confuse my computer.
I don't particularly use IE either and it certainly would never be my default browser. maybe thats the true point i am getting at. Which one actually is your default browser, do you go for things like user friendly advanced controls, or do you prefere a basic interface. Either way Firefox offers both i reckon.

Even microsoft nowadays are making large parts of there website more compatible with Firefox.

Does anyone have any information on the new version of Firefox?

Ah yes browsers!
One of those subject that everyone has their own preference as to which one to use.
Kind of like comparing cars vs trucks, or do you prefer blonds or redheads, Budweiser or Coors, sneakers or high heals (in some of your cases ), that type of thing.
While I have to admit FireFox has come a long way in improvements and IE hasn't had a major update in who knows when, I've tried them all.
I think I can safely say that I use a browser a lot. In fact Lancers Reactor has an admin browser interface we can and do use to make the news and download page posts (to those that don't know what a post is, it's the text you read) and I think I have constructed my share of those, combined probably somewhere close to 2,000, then add the fact that I use a browser to look at the code to see if I made any mistakes and what it will look like in the browser window.
Keep in mind this is only a suggestion... Like I said everyone has their own preference but this is how I use browsers...
First choice is Maxthon. This is the best browser overall for the way it shows web pages and for the ease of use and has tons of features...
Second choice is Advant. This is also a great browser very close to Maxthon in being feature rich and showing web pages the way the were coded to look.
Opera, since they offered a free version recently, I like this browser for its speed. It ranks number one as far as speed in loading pages.
FireFox Much better at displaying pages with the latest version, open source is its best feature. Getting better with each version.

There's a lot more that I've tried and use occasionally just to see what the news page looks like with them. Some don't show everything on the front page such as all the button links on the bottom left side of the page.

Firefox is one of the few truely WEC3-compliant browsers. It also adheres to, and fully-implements, the full Javascript feature-set. IE doesn't. And that's a major issue, all by itself.

I hate IE, because it allows developers to patch all sorts of nasty ActiveX controls and other things into websites. I find such things terribly frightening. Telling the user that they're downloading and installing something... is not nearly enough. I think that powerful content (i.e., anything that can look at files, directories, Registry data and other things) should never be integrated with common browsers- it's not like you cannot build applications that can access the Web without being part of IE.

The fact that IE has become a de-facto deployment environment for so many applications is very, very worrisome- this "ease of use" has greatly contributed to our very poor security environment. Nobody is safe unless they spend a non-nominal fraction of their time on their own security... and have the knowledge required. We self-congradulating geeks who are reasonably secure (i.e., They know what We do, but aren't able to hack our credit cards with impunity, or track all of our Web use) need to remember that 99% of the Web-using public is getting their privacy invaded in horrifying fashion, all the time... and they're not even aware of how much is being transmitted to parties unknown for reasons unknown.

I think that the Consortium needs to get its act together and come up with some sort of certification program so that developers can make and distribute safe applications... and then everybody who doesn't start playing by the rules should get blacklisted. I think that it's more than high time one of our highly-paid politicians here in the US finally got up and started explaining to the American public (let alone the public in the rest of the WWW world) how badly their privacy has been eroded by Big Business and Big Government (both bodies buy the information collected by the parties who manufacture spyware, but hypocritically say that they're above the fray, because they don't produce it).

Flash, etc., have never been totally secured, let alone all of the third-party stuff allowed by IE.

.... er... um... I guess that was off-topic.... moving right along...

I agree to a certain extent....but even though I am well versed in the W3C guidelines, I still find them to be often unmanageable. ie. one rule works well with one site but not with another. I feel sorry for those that are only just beginning to learn them.

I'm 100% behind web designer/developer certification, but they have to get the rules right in the first place. They currently change too often and are way too vague to apply to every site. In fact, at the moment I would equate certification to the creation of a police force in a country that has no law, only suggestions that are often inappropriate.

And of course before you can lay down the law, you have to make sure that your broadcast medium can cope with the law enforcement. ie. all of the browsers need to become compliant immediately. Currently out of the major browsers, only Firefox renders CSS correctly and even then its not actually 100% perfect.

Edited by - gromit on 10/11/2005 2:13:29 AM

fire fox, = speed
IE = it works

and building a site for cross browser compatability can be a right pain in the proverbial.

someone mentioned that ie didnt do regular updates other than sp2? i think you are missing the point, sp2, is a service pack as was sp1. but in short its a pack/collection of updates that have been bundeled together(you can get them all seperatly). and if you go to M$'s site and check for critical updates i dare say that you should find more, i like the rest of you dont trust bill, or his company, (which is probably why i dont update, that and sp2 conflicting with so much i do. jebus it evn stops my ftp from working)

just my 2 cents for what its worth.



www.kokrull.com home of ** uk server **

the only problem i ever really had with SP2 was that it wouldn't let me use StyleXp to change my ntoskrnl file. everything else works just fine, even the SP2 firewall, which is safe enough as I have a hardware firewall doing the main work. I'd be happy if M$ deployed AV and anti-spyware as part of a new SP as it would make my life a lot easier not having to run around picking up the c*ck-ups of other people. I already configure people's desktops to require as little input from me as possible and have a maintenance schedule set.

anyway I digress.

lucy you, i have one box that if i put sp2 on it it just reboots randomly, not what you want from a server really lol,



www.kokrull.com home of ** uk server **

if you don't like IE because its insecure then i have 2 words, DL SPs. they do wonders