Which browser do you think is the best?

IE 6.0 (No great innovation since V4)
Netscape (No longer being developed)
Mozilla Firefox (More users moving from IE to this)
Crazy Browser
MyIE2
Avant
Sleipner
SlimBrowser
Maxthon

I would use Firefox, but unfortunately Iwas unable to get some of the toolbars to work. Plus the fact that Firefox doesn't support ActiveX controls. This means sites like Internet Banking and Windows Update don't work. So I still use IE 6.0. It's more of a compatibility issue with me.

i voted for IE, simply because i prefer it to netscape, however, i use MyIE 2, because it's like IE, but faster, and less crap. IE has given me so many trojans.

Actually Ste I hadn't finished the poll and accidentally clicked Submit. Never mind

well i prefer IE to all other browsers anyway, simply because i've been using IE ever since i got a computer and when you've been using something for a long time, its easier just to stick with it, which is why im using MyIE 2

http://www.myie2.com

Opera is a wonderful browser.

Firefox wins, hands down.

I really don't think you should list more than one Internet Explore core browser, because they are all basically the same(slow, unsecure, memory hogs) despite all that, Avant is the superior amongst those.

Firefox is based on mozilla/netscape, but so ridiculously optimized and removed of bloat it's a whole new beast. Realistically windows should ship with this, you'd have a lot less morons "I got a trojan from my intarweb!1" and increase everyone's productivity/ease of use.

As for your trouble with online banking/windows update/compatability, think of it this way... Firefox is (I believe) the only browser that fully supports and complies with the W3C's standards, windowsupdate is a Microsoft run site designed for updates/support of their specific products hence: they lost 50 billion dollars for this exact issue(browsers), companies who have designed their online database programs/forms have designed them in such a way that they are incompatible and is more a problem on their side. A user who valued their security and privacy would see that as a big issue.

its amazing how you insulted me in such a fine, and valid point of readable (unusual for you) peice of information. But then if windows shipped with such a "great" peice of browser software, people would start complaining as usual.

Firefox = better...

But why do I use IE6 you sk? SIMPLE:
My scrollbar thingy on my laptop touchpad doesn't work with firefox, but it will with IE6.

..... I've never got a virus through IE, unless you call purposely downloading tucow's (right?) back orifice (right again?)..... it's been such a long time YEEEESH!

I use Firefox myself but I keep IE6 as a backup for those few sites Firefox has a problem with. Funnily enough, a couple of the pages on my own website don't display properly with Firefox yet they're fine with IE6.

There's more support for IE:
Firefox has trouble supporting things like mouse wheels
Some things don't work as well on sites that you might create
People are used to it and hate change
If you know what you're doing on the net it's highly unlikely that you will get a virus

IE has security holes, god knows what kinda crap gets through.

definitely Firefox.

Opera is good too.

I tend to prefer cross platform softwares, except for microsoft's products like IE, word, excel and so on, which should remain only on their crappy buggy platform.

i kno that this is a bit off topic but im wondering who thinks microsoft is a bit possesive over wat people use on windows like they automatically give you media player and IE. who agrees?

why complain, it's free and it works.

springo wrote:i kno that this is a bit off topic but im wondering who thinks microsoft is a bit possesive over wat people use on windows like they automatically give you media player and IE. who agrees?

Would you prefer if they didn't give it you and instead you had to pay for it?

no it is just that if people dont like it and they cant download anything else then they are forced to use IE for a long time. think about it.

I have thought about it. And you don't have to use IE. It's installed by default on my machine but right now I'm using Firefox.

Responding to the first post about WMP and IE by Springo:
This is exactly what I was trying to get at. Microsoft are dominating the program war. I mean, let's face it: No Media Player is ever going to be as good as WMP. No word processer is ever going to be as good as Word. No spreadsheet program will ever be as good as Excel. MS have acheived dominance in the browser war too by making most of their sites like Windows Update and the MSDN Library ActiveX controls which most other browsers don't support. Unfortunately, because of all these things IE has so many loopholes and security holes that it is pretty much not very innovative. Plus the fact that most people have been using IE for ages and don't like change. My brother won't switch to OpenOffice.Org because Word is the product that he has been using for ages. It's this whole change thing.

thank you, thank you
at least someone knos wat i mean.
*treats 007bond like a king*

Winamp is alot like the new Media player now...

Personally I like movies in WMP, while songs in winamp, and so keep them that way.

I also like WMP 6.4 the best, and if it wasn't for the small fact that I would have to keep turning off the screensaver in XP if I wanted to watch a movie, then I would STILL be using it...

IE is personally very good... I see no real problem with loading (broadband), and the pages seem fine. I don't go around crummy websites, I don't go around posting my IP up everywhere, I have a firewall up (hardware through my router - not software/XP built-in-crap).

I have to argue that MS doesn't win because of people getting "used" to the product though.... I would have to argue that MS wins because they install the product's along with Windows (and package deals at stores of course... like "Win XP Home + MS Office") to have an "out-of-the-box" effect.

You don't need to install/download/go through 50 different players or internet browsers to listen to music/watch a video/surf the net... Windows will do it "right out the box". And as it does that, users don't 'need' to change - so they don't.

Heck, most people don't update - it's mostly automatic/left alone... And then most people have either norton (which fucks up yer computer alot and is only a 80-90% detection rate) or nothing... Then there's the firewall which nobody uses (many free ones out there!).

Eh just to make it clear, it's the microsoft sites that are incompatible with W3C standards, not firefox incompatible with the sites. IE uses all kinds of generic html syntax exclusive to it. Also the reason they have the monopoly, isn't because, Word is the best windows word processor, office has the best office tools. Those are all opinions. Microsoft also had the first foot and an inside track into designing all these tools for windows, and even went out of their way to make it harder for open source alternatives to be made. Hell, openoffice doesn't handle all excel situations right because microsofts licenses.

Also unrelated, but here's a picture of my badass new desktop. Click for full-size, you won't be disappointed.

That is the sickest dekstop I have ever seen! Is it functional? And if so, how did you make it?

horrid

Yeah, it's functional. It's basically just a desktop.html file, with a css style sheet, and a ton of javascript to execute the shortcuts and such. A guy from the somethingawful forums came up with the template scripts for it, since then it's been streamlined and tweaked, and you can download a copy of the base then customize it like I've done. It's basically a useful incarnation of active desktop, and ironically uses activeX and IE's integration into windows to function. I'd say you should probably have a high-end system, but, I don't even notice it taking resources, so I'm not sure. Your mileage may vary.

Google TsDesk for info.

To be honest that looks like a horrible desktop. I'd sooner have the default Microsoft one than look at that every time I switch my computer on.

Well I guess it's personal opionion. To me that desktop is gold for a computer like mine. The background pic could be changed, but the actual functionality is what I'm after

Personally it looks very nice... Sure the background pic is personal - but the black suits it.

Anyway, I'd like that in a shell-form... You know, like you can get that stuff for linux... Moveable link windows and being able to minimise them/shrink (compact... like the winamp playlist window.... make it dissapear into a bar.... like Linux again) would be awesome.

*spits on topic because of the mention of active desktop*

Yeah active desktop was some worthless tripe, this is a bit of a better use for it, and I don't think XP calls it such anymore as it's actually, yes, useful.

I too like the idea of switching to linux so I could have a truly interactive desktop with streaming information and such straight to it, instead of having to trick my OS into allowing it.

Just imagine when Longhorn hits and we are expected to have real time video displaying most aspects of our desktop/OS.

P.S. Yeah the background is a personal choice, the whole thing is, it's all skinned how I want it through CSS, but it wouldn't hurt others to look into this as a much nicer alternative to things like StarDock software and such.

007 Bond wrote:

No word processer is ever going to be as good as Word. No spreadsheet program will ever be as good as Excel.

As someone who uses (and creates for other people) spreadsheets as part of my job, I feel like doing a John McEnroe about now...

<New York Accent>
You can NOT be serious!
</New York Accent>

Excel is OK for casual spreadsheet users, those who dabble a bit and 'Professional developers' who think Bill Gates is King and can do no wrong - but I've found its tendency to 'break' spreadsheets that use any serious VBA scripting at each MS upgrade makes it an utter P.I.T.A. to use for anything that goes beyond the simplest recorded macro.

Lotus 123 (God bless it!) seems to me to be way, way more robust in that regard, I've got to support hundreds of applications based on Lotus Rel 2.4 /3.0 & 5.0 that I wrote in the late 1980's early 1990's. So far I think I've had to make maybe two or three minor 'tweaks' to the code (where I've exploited an undocumented feature - so I can't blame Lotus for that) and these apps are still in use today on Smartuite 9.5, 9.8 etc. Trust me on this, if I'm investing a lot of time in building a complex spreadsheet, I'll do it in Lotus and forget about it, or do it in Excel and it's 'odds on' that when the next Excel upgrade comes along I'll be doing it again.

Of course, the fact Excel apps seem to need revision with each new release might be regarded as an advantage by some developers. It is in their interest to promote Excel as 'the best choice' when you think about it. (Cynical aren't I!)

While I'm at it, Access *is* very good and is now the 'standard' - although Approach is (I think) a much more friendly DBM package to use. Word users suffer from the same "upgrade hell" problems that Excel does but to a much lesser extent (fewer people have a reason to script Word). Personally I prefer Word Pro to Word - but that's probably because 'way back when' we had a choice of Word 6.0 which crashed all the time, or Word Pro which didn't crash and also looked nicer.

Just because something is the most used choice doesn't make it the best product by any means. MS have mastered the art of using their dominance of the OS market to lever competing products in other areas out of the way over the years, and I think the MS Office dominance owes a lot more to that tactic than any particular merit of the product(s).

Al (MaDbRiT)

It does seem with every new iteration of excel, less old spreadsheets of mine work. Most things I have from Office 95 crash excel now.

I've never really had any problems with Windows products - be it Word, Excel or whatever. Maybe there are better ones out there - in fact I'm sure there are - but which software you use tends to depend on which software you need. For power users and scripters, Word might not suffice but for everyone else, 99.99% of the computer using population, it's fine.