Sick'n tired of Explorer!! what about Opera?

[Ruudman]

Anyone who would like to share some browser preferences?

My laptop's running W2K


Thanks in advance,
ruudman

[theblue1]

Yeah... after running without a virus/worm since 96 or before, I finally got nailed in a 'browser highjacking' ( I was just checking on some lyrics, really... )... the browser locked up and I got a "Are you really sure you wanna install these evil program?" or somesuch message. I couldn't shut down the browser so I gave it the 3 finger salute to bring up the task manager and close it down.

WHen I rebooted I went to Trend Micro's free Housecall online anti-V scanner/fixer and (after an hour and a half of scanning my 220 GB of storage), SURE ENOUGH, there was a cute little worm buried in my system, which Hosecall nuked.


So, I'm back to Firefox. I upgraded to 1.5 and it's better but, while there's much I like about it, there are STILL some serious, crippling (for me) bugs -- like the inability to search inside web forms and the EXTREMELY erratic behavior of the Google Toolbar for Firefox... specifically the disastrously buggy spell check -- which appears to be directly related to the aforementione search bug.


That said, I think I'm FINALLY getting the hang of using tabs for good rather than confusion... I have a bookmark set up that opens five different recording forums at once and that's pretty cool. Now I'll NEVER get anything done.



With regard to Opera. I used it a few years ago and really wanted to like it, but it was just a little too different in subtle ways for me and I, while I kept if for a while for testing (I do web database work) I finally let it slip away, since it had such a very small slice of the browser pie, it just seemed silly to test in it.

Last year I tried Opera again -- but the build I installed was a HUGE memory leaker. Just loading it devastated XP memory and it typically never came back. Whereas IE and FF and Mozilla tend to be pretty responsible citizens, RAM fragmentation/release-wise.

[perun]

Try the MOZILLA FIREFOX, I'm using it for a year... Never crushed, great logo ... Great options...

Try it, it's great...

[Ruudman]

thanks, guys
The only thing I know for sure right now is that I'm through with IE

Sooo, Firefox, ey?

ruudman

[dlmorley]

I really like Firefox too...but I'm on OSX. Don't know if it is different on windows.

[h2000]

Opera user here. I'm very happy with it, and I got it customized, etc. It's the fastest browser out there for sure and can be very streamlined.

Not sure about the memory leak thing, I have no problems here.

But, it's not to everyone's taste. If you want the closest thing to IE, but more secure and better functionality, I'd go with Firefox.

[tommyd]

Firefox on Windows is the sh%t!
TommyD

[bionicears]

Firefox on my PC is WAY faster than Explorer...

[Ruudman]

Thanks, I'll give it a try tomorrow!



ruudman

[manning1]

ruudman....
i know you prolly wont do this but its fun to mention.
if you check this out and learn some computer programming
it includes source for a web browser if i remember.
http://www.pyxia.com/index.php?optio...id=5&Itemid=32
the beauty of this is that the hackers etc will have a hard time getting thru the browser with bad stuff bcos its not standard MS code prolly.

i built my own web browser....not useing ibasic...but something else before ibasic came out.......thus i get no bad guys invading my pc.
anyway its fun to learn something new.
if you google youll see there is lots of web browser building hints and souce code
around to learn from.
my little browser i built runs like a rabbit in only 80k of memory rather than the
huge apps out there. i'm useing it now to type this.
its not all that difficult if your willing to learn some new things.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by h2000

Opera user here. I'm very happy with it, and I got it customized, etc. It's the fastest browser out there for sure and can be very streamlined.

Not sure about the memory leak thing, I have no problems here.

But, it's not to everyone's taste. If you want the closest thing to IE, but more secure and better functionality, I'd go with Firefox.

Cool. That IS the kind of thing that should get fixed. And it's entirely possible that it was something peculiar to my setup, as well (of course, that's almost a given).

I was pretty shocked. There are simply some software outfits that just don't seem to care WHAT they do to your computer's operations -- but it never seemed like Opera was one of them.

I love my MusicMatch On Demand subscription in many ways (it's a great bargain, at the very least, and a great way to hear stuff I would never actually buy and it's far superior to searching my HD for content -- AND it's better fi than the other services, with 160 kbps WMAs) BUT the MusicMatch software itself had become INCREDIBLY bloated. I removed its "launcher" software from my boot profile, but once MM has launched and run, there's about 60-80 MB minimum, of your RAM that you won't be seeing until you reboot. You might recapture some of it if you log off and back on, but there's quite a bit of unrecoverable memory wastage. (And if you don't at least log off, your system will be dragging around a couple of big MM services that account for part of that usage -- and result in a no doubt concomitant drain on other resources as well.)



BTW... to anyone who's recently switched to FF: as long as you're running FireFox -- make sure you get the most out of it.

One of the good things about FF is how customizable it is. You can download all kinds of plug ins (be careful or you'll end up with something that makes IE look like the Rock of Gibraltar, security-wise).

There are lots of customizations and (possible) optimizations.

Andt here are a lot of skins. Many of them are garish or fatiguing, but some of them are cool AND functional. (I'm using the menacingly named but actually cooly elegant iPox -- it's an 'iPod' theme... maybe adding the "x" DIDN'T sound like some form of germ warfare to THEM but I almost didn't DL it. Glad I did, though; I love it.)

[spacewars]

Originally Posted by Ruudman

Anyone who would like to share some browser preferences?

My laptop's running W2K


Thanks in advance,
ruudman

um....
...Firefox?
I thought this was so obvious as to make mentioning it redundant, but I guess not.
I seriously can't grasp why anyone would use IE at this point...

cheers

-sw

[Ruudman]

Thanks for pointing me out as an idiot


ruudman

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by spacewars

um....
...Firefox?
I thought this was so obvious as to make mentioning it redundant, but I guess not.
I seriously can't grasp why anyone would use IE at this point...

cheers

-sw

Well, I mostly prefer IE. It's faster. It's more compliant with crucial HTML and XHTML standards. It has far less bugs. IE can search inside web forms. The Google toolbar for IE actually works like it's supposed to. (I'm sure that is a mutual ish between Google and Mozilla org.)

But -- while FF actually has considerbly more unfixed security holes -- IE is clearly more heavily targeted. Worm/Virus writers, mostly in the employ of either personal info scammers or spam-zombie mavens, go where the biggest target pool is, and that's still IE.

Also, something I do REALLY like in FF is the ability to quickly and usually fairly usefully resize web page text. THAT is a VERY big plus for me, since I often work on a laptop.

[Sounds Great]

Netscape 7.1/7.2

Their best yet and I haven't tried anything that works better or is set up more logically. Been using Netscape for over 10 years now though, so I might be biased.

[opentune]

When using an older version of Opera (7.x or so) i noticed there was something
wrong with the memory management... never found a way to work around this,
but it didn´t really bother me.
The system was still quick enough.

Now i´m a happy version 8.5 user. Works great here.

[C Heat]

Camino for Mac.

OT I know.

Just throwin' a plug in for them.

:)

[Henchman]

Opera Rocks.

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by opentune

When using an older version of Opera (7.x or so) i noticed there was something
wrong with the memory management... never found a way to work around this,
but it didn´t really bother me.
The system was still quick enough.

Now i´m a happy version 8.5 user. Works great here.

Thanks for the update! I'll have to add Opera to the stable again soon.