A decent Web brower

[barcode]

I have had enough of Chrome, since it never restarts properly, and seems to become rather chunky. I have even uninstalled it twice removing all data and still it not solved the problems.

Can anyone recommend a good Web brower? an explsion in new companies seems to have happened since the last time I went looking: Maxthon, RockMelt, SeaMonkey, etc

cheers

[WillPS]

If you were asking me this a year ago, I'd have recommended Opera without question. However, Opera has recently left the Presto engine (which is their own product they've built over a considerable number of years) in favour of WebKit/Blink/Chromium (which is what powers Chrome). Chropera has not impressed me thusfar; features like Turbo and Link are still completely absent and the replacement for Dragonfly is crap.

With a heavy heart, I'll probably be moving to Firefox when Opera 12 (the last *proper* edition of Opera) is fully retired this summer.

[cwathen]

I take I'm still alone in being IT focused yet have absolutely no problem with using Internet Explorer?

Granted, if you're still on XP then IE8 doesn't really cut it any more, but if you're on a modern version of Windows IE9/10/11 are still perfectly capable browsers in my opinion - I use Chrome on my XP-powered netbook, but IE11 on my desktop machine and have no particularly wish to change.

[Nick Harvey]

I largely agree with Chris here. I'm on Internet Explorer (11) on my Windows 7 machines, but have had to go to Firefox (26) on my XP machines because I got fed up with having to go and make a cup of coffee during every page load on Internet Explorer (8).

[cwathen]

I largely agree with Chris here. I'm on Internet Explorer (11) on my Windows 7 machines, but have had to go to Firefox (26) on my XP machines because I got fed up with having to go and make a cup of coffee during every page load on Internet Explorer (8).

I think a lot of anti IE-ness is all to do with appearing cool in geeky circles Nick.

10 years ago in was de-rigueur to take your new computer with (legal) Windows XP Home Edition, immediately reformat it and install your (usually pirated) copy of Windows XP Professional which you 'needed' because you were a 'serious' user and couldn't possibly be seen dead using XP Home - only to then not use any of the features which were only in Pro and not in Home!

10 years on, OS version snobbery has been replaced with browser snobbery. For many people using a non-IE web browser despite running the latest version of Windows seems to be more a matter of principle to show what a 'serious' user you are rather than genuinely finding the other browsers to be better.

[Pete]

I'm not so sure if that's true anymore. I think with Chrome particularly, many people moved during the rubbish days of IE and have now got comfortable with Chrome. Things like the bookmarks syncing between computers and tablets without you having to put any thought into it (even with firefox there is a bit of effort required) means quite a lot of normos now use Chrome too.

[Philip]

I've been using Firefox since 2004 and have never had a problem with it, even when people were saying it was "too slow" I never saw the difference between it and comparable browsers. It's expandability is still miles ahead of other browsers.

I do suggest you try out other browsers and see what is to your liking. Internet Explorer 8 and below are awful (especially today) - if you are still on XP please don't use it. That said 9 and above are respectable browsers even if they do still have that clunky 90s name and stigma attached.

[Andrew Wood]

I've been using IE for 18 years and haven't really had any need to change. Sure, it has its moments and I've always had other browsers installed at the ready, but it does everything I need. Plus with its integration into Windows, there's no waiting around for it to start up.

As with all these situations, though, it's whatever you're comfortable with.

[WillPS]

I largely agree with Chris here. I'm on Internet Explorer (11) on my Windows 7 machines, but have had to go to Firefox (26) on my XP machines because I got fed up with having to go and make a cup of coffee during every page load on Internet Explorer (8).

I think a lot of anti IE-ness is all to do with appearing cool in geeky circles Nick.

10 years ago in was de-rigueur to take your new computer with (legal) Windows XP Home Edition, immediately reformat it and install your (usually pirated) copy of Windows XP Professional which you 'needed' because you were a 'serious' user and couldn't possibly be seen dead using XP Home - only to then not use any of the features which were only in Pro and not in Home!

10 years on, OS version snobbery has been replaced with browser snobbery. For many people using a non-IE web browser despite running the latest version of Windows seems to be more a matter of principle to show what a 'serious' user you are rather than genuinely finding the other browsers to be better.

IE6 was ghastly. From the user's point of view, it booted quickly (because it was so deeply engaged in XP's kernel) but it had a bloody huge interface in the days when screen real estate was at a premium. Its average page download speed was poor, straight forward HTTP file downloading worse and caching was inconsistent.

From a developer's point of view... well it's not even worth going in to. It didn't even flipping support transparency on PNGs without a chunk of javascript. *Bad memories of making my awesome Myspace profile look decent in IE6*

The reason I went with Opera originally was its level of standards support - what caught and retained me was the features which have subsequently been copied by all and sundry. Stuff like tabs, speed dial, magic wand (password helper), synchronisation... all out-of-the box, no faffing about.

And I'm not sure Opera has ever been 'trendy'; certainly the desktop version has pretty solidly held around 1-2% of the market.

IE9 and IE10 are annoying in that they *almost* support CSS3 but then not quite - IE11 is pretty much the complete article and I don't have much bad to say of it (except border-width:6px seems to break it).

[Alexia]

I use PaleMoon, a custom build of Firefox. No real complaints. Supports all the Firefox addons, so with Ghostery, AdBlock and HolaUnblocker I have quite a pleasant browsing experience.

[cwathen]

IE6 was ghastly. From the user's point of view, it booted quickly (because it was so deeply engaged in XP's kernel) but it had a bloody huge interface in the days when screen real estate was at a premium.

Took up huge amounts of screen real estate? What, like this you mean...

...doesn't seem to be taking up too much space to me. This is of course titted about with a bit - and I thought this was one of the big strengths of IE5/6 - they were the only versions of IE where the UI could be fully customised to display as much (or as little) as you wanted, and where things could be moved around wherever you want. It could be made very unobtrusive if that's what you wanted. But the default settings still gave you a UI no bigger than any other browser of the day. Today Microsoft mandates that my favourites icon goes on the right hand side of the screen but I want it on the left hand side of the screen and there is no way to move it - seems like a retrograde step to me.

Its average page download speed was poor, straight forward HTTP file downloading worse and caching was inconsistent.

Never had these issues myself, I always found it quite snappy at downloading. In the 90's I was a Netscape fanboy as IE1/2/3 weren't very capable and IE4 *was* clunky and slow, but when IE5 came out I tried it and stayed with it because I found it to be quicker than Netscape, and when moving to IE5.5 and later IE6 I never experienced any appreciable slowness.

From a developer's point of view... well it's not even worth going in to. It didn't even flipping support transparency on PNGs without a chunk of javascript. *Bad memories of making my awesome Myspace profile look decent in IE6*

IE6 was released in the middle of 2001 - it's older than Windows XP, being released several months earlier. At launch, it's main competition was older versions of itself and Netscape 4 (for Netscape 6 was so bad that many Netscape diehards stayed on version 4). Netscape 4 was a once competent but by then aging browser which had seen no real development since 1997 and was never known for being much of a speed demon in it's day anyway.

At that time IE6 was class leading, hence it very quickly becoming the browser that powered over 80% of the internet. You mention issues with PNG support - who used PNGs in 2001? The standard wasn't even finalised until 2004! This was an internet where animated GIFs, framesets and JavaScript were still considered cool, and anything more fancy was done in Flash. I don't recall there being much negativity about it in the early days, it was considered perfectly capable.

The problem of course was that the web was evolving so quickly that it's time was up after a few years and it should have been replaced but instead Microsoft left it to stagnate and 5 years later they were still on IE6 whilst other newer browsers were outclassing it leading to the frustrating situation for web masters of the world's most popular browser also being a clunky outdated thing from a different era and where they were trying to implement modern websites on a browser which didn't properly implement newer technologies as they weren't in common use when it was released. IMO, letting that happen was Microsoft's big mistake, not that IE6 ever existed in the form that it did. If they had only got IE7 ready for XP SP2 in 2004, instead of merely tarting up IE6 and leaving it to do a couple more years before version 7 finally came out I'm not sure that it would command the hatred that it does today.