Why do you use the browser you use?

[the_eggwhite]

So... I'm once again butting heads with IE6. If it would die the death it so richly deserves then it would be much easier for web designers to provide the functionality that people keep asking for. But as it is, IE6 still makes up around 30% of the browser market, and so we're hobbled. 30% of the market uses a browser that's more than six years old, and expects technologies that were invented in the past year and half to work.

So I'm going to ask a general "all my friends list and beyond" type question. As many answers as I can get will be greatly appreciated - so encourage other folks to stick their oars in as well.

The question is as follows:
"What web browser do you use, and why do you use it?"

I'll try to keep the browser evangelism to a minimum (and expect others to do the same). The exception will be to provide people with ways to avoid using the trainwreck that is IE6, or to escape from it's clutches or fix it a bit if you're stuck with it. My general opinion is that people should use whatever browser is best for them, but also that IE6 is rarely best for anybody.


For general purpose browsing:
Opera 9.24, but I'm rather looking forward to Opera 9.5 - development versions are looking rather mighty! Opera is lightweight, efficient, and is the home of so many UI advances it's not true. Other browsers get these advances in the end, but they're usually in Opera first, and they're usually there as standard rather than having to be added as extensions. Basically, with opera, I can install it and go. IE just bugs me too much to use it much, and Firefox doesn't do much that I want out of the box - I have to install a bunch of addons, which often slows things down. Safari just came to late to the party, and most other browsers are too unreliable.

For development
Firefox 2.0.0.9 with a raft of extensions, with Firebug and Operator first and foremost amongst them.

For testing
IE6, IE7, Safari (windows), Swift (Windows webkit browser - alpha, but useful nonetheless), whichever text-only browser I can get my hands on at the time. Soon I'll be testing in some linux browsers as well, and potentially on Safari on a mac.

EDIT:
I forgot... on my home machine, when I'm running in Linux I use either Firefox 2.0.0.* or the public alpha of Opera 9.5. This is because I'm running a 64 bit version of the OS, and these are the versions of those browsers that are available for a 64 bit arcitecture.

Comments

[d-morff.livejournal.com]

I use IE 7 because it comes with Windows and deos what I want (view webpages).

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Not that uncommon a reason, and whilst it still has issues, IE7 is a lot better than IE6.

Cool - cheers for the response.

[anonymous-james.livejournal.com]

I use Firefox 2.0.0.9 for most things.
I use IE6.0.2900.2180...... etc. for things that don't work in Firefox, and for keeping my self logged in with different accounts.
i.e. Firefox for my main gmail account, and IE for Wessex gmail.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Is there a reason you use IE6 for your backup rather than upgrading to IE7?

[anonymous-james.livejournal.com]

I'm lazy? Initially our work software didn't work when IE7 was installed, that is now resolved. I wsaw an IE7 upgrade on windows update, and put it off, eventually I think I let it run, but it didn't do anything. I think....

Certainly when it first came out, I didn't like the look of it, and didn't trust it not to be a steaming pile of.... IE6 for all it's failings is fairly stable now.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

It's stable in the sense that it's bugs are well understood, and web designers sweat blood to include workarounds to minimize their impact on users.

More and more are stopping doing that now.

It's also got some pretty massive holes in it, and I don't think MS are bothering to patch them anymore. I would suggest the upgrade, especially if the things that you end up falling back on it for are financial in any way, shape or form.

[anonymous-james.livejournal.com]

In addition I'd state that Firefox is almost always faster than IE6.

[nemy.livejournal.com]

IE7 because I'm a user not a designer. Mostly because its a windows product that everyone uses and that fact that after many years I understand the GUI instinctively.

I did have a at least 3 years working soley on a MAC so at least from a personal perspective I have a preference for microsoft having tried "the other side" so to speak.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Cool - have you played with other windows based browsers much? I ask because the implication (intended or otherwise) that only designers use non-IE browsers is perhaps not as accurate as it could be. Most stats I can find tend to put IE6, IE7 & Firefox on roughly similar levels (25-35% each).

Additionally, the IE7 interface is quite different to everything that's gone before... so it's interesting that you use it for the familiarity! The closest interface to the traditional IE6 look & feel is actually Firefox - mainly because it was pretty much designed to copy it.

[nemy.livejournal.com]

I've used Firefox alittle bit and as you said its very much modeled in IE6. I'm not slating the product per se but it didnt offer sufficiently improved functionality, beyond IE6 so I plumbed for white bread instead of brown bread if you get what I mean. My needs for a web broswer are pretty basic so Im not the best judge of testing a WB to its capacity.

IE7 "looks" different but I can assure you IE6 lurks behind it. Its just had a make over. Imagine a standard IE6 screen. Now take your monitor and literally roll it 90 degrees to the left - thats IE7. Tabbed browsing and putting some of the more basic function items as buttons instead of in menus is just making IE6 tidier in my view.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Cool - am just trying to get to grips with people's reasoning (or lack thereof).

I'm doing it in a completely un-scientific manner, of course.

[evilref.livejournal.com]

I'm reading this using Opera 9.02 on a FreeBSD 6.2 workstation. The workstation is FreeBSD not Linux because it is better for development (there, that's got that off); and I'm using Opera because these days Firefox chokes on the gargantuan Javascript that comes with LiveJournal. I'm only running a 512M machine ... what can I expect?

I still read my mail using Firefox 1.5.08 because Opera won't display the NetIdentity login screen correctly.

When I want to make local archives of text pages, I use Lynx 2.8.5rel.4.

I use these versions for the same reason many of your readers use IE: because they are what came with my OS -- they are standard for the ports tree.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

If there's a FreeBSD version of it available (there is a Linux one, so you might be in luck), you might want to have a nose at the public alpha of Opera 9.5

It's also had some heavy duty refactoring done to it, so it's faster and has an even smaller footprint.

[evilref.livejournal.com]

The reason I use the ports collection is

# cd /usr/ports/www/opera
# make install
insert lots of text here
# make clean

Job done.

It would be significantly more effort to upgrade, since the disadvantage of not running Linux is silly little inconsistencies in the build. The ports collection get over those inconsistencies, because someone else has already done the work. I could do the work, but generally my time is too scarce. In that regard, I'm a user, not a developer.

Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[evilref.livejournal.com]

Having said all that, the answer to your original posting is that I don't want a lot of that "functionality that people keep asking for". Let's take LiveJournal for an example, since we're here.

There has recently been an "upgrade" which affects links in pages. Rather than being able to float the mouse over the link and see where it goes in the bottom line of the page, some cruft labelled 'LiveJournal SnapShots' pops up. There also pops up some alert saying that the script on the page has timed out.

I don't want it, I didn't ask for it, and I richly wish it would go away.

The corollary is that if I save the page as HTML, the source (no images or anything) weighs in at a meaty 63K. If I select-all and paste the text into a text editor, the text is less than 15K. So the bit I actually want to read is less than 25% of my modem usage.

Yes, modem usage. Out here in Connemara, we use dialup. That means that a page that ought to download in 10 seconds actually takes more than 40.

The thing I really want from a browser is for it to be good at filtering all the 'clever' stuff that web designers put on pages and give me the information that I really want to read, in a time that is not best measured with a calendar.

It often turns out that the older browsers are better for that than newer ones, because the older ones can sometimes trigger fallback modes.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Most of the problem there is bad web designers. If they're doing their job properly, they should be sending small, optimised responses to the user agent. If Javascript's in use, it should be unobtrusive and degrade gracefully.

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of bad web designers out there. Usually, they're either graphic designers or developers who think they're web designers, despite having no clue about usability or user experience design.

I should also point out that you're something of an atypical user.

As for older & newer browsers, any newer browser worth it's salt lets you easily de-cruft a page. For me, I hit f12 and turn off the things I don't want. Done. I can do it page by page if I want, but I tend not to bother.

Can you point me at an example of one of their dud-links, by the way? I want to go rummage around and find their cockup (so I can mock it, mainly), but I can't find one... Every link I hover over gives me a URI in the status bar.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[evilref.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, there's still a lot of bad web designers out there.

Oh my, ain't that the truth. :-( :-( :-(

"I'm sorry, but our website requires that you install flash player. This page is best viewed on a screen of three gazillion pixels, which is why it's just gone full-screen and blotted out your task bar. And doesn't our java dancing logo look sweet, accompanied by the alleged music now blasting out of your speakers, drowning out the CD you were listening to, and the flickering of your house-lights as your CPU struggles to keep up and shorts out the National Grid."

I guess I'm just turning into one of those 'grumpy old men'.


I should also point out that you're something of an atypical user.

I think I'm an atypical user in a Western country. But most people don't live in Western countries: probably only 30% of people are Westerners. Making the web unavailable to 2/3 of the population because their PCs don't have the grunt and their connections are too pedestrian strikes me as bad. But I don't pay the salary of any web designers, so I don't get to set their priorities.

Can you point me at an example of one of their dud-links, by the way?

All the things I described refer to this web page, as viewed in Firefox on my desk. Of course the text/total figures will have grown as people have added comments.

The popup-thing only happens in FireFox. As viewed in Opera, it's fine. Guess which browser I'm using.

But the pages are still slow to load, because they are so big.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I'll have to test in a Linux (closest I can get to FreeBSD) Firefox build - I'm not seeing that snapshot things anywhere. Odd.

I'm with you on the filesize thing, though - looking at the source, most of it's nasty inline javascript. Eventually they'll work out that not only does it bloat the pages, but it's totally unmaintainable. Some places have worked this out already, and there are "Unobtrusive Javascript" plugins for most of the major frameworks.

When they get over the shiney new-ness of their new javascript stuff, they'll sort it out and separate it from the markup. If they do that, then they'll be a lot closer to having a page that degrades gracefully without forcing people to download a bunch of stuff that they've already turned off and won't be using.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[evilref.livejournal.com]

Further research shows that it is a new "feature" that was added to the non-paid accounts. A new feature was also added to the viewing settings enabling it to be turned off. I missed the announcement because I was in the middle of upgrading my workstation from 6.0 to 6.2.

And breathe.

Apparently spacecowb0y has modified the FireFox ad-blocker to kill it, too.

http://spacecowb0y.livejournal.com/281574.html

He seems to have a fair amount of grateful applause.

When they get over the shiney new-ness of their new javascript stuff, they'll sort it out and separate it from the markup. If they do that, then they'll be a lot closer to having a page that degrades gracefully without forcing people to download a bunch of stuff that they've already turned off and won't be using.

The really big plus of putting the javascruft into separate files is that I can program my proxy-server to cache it. That makes a big difference to my bandwidth.

It will make a big difference to the bandwidth of the big providers, too, since they use the same sort of solution I do, if on a scale six orders of magnitude bigger.

It will also, ultimately, make a difference to the amount of server capacity SixApart have to run, since they won't have to serve all that bandwidth. That has got to be a non-trivial cost, given how many people use LiveJournal.

As you said, there are a lot of bad developers out there.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Lo and behold, whilst I am evangelising unobtrusive JS... so are Ajaxian.com.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Actually, looking a bit more closeley tells me that they could have been a lot worse. Their Javascript is relatively unobtrusive, except for the mahoosive chunk of it that's inline JS that you have to load even if you're not using it. 147 lines of JS out of a page of 348 lines total, as of before I posted this comment.

There's also 4 HTTP requests required for the scripts and 5 HTTP requests for the CSS, each of which will be slowing things down further.

The CSS also looks... somewhat less than optimized. 1761 lines in total, weighing in at around 34.2 KB. Much of which is a later file overruling the styles applied in an earlier one, at a guess.

One more reason for me to manually re-style my LJ's CSS. Now I just need the time and inclination.

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[evilref.livejournal.com]

Now tell me that LiveJournal is a particularly bad example, and that not all web pages are like that.

Or make a guess at how many pages LiveJournal serve per day, and so how much monthly bandwidth they could save if they streamlined that 34.2K.

Maybe you should send them a CV. ;-)

Re: Functionality that People Keep Asking for ... :-(

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

I'd be tempted, but I doubt they'd pay me enough to relocate.

Also, a lot of that CSS bloat will be down to making things work in IE6. That usually adds about 25% onto the CSS. The other thing that'll be bloating it out is the ability for users to make their own themes, but still have it come close to working when they cock things up or leave chunks out.

It looks like they've got a base CSS file that does the LJ corporate look (much of which could probably be omitted from themed pages, but isn't).

They then add on a basic utilitarian blog CSS file that sets up the defaults for every setting on an actual journal or post page.

Then comes the CSS file for the theme, which overwrites a lot of what was in the previous CSS file, but because SixApart have no way of knowing what's in the theme one, they have to leave the base one in to make sure the page works if the theme's incomplete.

Then comes an "lj-extras" CSS file, which probably contains the stuff they don't want user themes messing with, as well as any new stuff they've added since creating the earlier CSS Files.

Lastly comes a user CSS file, which contains my personal customisations to the theme. In this case, this file consists of two comments and nothing else. Kind of makes me wonder why they waste an HTTP request on what is effectively an empty file.

Each individual file could almost certainly be optimized better, but there will be reasons for a lot of the bloat. Usually these are market led reasons, with a few legacy tech limitations alongside them as well.

[themadone.livejournal.com]

Most of the time I use Firefox - it just works. I've tried Opera but I find it's UI a tad quirky. Sometimes for testing purposes I might use whatever IE is available to me at the time.

I also use Lynx when at work, as it's purely text based and thus is good for stealth browsing. For the (very) few sites that I want to browse like this that require javascript, I fall back on to using Links.

[borusa.livejournal.com]

At home, I use whatever the latest version of Firefox is. I've never been a great Opera fan (I hated the adverts, and didn't much like the limited viewing space - I know both are no longer the case, but brand loyalty). Occasionally I use Konqueror, Lynx and IE7, but only for unusual reasons. (Like "website doesn't work in Firefox")

At work, I use IE7, for corporate compulsion reasons.

On my mobile, I run IEMobile and Opera Mini in roughly equal proportion. Neither is ideal - Opera Mini isn't recognised by the MIDlet Manager, and as such it keeps asking if I want to allow it to connect to the the internet, and IE really screws up the rendering occasionally.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Cool - thanks for letting me know.

[shadowjon.livejournal.com]

IE7

Becuase its what's installed at work

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

A common excuse reason. Still, from what I know of your workplace, the fact that they're on IE7 seems remarkably progressive of them!

[shadowjon.livejournal.com]

Nah, its just because I'm lucky enough to have a more recent version of Windows. The rest are still messing around on all sorts of different versions

[barty.livejournal.com]

My default browser is Firefox 2.0.0.9 (on OS X 10.5), which I use for normal surfing and for development. I use it because I'm familiar with it and because of Greasemonkey and Firebug. Those extensions mean I'm unlikely to move to another browser, even despite Firefox's memory problems.

I only use IE (6 and 7) for testing.

I've recently started using Safari for mobile browsing.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Opera's lack of a Firebug equivalent is one of the things that means I use Firefox for development work... Greasemonkey style things are out of the box in Opera, though, through something called user.js.

I've never had to tangle with it, though.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Although, having just written that, I've just seen that as of exactly one year ago, there is an Opera firebug equivalent. I just didn't notice because I was too busy using firebug.

[(Anonymous)]

For both general work and home browsing I use Firefox 2.0.0.9. As a tabbed browser I like it better than Opera (although the times I have used Opera it has seemed faster). Main reason over using Firefox than Opera though is for cookie control. Firefox has a nice checkbox on it's prompted that simply says "Use my choice for all cookioes from this site". Opera has too many options when it comes to cookie management. I like to either accept or deny everything a site is trying to write to my machine in one go.

IE6 (6.0.2900.2180) is used for access to our CMS and it's the only thing it is used for. IE7 is not used at all except when I have to endure other people's machines. The overhauled interface is just too different for me. Even just the refresh button. It's in a completely useless place (yes, I know I can probably change it, but quite frankly I have no desire to use any IE version full stop).

Exception to home browsing with Firefox on my PC is using Safari on my mac. Although I also have Firefox installed, I generally use Safari as it's more lightweight. Also my iBook is generally just used for when I'm lying around in bed doing non-serious surfing so I don't need my Firefox with its myriad of plugins that my home PC has.

Mobile device wise, my iPod has Safari (unsure of what version) which is pretty fast and copes with most web sites very well.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Cheers for the info, anonymous Roehampton person!

[majic13.livejournal.com]

Used Firefox for a few years, have recently jumped to Opera after a Windows update broke Firefox and have found the experience fairly pleasant. While there are still a few things about Opera that kind of irk me (for some reason it seems to dislike gaia online to a certain extent), the extra functionality (content blocking, auto-reload, remembering closed tabs) is very nice. Previously I'd been put off Opera because the interface was kind of fugly (back when it was still sort of shareware with ad sidebars in the browser itself), but they've fixed that since the last time I tried it.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Gaia is, when it comes down to it, pretty shoddily built. But the market they're aiming for is primarily associated with IE users and a growing number of Firefox users... and those two browsers are more forgiving of invalid code.

They do a lot more to try and interpret what the person who built the page meant, rather than doing what they've been told and letting the builder know they got it wrong.

One of the reasons I use Opera is that it's much better at letting me know if I've cocked up the code...

IE & Firefox both try to fix it for me instead. Which would be nice, but they rarely succeed, and tend to fail in different & inconsistent ways. I can use tools to make them show me where they've changed things, but only if I know they've done it.

[daydreamweaver.livejournal.com]

I use IE6 at work, because that's what's installed--I don't have access privileges to change it.

At home I use IE7. Would prefer Opera, but my husband prefers the IE UI.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Just to check, are you still in the archaic realms of academia, or did you escape?

I'd guess they're sticking with IE6 because some ancient piece of software doesn't play nicely with IE7... that's what most folks had at my old place for a long time, as academic institutions don't like upgrading things.

If you want something nicer then it's quite often worth just asking the people in charge of who gets what software - a better browser in the hands of somebody who knows what they're doing usually means less work for them! At my old place, they were technically an IE6 shop, but if you asked for Firefox, you got it because it meant less malware & less vulnerabilities.

[susiejazz.livejournal.com]

IE6 cause its what they have here at work....

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

This seems to be the most common reason I've encountered for IE6 still being around (in general, not in this quick "ask my friendslist" pop-quiz).

Damned corporate inertia!

[shadowjon.livejournal.com]

Most of us don't really need to do much on the Web beyond the odd Google search and a bit of LJ-based skiving, so there's not much incentive for any IT dept. to bother upgrading when half their time is taken up with users who don't even know how to save files to a network drive.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Actually, if most of the browsing that's done is casual websurfing (or webskiving) then there's more incentive to upgrade from IE6.

IE6 is the least secure browser in common use, which means it's the most likely to let malware onto your computer when you trawl round funny-video sites and facebook apps in your lunchbreak.

It's the one most likely to let all kinds of nasty things into the network that the IT dept have to clean up afterwards at great expense (in man-hours, if not in money).

<exaggeration>Essentially, an IT department encouraging you to use IE6 is a bit like your doctor encouraging you to swim around in raw sewage with your mouth open. It's good for increasing their workload, but leaves you with a lot of unpleasant cleanup work.</exaggeration>

[blufive.livejournal.com]

Work and Play: Firefox on WinXP, with Firebug kicking around in a work environment.

At work, I'm currently playing with the latest 3.0 alpha, but at home I'm sticking with 2.0.0.9 ATM. That may change when the first Beta comes out (imminent, I think).

Testing purposes (and $^$"$%ing work intranet that thinks IE is the only browser in the world) IE7, or IE6 when strictly necessary for testing (they're each about ~35-45% of the visitors on our sites, so...)

This is all mostly due to inertia; I started with Netscape 3.0, 'cos that's what the cool kids used in those days (you think IE6 is bad, you shoulda seen IE2. Yeeeuch.) I stuck with Netscape all the way through to about 4.7, primarily for the user interface - I always preferred it; IE's bookmark management facilities, in particular, have always been a poor second (all this despite the later 4.x versions being crashier than a demolition derby - 4.61 was epically unstable, even by the standards of that crowd)

I checked out Opera frequently, and did actually use it regularly for a while around about v3.5, but the MDI interface drove me around the bend.

(Get this - I'm one of the wierdos who's never really liked tabs. I'm possibly starting to come around to the idea a bit now, but I still generally prefer to spawn new windows all over the place)

Once I got sick of the Scottish browser's crashiness, and started to become professionally involved with the web, I jumped over to the then pre-alpha Mozilla suite (ooh, about M15, I think)

I then stuck with the Mozilla suite until Firefox (then called Phoenix) 0.8 finally drew me away.

For me, IE7 was actually a retrograde step, user-interface-wise. As a web-tech person, I agree with you totally about the rendering engine fixes, but IE7's UI sucks.

(Personally, I suspect that's actually a significant driver in the loss of market share - people "upgrade" to IE7 and think "hey, who broke my browser?" I actually had to help several people reconfigure the options immediately after the (forced) upgrade, so they could find the features they used to use... )

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember IE2 and IE3... Although I will confess that I preferred IE4 to NS4+. I think Netscape lost the plot a bit, really.

The Mozilla Suite was cool, but too bulky with features I didn't need... I converted to Opera back around 5 point something and haven't gone back. I nearly switched away again several times when Opera was floundering, particularly as Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was looking rather nice.

But each time that's happened, Opera's picked up again pretty quick (9.5 looks like it'll be pretty mighty, and 9.2's not bad at all) and Firefox has become more of a memory hog.

As for the IE7 UI, I agree with you. Most of my problems with it are not to do with the presentation, though, but to do with response time and the feedback it gives to users - basically, it's sluggish. Its other flaws are bearable, but that sluggishness kills it. The amount of time it takes to actually give you a new tab after you've clicked on the new tab thinger is just horrific.

IE6 had a nice, responsive, utilitarian interface. Which is why Firefox largely copied it (on a superficial level, anyway, which is what most people notice or pay any attention to)!

[blufive.livejournal.com]

The killer for me in the IE4/NN4 decision was the UI, notably bookmark creation/organisation/access (IE: teh suck, NN: OK) and new window behaviour (IE: directly on top of the old one, totally unsuable; NN: cascaded: usable). I swapped over to the mozilla suite as soon as it was bearable (albeit slower than a nailed-down slug, and ugly with it). During that period, Opera was not free-as-in-beer unless you were prepared to put up with ads; I was a cheapskate and not willing to put up with banners. Plus, like I said earlier, I never really got on with tabbed browsing, and that was always a big thing in opera. Even in Firefox, the hidden "open windows, not tabs" preference is one of my first destinations after a clean install.

Also, I my time using the Mozilla suite coincided with my growing involvement with the server-side bit of the web, and the Mozilla Suite had the DOM Inspector long before Firefox even came along. DOM inspector was instrumental in me finally getting the hang of CSS properly. The final obstacle to my switching to Firefox was availability of the DOM inspector; I think I switched within a week of it being available in Firefox, and here I am.

[eggwhite.livejournal.com]

Oh, and they've changed the default settings now - if you upgrade to it now, it gives you the menu bar as standard.

Which means that you can actually find things now...

[blufive.livejournal.com]

I wondered why less-techie friends/colleagues stopped saying "waaah! upgrade broke my browser!"

[satyrica.livejournal.com]

I used to stick with IE in spite of the anguished howls of all my Firefoxing friends because I don't like tabbed browsing; then IE introduced tabbed browsing, so I switched.

Browsers

[eharris.livejournal.com]

Firefox Two and a little bit.

With gradually reducing number of web sites, fortunately, I use the "IE Tab" plugin, which picks up whatever version of IE I have on the machine. This Win2K machine appears to have IE6, and the XP machine I use will have IE7, I would imagine.