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

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.