Internet Browser Poll

Favorite Internet Browser

  • Internet Explorer

    Votes: 2 11.8%
  • Opera

    Votes: 3 17.6%
  • Firefox

    Votes: 9 52.9%
  • Safari

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Netscape

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Maxthon

    Votes: 1 5.9%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 5.9%

  • Total voters
    17
If we're going back to 1st computers I can trump you all by virtue of age alone.
My 1st was an IBM 360/50 worth several million dollars, though I didn't own it of course.
I was employed straight out of London University studying Maths and Physics, as a computer operator and spent a while loading tapes and card decks, and mounting 15Kg disc packs on banks and banks of disc drives, whilst learning the business and studying 360 assembler.
There was no such thing as a computer degree or even a whisper in schools about what computers were, never mind the mysterious arts of programming them.
My model 50 was one of 4 brand new computers in a rapidly expanding machine room the size of an aircraft hanger, with a suspended floor under which were miles of cables the thickness of your arm, in an arctic gale of air conditioning which, if it were to fail meant an instant shut-down of all systems before the CPUs cooked and all the disc heads crashed.
The system had a gigantic 512k main storage (RAM to you) and ran the company's customer order processing. The operator I/O interface was a modified IBM golfball typewriter with a continuous sheet feed, and jobs were run from punch-card decks on an OS which was emulating the previous generation of mainframe (7010) for which the processing software was written.
Shortly after I joined, they wrote an application which ran the emulator in 1 partition of the 360 MFT OS (Multi-programming with a Fixed number of Tasks).
MFT was configured by the operator at bootstrap with as many partitions as needed for the workload and size of task (one for the reader at 8k, two for the printers at 14k each, the main one for the production processing, and a couple of others for the operators and production programmers to run test/maintenance jobs.
A normal job would involve mounting 24 tapes on one of the 16 drives which read in all the order information (teleprocessed in from acrosss the globe to another model 50 which was 50yds away across the machine room and was the only one linked to the outside world. It did nothing but send and receive data to and from tape to every corner of the planet).
Once all the data was input, the system would cogitate and ruminate for an average of 8 hours (a nice easy shift for some lucky soul) before spewing out another couple of dozen tapes of production/shipping instructions to the manufacturing plants, which would be wheeled across to the network connected machine for transmission.
Every interaction with the machine had the repetitive sequence
r 00,"i $3p" to print
r 00,"i $3d" to display
etc etc because you were talking to partition 00 of MFT, in which was the emulator program which was interupted with the "i" to receive a button push emulation "$3" of e.g. the print button.
You will never meet in your lifetime, anyone who can type r 00,"i $3 as fast as me.
Having done it a million times a day (it seemed like it), the characters just flew onto the paper without mental consciousness. Even the punch-girls whose fingers were a constant blur when typing alpha-numerical input couldn't match me because of the esoteric nature of the phrase, involving multiple shifts and special characters.
Funny what special (useless) skills one develops in a lifetime.

That was 1969, the year of the first moon landing, the year the Beatles were still a group, when 1 production cycle lasted 24-36 hours to process data I could probably knock-off in lotus 123 on my new PC in a minute or two. (and store the whole machine room-full database on a CD ROM).
 
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Yeah you go tme beat. I wasnt even born for almost another decade. That was 8 years before i was even born. So yeah you get me beat. :lol:
 
The first computer I ever saw was on a school visit to the National Physics Laboratory in the UK and there she/he/it was in all its glory - Univac. Used a vast amount of power, generated a vast amount of heat and broke down with regularity (tubes burning out) and it could only do what the average pocket calculator can do these days.
UNIVAC-1-FullView-B.jpg

We never used calculators in school. The first one I saw was a "Monromatic" in the Physics lab at University. It made one hell of a noise!
Monroe6N-575-IMG_2438-5.jpg

My first computer is the one I'm using now which is around 4 years old now, as I hate to admit that my formative internet years started late on and were courtesy of WebTV, a.k.a. MSNTV.

I still prefer IE7, sorry guys.
 
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Thanks Terry, that's quite a story about the Spit and the Pitts. Sorry to hear about the owner's death, that's kind of bizarre...and then his wife steps in and becomes a warbird pilot. Quite a story...

I got to Oshkosh every year (26 years running) and there are always at least a couple Spits in various models that never fail to wow the crowds. ONe of the great airplanes of all time, aside from it's historical significance, it's just a beautiful classic.

I've yet to photograph one (I shoot and write for Plane & Pilot and Pilot Journey here in the states) but it's on my wish list for sure.

Meanwhile I've gotten some good rides in such as the L39 Albatross (to photograph a Mig 21!), a P-51 (to photograph the L-39...not bad for photoships!), Grumman Goose, just shot an F4U Corsair 6 weeks ago, so I have my fun as well.

My preferred form of flight is in hang gliders and soaring birds, although I'm training in a Light Sport Plane soon to do stories about getting a Sport Pilot's license.

Best of luck to you, thanks for the help.

Jim
 
Jim,
replying here to the other thread after following my link will confuse the hell out of Ron!n when he tries to work out what it's got to do with his poll, but this a water-cooler thread so who cares ?
It will give readers a puzzle, and send the more curious on a hunt to find what exactly you're talking about. I see you voted while you were here so at least he should be pleased, if mystified.
Further to that conversation, you might be interested in
http://www.ml407.co.uk/
which is the website of the Spitfire in question.
 
I'd have to say that I like the Flock web browser. It's got a lot of freatures in it for people who use the net for social purposes. But, Firefox will always be #1 for me.
 
Well for those that like Firefox and use the social websites Flock is a perfect match. Flock is based off of the Firefox engine.
 
Hmm...

I decided to check out Maxthon 2.0 again (didn't even know it was out of beta :lol:smile:... it's pretty nice!
I love the plethora of options available in the settings (verses having to use about:config for Opera and Firefox)..... It still uses the IE engine (version 7, though).

An interesting browser, no doubt.
 
I tried it and it was alright. But i have been using Opera 9.50 latest beta more and more. I really like where they are heding with that.
 
Blah, this is my last post from MX2... Going back to Opera in a couple of seconds :smile:

It's a nice browser, but has too many quirks one would have to get used to first....
1) You can't tab into the search box. In Opera, Firefox, and even IE, this works: ctrl+t -> tab -> (in ie7 only) tab -> type search terms -> <enter>
2) It's insisting on opening sidebar favorites into a new tab, despite the fact that I have it configured not to do so.
3) No speed dial :grinning:
4) Keeps on hilighting search terms, even though I keep telling it not to.
 
As I said earlier - we all really prefer what we're used to.
I'm sticking with MX1 till they stop supporting it.
 
^ I totally agree :smile:

IMO at this point in the browser wars there's more to lose than to gain by switching from a browser you know and trust to one you've never tried - even if it is technically superior or what not.
 
A question about browsers.
Does anyone know if the Silverlight thing is compatible with Opera and other browsers? I tried it with Opera and it doesnt work, however, it work with IE.
If not is there a way to make it work?
 
Per the Microsoft Silverlight website no, it's not compatible with Opera. Only IE and FF and Safari in Mac.

SSR.jpg
 
This is a very old thread to bump after such a long time; but whilst downloading the latest Maxthon 1 and customizing it (for some reason it refused to update the previous version and adopt all my years of personalization automatically, so I had to set it all up from scratch again to get the latest version), I decided finally to do the same to Maxthon 2 and finally try it out.
Apart from a few minor cosmetic niggles (the list of skins is so massive that it's hard to find the time to locate one I like (I want it to look just like my old faithful M1), and that doesn't look like it's been designed by a hyperactive 5 year-old with a new paintbox.
But one nifty feature I like already is the ability to split-screen and group the tabs in 2 halves independently. You can see it in use here. I've never noticed the feature in another browser, do any of them do the same ?
 
No I don't think I have, but I'm sure someone out there has probably thought it up for an addon for FF/IE.

Well good news if you like firefox, just get the Split Browser download from here and split up the window to your heart's content:

943948800
 
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I can't quite see the detail there Jus, but it looks like it's just tiled the tabs as windows. Maxthon 1 could always do that natively, but I never found it any more useful than just clicking the tabs to see each one because it tiled everything.
The Max 2 split screen is a toggle button that effectively turns the program into the equivalent of two copies running shoulder to shoulder. Each half still functions like a regular tabbed browser where you just select the tab displayed on that half, and you can drag tabs from one side to the other, which you couldn't do if they were actually 2 copies. (although I seem to recall chrome might have claimed to do something similar by keeping all its tabs as separate processes, but I haven't tried it because I don't like Google's intrusive behaviour regarding user privacy.)
 
Sorry that screenshots on the extreme and it wouldn't let me resize it. They have some additional photos on mozilla's site at that link which you can view up close.

Edit: Yeah should have clarified that it is just a user who has splitted a lot of different sites across thier screen, so it looks like IE's preview tabs but its not. The feature you're thinking of is provided with a FF addon known as Showcase, which I use all the time on my portable FF. For example, here's a screenshot where the user has split up the window, viewing/working with three websites at once:

943948800


I've been looking high and low for an IE addon (as I usally stick with IE like Peter), but no one seems to have an answer. So here's my make shift alternitive:

Open the two or more sites you want to view/work with at one time in different windows. CTRL+Click the windows, right-clicking while holding down CTRL with the last window and selecting "Tile Windows Vertically" in XP or in Vista "Show Windows Side by Side". Windows 7 still offers the capability as I discovered, but you must do it to all of your windows (rather than just the ones you want to view) by right-clicking on an empty area in the taskbar, which could be a problem if you got multiple things open and only want to see the IE windows.
 
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hey guys

i think that most of them are great with minors diffrence

Chrome : just an awesome elegant look with nothing new or interested

OPera : i tried it out along ago in the 90's when i didn't have ADSL Just a modem and it was the best about speed browsind and downloading

Firefox : One of the best, and gaining vast popularity every day, it has a lot of useful addons

Safari: Awesome look with brilliant design and very fast but also it has some bugs and take alot of memory during idl And during sufring.

IE : Is the old man, i like&hate it...i didn;t try the ie8 yet and i am not gonna to cuz i fed up of it

My Personal favor;

1- firefox.
2-safari.
3-Opera.
 
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