Internet Browser Poll
- Thread starter {Ron!n}
- Start date
I use Opera as a nice portable browser on a USB stick, which I prefer to Firefox which I've used in the same way.
However I can't vote with your limited choice, since my desktop alltime favourite, the browser I've used for years and in my opinion the best of the lot, is Maxthon1, which you don't even mention.
I also sometimes unintentionally use IE7 under Vista because of a Vista/Maxthon problem which ignores attempts to override the default browser setting but I deeply resent MS's refusal to allow the end user to customize IE7's toolbars etc to resemble IE5/6, so tend not to use it a lot.
However I can't vote with your limited choice, since my desktop alltime favourite, the browser I've used for years and in my opinion the best of the lot, is Maxthon1, which you don't even mention.
I also sometimes unintentionally use IE7 under Vista because of a Vista/Maxthon problem which ignores attempts to override the default browser setting but I deeply resent MS's refusal to allow the end user to customize IE7's toolbars etc to resemble IE5/6, so tend not to use it a lot.
The reason that Maxathon isnt mentioned cause it isnt one of the "big ones". By that i mean one of the browsers that at least registers with internet usage on sites. IE is of course the largest. Firfox is in second. Opera is in a distant 3rd and the last catagory is always "Other" which contains browsers like Maxathon, KMelon, SeaMonkey among others. It is cause the usage of these browser is so low compared to the rest they everyone forgets about them.
Not saying it is a bad browser but this is the tendencies of the people who report the stats so it become our tendency to act the same way. Safari of course is mentioned cause it is the big one for OS X. Firefox cover Windows and Linux. Opera is all 3 OS's. That is teh bad thing. Maxathon is limited. Only Windows support...
Not saying it is a bad browser but this is the tendencies of the people who report the stats so it become our tendency to act the same way. Safari of course is mentioned cause it is the big one for OS X. Firefox cover Windows and Linux. Opera is all 3 OS's. That is teh bad thing. Maxathon is limited. Only Windows support...
I admit it's not a "big one", it's the best kept browser secret on the web.
See http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=10455
where they talked about just that a few months ago.
I started using it several years ago when I was trying to stop annoying pop-ups in IEx, and googling around, trying several pop-up blocker extensions/toolbars, always found that the blocker either didn't work well, or had side effects (design features) which were as annoying as the pop-ups.
Then one hit, pointed at this Maxthon thing which turned out to be a whole browser not an add on, and contained all the features conspicuously missing from IE.
Being based on the IE engine, it was very familiar and was infinitely customizable, and rendered all my favourite websites exactly as I expected (sadly Firefox Opera et al, would all render pages slightly differently)
The particular reason I wanted all those features was for online quiz entry in a UK TV show, which I calculated was a good statistical punt (it was a premium rate phone line game, but had free web entry).
One particular feature of maxthon was a toolbar button that can dynamically switch tab behaviour, without the need for a Ctrl or Shft input, and I used this to good effect, to rapidly reuse one tab for entry without having to re-enter my details on each entry, which enabled me to machine-gun entries into the system up to their max limit.
My analysis of the binomial probabilities involved proved correct and I won the competition twice, netting £1750 ($3500), before the program was pulled off air after an internal production company scandal about rigging the game.
I put my success down entirely to the efficiency with which Maxthon allowed me to do things which weren't possible with IE, Firefox or Opera (I did try them). I actually won the first time on the very day that I first installed Maxthon.
How many browsers are not just FREE but actually pay YOU money ?
See http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=10455
where they talked about just that a few months ago.
I started using it several years ago when I was trying to stop annoying pop-ups in IEx, and googling around, trying several pop-up blocker extensions/toolbars, always found that the blocker either didn't work well, or had side effects (design features) which were as annoying as the pop-ups.
Then one hit, pointed at this Maxthon thing which turned out to be a whole browser not an add on, and contained all the features conspicuously missing from IE.
Being based on the IE engine, it was very familiar and was infinitely customizable, and rendered all my favourite websites exactly as I expected (sadly Firefox Opera et al, would all render pages slightly differently)
The particular reason I wanted all those features was for online quiz entry in a UK TV show, which I calculated was a good statistical punt (it was a premium rate phone line game, but had free web entry).
One particular feature of maxthon was a toolbar button that can dynamically switch tab behaviour, without the need for a Ctrl or Shft input, and I used this to good effect, to rapidly reuse one tab for entry without having to re-enter my details on each entry, which enabled me to machine-gun entries into the system up to their max limit.
My analysis of the binomial probabilities involved proved correct and I won the competition twice, netting £1750 ($3500), before the program was pulled off air after an internal production company scandal about rigging the game.
I put my success down entirely to the efficiency with which Maxthon allowed me to do things which weren't possible with IE, Firefox or Opera (I did try them). I actually won the first time on the very day that I first installed Maxthon.
How many browsers are not just FREE but actually pay YOU money ?
Wow, that's impressive!
I used MX2 for a while, I'm not sure why I stopped but I think it was a serious bug in the beta (meaning I have to check it out again soon, of course
)
I first found MX1 back when they first made their English version available, but I was a hardcore Firefox (or was it still Firebird?) user at the time, then Opera.
Your profile says you're a systems programmer - did your binomial calculations have anything to do with your field?
Addendum:
OK, I've added "Maxthon" and "Other" to the poll per Ronin's request.
I used MX2 for a while, I'm not sure why I stopped but I think it was a serious bug in the beta (meaning I have to check it out again soon, of course
)I first found MX1 back when they first made their English version available, but I was a hardcore Firefox (or was it still Firebird?) user at the time, then Opera.
Your profile says you're a systems programmer - did your binomial calculations have anything to do with your field?
Addendum:
OK, I've added "Maxthon" and "Other" to the poll per Ronin's request.
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Guru,
I was a sysprog by profession before I quit the rat-race for a small holding/brewery/water mill in very rural Wales (I've since moved back to England, but not to sysprogging).
I worked for the Big Blue creating/installing/maintaining MVS OS's on a machine room of very large mainframes, to each of which were connected several hundred end-users. (weird to think now, all these years later, that my PC could out perform all of them but only supports one user. I used to write software in those days in 360/370 assembler where applications were 1 or 2 kbytes, and I'd fit 8 switches in a single byte and test them with a mask just to save space.)
When I first joined the company 1 Mbyte of storage was a set of doughnut shaped magnets, threaded in 3 planes with wires, inside a glass-sided box the size of the cottage I now live in !
When I left 20 years later, I'd become a performance specialist, tuning the software, getting the engineeers to reconfigure the hardware, squeezing sub-second response times for the end-users out of ever more constrained resources, and constantly rising demand.
That's why it offends my sensibilities so much to see the sheer profligacy and inefficiency of successive generations of Windows etc.
As a performance man I did use a lot of statistical tools to analyze the enormous amounts of data generated whilst keeping constant tabs on machine performance, (users were pretty damn quick to let me know if things were slipping so I had to be on the ball all the time), but my assessment of my chances of grabbing some cash was more intuitive than rigorously calculated.
I have a suspicion that half the world's ills are caused by the inability of the average human to correctly assess the true probability of events, thus causing them to believe the improbable, or disbelieve the more likely - but that's a whole other discussion !
I was a sysprog by profession before I quit the rat-race for a small holding/brewery/water mill in very rural Wales (I've since moved back to England, but not to sysprogging).
I worked for the Big Blue creating/installing/maintaining MVS OS's on a machine room of very large mainframes, to each of which were connected several hundred end-users. (weird to think now, all these years later, that my PC could out perform all of them but only supports one user. I used to write software in those days in 360/370 assembler where applications were 1 or 2 kbytes, and I'd fit 8 switches in a single byte and test them with a mask just to save space.)
When I first joined the company 1 Mbyte of storage was a set of doughnut shaped magnets, threaded in 3 planes with wires, inside a glass-sided box the size of the cottage I now live in !
When I left 20 years later, I'd become a performance specialist, tuning the software, getting the engineeers to reconfigure the hardware, squeezing sub-second response times for the end-users out of ever more constrained resources, and constantly rising demand.
That's why it offends my sensibilities so much to see the sheer profligacy and inefficiency of successive generations of Windows etc.
As a performance man I did use a lot of statistical tools to analyze the enormous amounts of data generated whilst keeping constant tabs on machine performance, (users were pretty damn quick to let me know if things were slipping so I had to be on the ball all the time), but my assessment of my chances of grabbing some cash was more intuitive than rigorously calculated.
I have a suspicion that half the world's ills are caused by the inability of the average human to correctly assess the true probability of events, thus causing them to believe the improbable, or disbelieve the more likely - but that's a whole other discussion !
Wow, that's certainly interesting.
I'm finishing up a degree in computer engineering, and to someone who began coding in C and now almost exclusively in .NET, I'm constantly amazed at just how much I can get a 30-year-old processor to do, quickly too. (Currently coding for the Motorola/Freescale processors from the 68k onwards.).
Writing in ASM means code that doesn't even take a full MB of memory on a processor that's laughably-slow still gets the job done faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than high-level code on today's machines - so I know what you mean!
It's certainly sad to see the hard work of hardware manufacturers to improve chip speeds, size, and efficiency being used as an excuse by software developers (Linux, Mac, and chiefly Windows on the OS-level) to create ill-performing and bloated code which runs slower on today's machines than earlier OSes did on previous generations of hardware.
I think the only consumer-available code out there today that actually tries to take advantage of the hardware as best as possible are game engines, where every byte of wasted memory or extra CPU cycles count... but that's probably why most people shy away from that field of work; and it's still limited by OS bloat.
Have you left the field entirely? I think it would do the current generation of coders well (myself first and foremost) to be reminded of these truths and facts that we seem to take for granted....
Mak,
I was impressed by, and became an avid user of Mx1 several years ago when it was head and shoulders above the competition (imo of course), but now even IE has tabs and all the browsers seem perfectly good and similarly spec'd. (they all pick up and include useful features they see in each other) So I guess it's all down to personal preference, and human nature being what it is, we all tend to stick with what we know and love, rather than learning the foibles of a different solution.
My own case in point is that I use Mx1 not Mx2 because 2 isn't an upgrade, it's a complete bottom-up rewrite, abandoning even the IE engine as I understand it, so chances are, I'd be learning from scratch again if I switched, and as long as the thing I use does what I want, what's the incentive?
I only switched to Mx in the first place because IE wouldn't do what I needed so I looked for something that would.
I like Opera for its complete independance from IE and "Temporary Internet Files", so I have it installed on a flash-drive complete with its cache which means I can not only continue an Internet session between boots on XP or Vista, but also carry it across to a backup system if I want, so I do use it fairly regularly and I especially like its built-in download manager, but I still like Mx a bit more because it's where I learned all the extra tricks in the first place so it all feels most natural there.
Guru,
I retired from all paid employment in 1988 when I was just 41, and didn't even own a PC till my Dad gave me his IBM Aptiva when he upgraded at the millenium change, so my expertise is all now sadly outdated.
It still astonishes me just how powerful the PC I am typing this on is, compared to the $6,000,000 mainframes I used to tweak for a living.
When I sit and wait 10 seconds for Windows to make up its mind to do something simple, I find it hard to believe that I used to keep 200-300 users sitting at desks in another building, happy and productive with their sub-second terminal response, while they were all connected to a single 7MIP processor with a mere 16Mb main storage by countless miles of co-ax cable.
They were mostly programmers developing code in PL1 and each saw a virtual 16Mb address space of their own (MVS - multiple virtual systems), so the OS spent most of its time swapping user address spaces in and out of main storage to massive HD storage, (which was nowhere near the capacity or speed of the little 500Gb 3.5" HD currently spinning next to my left knee).
And yet, miraculously the code would still manage most of the time to give them the impression that the system was all theirs and as soon as they hit "enter", it was ready for the next line of code without a discernable pause.
If the same level of economy of code were applied to this PC, I wonder just what it could do ?
To be fair of course, graphics has a lot to do with it. In those days, computer terminals had just gone from 80x24 monochrome text to the dizzy heights of 8 colour text with optional foreground/background colour swap and optional blink, so graphics engines were unheard of. How many of us would go back to a text only screen and abandon the joys of Aero Glass I wonder ?
When I retired, I'd just had demonstrated on my expensive huge colour terminal, a new piece of software/hardware developed at the IBM Hursley labs, where they had scanned a photo of Cheryl Ladd and digitized it, and I first saw the miracle of a full colour picture on my screen (albeit only about 100x75 pixels !)
I was impressed by, and became an avid user of Mx1 several years ago when it was head and shoulders above the competition (imo of course), but now even IE has tabs and all the browsers seem perfectly good and similarly spec'd. (they all pick up and include useful features they see in each other) So I guess it's all down to personal preference, and human nature being what it is, we all tend to stick with what we know and love, rather than learning the foibles of a different solution.
My own case in point is that I use Mx1 not Mx2 because 2 isn't an upgrade, it's a complete bottom-up rewrite, abandoning even the IE engine as I understand it, so chances are, I'd be learning from scratch again if I switched, and as long as the thing I use does what I want, what's the incentive?
I only switched to Mx in the first place because IE wouldn't do what I needed so I looked for something that would.
I like Opera for its complete independance from IE and "Temporary Internet Files", so I have it installed on a flash-drive complete with its cache which means I can not only continue an Internet session between boots on XP or Vista, but also carry it across to a backup system if I want, so I do use it fairly regularly and I especially like its built-in download manager, but I still like Mx a bit more because it's where I learned all the extra tricks in the first place so it all feels most natural there.
Guru,
I retired from all paid employment in 1988 when I was just 41, and didn't even own a PC till my Dad gave me his IBM Aptiva when he upgraded at the millenium change, so my expertise is all now sadly outdated.
It still astonishes me just how powerful the PC I am typing this on is, compared to the $6,000,000 mainframes I used to tweak for a living.
When I sit and wait 10 seconds for Windows to make up its mind to do something simple, I find it hard to believe that I used to keep 200-300 users sitting at desks in another building, happy and productive with their sub-second terminal response, while they were all connected to a single 7MIP processor with a mere 16Mb main storage by countless miles of co-ax cable.
They were mostly programmers developing code in PL1 and each saw a virtual 16Mb address space of their own (MVS - multiple virtual systems), so the OS spent most of its time swapping user address spaces in and out of main storage to massive HD storage, (which was nowhere near the capacity or speed of the little 500Gb 3.5" HD currently spinning next to my left knee).
And yet, miraculously the code would still manage most of the time to give them the impression that the system was all theirs and as soon as they hit "enter", it was ready for the next line of code without a discernable pause.
If the same level of economy of code were applied to this PC, I wonder just what it could do ?
To be fair of course, graphics has a lot to do with it. In those days, computer terminals had just gone from 80x24 monochrome text to the dizzy heights of 8 colour text with optional foreground/background colour swap and optional blink, so graphics engines were unheard of. How many of us would go back to a text only screen and abandon the joys of Aero Glass I wonder ?
When I retired, I'd just had demonstrated on my expensive huge colour terminal, a new piece of software/hardware developed at the IBM Hursley labs, where they had scanned a photo of Cheryl Ladd and digitized it, and I first saw the miracle of a full colour picture on my screen (albeit only about 100x75 pixels !)
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Terry thank you for the wonderful input. I will try both MX browsers and give them more of a chance. But you are right on the nature thing. I have been using Opera for jsut about 2 generations of the browser and i couldnt be happier with the independence i feel with the browser. Knowing that Opera is the first browser to try and follow some of the standards they they have tried to develop and pass the Acid2 test. To see what WebSites really look like.
Very interesting on teh backstory. I personally have seen how PC's have changed myself since i started working with one back in teh AppleIIe days and having my first personal PC back in the 286 days. then moving on to the 386 and 486 before getting my first Pentium with Windows 95. That was a great day. Getting Windows 95 home, and crashing it 10 minutes after booting it. :lol:
The things we had to do back then that people now wouldnt even understand. How we had to configure out sound card and video card to work right. That was AFTER we already installed the drivers. I miss those days.
Very interesting on teh backstory. I personally have seen how PC's have changed myself since i started working with one back in teh AppleIIe days and having my first personal PC back in the 286 days. then moving on to the 386 and 486 before getting my first Pentium with Windows 95. That was a great day. Getting Windows 95 home, and crashing it 10 minutes after booting it. :lol:
The things we had to do back then that people now wouldnt even understand. How we had to configure out sound card and video card to work right. That was AFTER we already installed the drivers. I miss those days.
lol, I'm glad to be rid of them
I wasn't coding back then, but that didn't make me like the external "sound blaster" audio boxes any more appealing...
The first PC I used was an Amiga, which is to say I've been spoiled. All Amigas had the color monitors and stuff, quite advanced tech for their time (Motorola > Intel at the time).
I think I had the external sound blaster card attached to the Amiga, my first run-in with creative! I hated their driver issues then (to me, it just didn't work) and I still do now :lol:
Then a generation or two of technology later I was using the 386 running at 16MHz with the ridiculous "turbo" button to run it at 33MHz (I think) - always wondered (not yet a geek to understand) why it couldn't just run at 33MHz in the first place.
I like today's PCs a lot better, thank you very much :lol:
I wasn't coding back then, but that didn't make me like the external "sound blaster" audio boxes any more appealing...
The first PC I used was an Amiga, which is to say I've been spoiled. All Amigas had the color monitors and stuff, quite advanced tech for their time (Motorola > Intel at the time).
I think I had the external sound blaster card attached to the Amiga, my first run-in with creative! I hated their driver issues then (to me, it just didn't work) and I still do now :lol:
Then a generation or two of technology later I was using the 386 running at 16MHz with the ridiculous "turbo" button to run it at 33MHz (I think) - always wondered (not yet a geek to understand) why it couldn't just run at 33MHz in the first place.
I like today's PCs a lot better, thank you very much :lol:
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I dont remember the 186...i do remember the 286 though. I have installed Windows 95 in VMWare with minimal resources to try and work on this OS again. Let me just say that after all these years. I dont remember how to setup the sound and video card anymore....
Sorry, it wasn't a 186 - it was an Amiga.
>.<
I know, big difference and all. to me (i was YOUNG!) it was just a PC.
earlier post updated.
If I'm not mistaken, that was 1992 and it was an Amiga 1200. It was so easy to use, once it was set up and all (didn't have anything to do with that).
AmigaOS was just so straight-forward, you didn't have to know how to do anything (not even read and write!) to use it.
>.<
I know, big difference and all. to me (i was YOUNG!) it was just a PC.
earlier post updated.
If I'm not mistaken, that was 1992 and it was an Amiga 1200. It was so easy to use, once it was set up and all (didn't have anything to do with that).
AmigaOS was just so straight-forward, you didn't have to know how to do anything (not even read and write!) to use it.