Author Topic: Which browser? (Read 8775 times)

Xaromir · « **on:** February 19, 2011, 12:31:14 am »

This seems to be a very basic question, but it's also essential.
I've been using FireFox now pretty much since the dawn of time (started when it was called Firebird).
But it becomes increasingly unstable, big and slow, and i just don't see what else.

Tried IceWeasle now, but it doesn't seem to support Adblock+ and don't see similar things for it.
I look with suspicion on Google, so i don't know if i'm comfortable with Chrome,
Opera seems to have the same issues as FF, big and slow.
I don't even bother mentioning IE, since it sucks.

Any thoughts on that?

Rucario · « **Reply #1 on:** February 19, 2011, 02:07:17 am »

I use Firefox 4b11 and it's very stable and light (and I'm using it on a netbook, which is not so good). I've good experiences with Chrome, it's seens very light and smooth. Google never stole me, so you should give it a try

For some reason, even liking Chrome, I just use FF. Guess I'm too used to it.

Dan Graves · « **Reply #2 on:** February 19, 2011, 05:50:27 am »

Quote from: Xaromir on February 19, 2011, 12:31:14 am

This seems to be a very basic question, but it's also essential.
I've been using FireFox now pretty much since the dawn of time (started when it was called Firebird).
But it becomes increasingly unstable, big and slow, and i just don't see what else.

Tried IceWeasle now, but it doesn't seem to support Adblock+ and don't see similar things for it.
I look with suspicion on Google, so i don't know if i'm comfortable with Chrome,
Opera seems to have the same issues as FF, big and slow.
I don't even bother mentioning IE, since it sucks.

Any thoughts on that?

Just use Firefox for now Xaro, you're not the only user getting fed up with the bloat, and i've been talking to some coders who have started working on a new, lightweight branch-off of Firefox.
Depending on how things go, it might get a new name, or it might just be called FF light or something.
But rest assured, people are working on it.

What you could also do is move to Chromium, the browser google chrome is based on.
Or Midori, but that might be a bit too stripped down.
Hell, have a look an try some others : http://alternativeto.net/software/firefox/
Next to that Test version of the lightweight firefox fork, i'm testig some of the alternatives on that page, Pale Moon is especially promising as all my FF plugins and add-ons work in it (that's 40 or so add-ons and plugins, some of which are very obscure. cool stuff).

old-and-in-the-way · « **Reply #3 on:** February 19, 2011, 08:04:51 am »

Quote from: Xaromir on February 19, 2011, 12:31:14 am

Tried IceWeasle now, but it doesn't seem to support Adblock+ and don't see similar things for it.

Then you are doing it wrong. Iceweasel is just firefox without the firefox branding (it's a legal thing).

Since iceweasel only makes sense if you are using debian, you can install adblock-plus with "apt-get install xul-ext-adblock-plus"

Posted from iceweasel. On Debian.

Dan Graves · « **Reply #4 on:** February 19, 2011, 07:17:37 pm »

Quote from: old-and-in-the-way on February 19, 2011, 08:04:51 am

Quote from: Xaromir on February 19, 2011, 12:31:14 am
Tried IceWeasle now, but it doesn't seem to support Adblock+ and don't see similar things for it.

Then you are doing it wrong. Iceweasel is just firefox without the firefox branding (it's a legal thing).

Since iceweasel only makes sense if you are using debian, you can install adblock-plus with "apt-get install xul-ext-adblock-plus"

Posted from iceweasel. On Debian.

I doubt he's using it from Debian though, last time i checked he still depended on Windows too much for most of his software.
It also made me wonder, because i couldn't find any pre-compiled installers for windows, and any compiling info that anyone short of a real geek could use to compile it.

By the way, didn't it become IceCat for all non-Debian uses, again because of conflicts with the project's leaders ? (just like with those dorks who now run Firefox ?)
Because all i cound find for my OpenSUSE through YAST (i'm lazy, i know) was IceCat.

I checked though, and even all my convoluted techie add-ons worked in IceCat, even Adblock+ and Adblock Element Hiding Helper, so i agree that everything should just run, or at least be coaxed into running with a little tinkering.

@ Xaro : assuming you are on windows, check out pale moon.
You can port everything you use from your Firefox to it, and it'll likely run smoother, with less crashes, and yet still work with all your plugins and add-ons.

Here's what both browsers look like on my system when on Windows 7 :

Adblock plus runs smooooooooth as Vodka on Pale Moon, even with giant addblocking lists and lots of hidden elements on every site i visit (even this one).

old-and-in-the-way · « **Reply #5 on:** February 19, 2011, 11:35:15 pm »

Quote from: Dan Graves on February 19, 2011, 07:17:37 pm

I doubt he's using it from Debian though, last time i checked he still depended on Windows too much for most of his software.

It also made me wonder, because i couldn't find any pre-compiled installers for windows, and any compiling info that anyone short of a real geek could use to compile it.

There is no point using iceweasel from windows -- it only exists because Debian prefer to back port fixes to stable than ship potentially buggy releases from upstream. (Edit: Well, that, and the logo trademark thing)

Quote

By the way, didn't it become IceCat for all non-Debian uses, again because of conflicts with the project's leaders ? (just like with those dorks who now run Firefox ?)
Because all i cound find for my OpenSUSE through YAST (i'm lazy, i know) was IceCat.

AFAIK, IceCat is the GNU fork of firefox/iceweasel that attempts to prevent non-free (as in speech) things from being loaded.

old-and-in-the-way · « **Reply #6 on:** February 19, 2011, 11:46:52 pm »

Just found iceweasel4windows32 project on sourceforge. Xaromir: don't bother with that if you are looking for anything different to firefox -- it's exactly the same thing, only with less testing because the user-base is smaller.

In defence of firefox/iceweasel, it's plenty fast and stable enough for me -- I leave machines running for weeks at a time, with browsers open with multiple tabs the whole while, and rarely experience crashes.

Then again, I do have java disabled, no flash plugin at all and noscript keeping most third party buggy javascript at bay. These are the things most likely to kill any browser.

Gandsfjord · « **Reply #7 on:** February 20, 2011, 02:21:32 pm »

I've switched to Google Chrome on both Windows and Linux (Debian).
Went through Opera and Firefox on the journey from IE to here - over the past 10 years. But as others have said; they're almost as bad as IE these days. Bloated and slow, and sometimes take ages to start up if they're set on installing some update....

Any information that Google would like to store about me, I'm sure thay can get regardless of which browser I use (gmail, gDocs and plain old Google will take care of that).

Dan Graves · « **Reply #8 on:** February 20, 2011, 10:45:43 pm »

Quote from: Gandsfjord on February 20, 2011, 02:21:32 pm

Any information that Google would like to store about me, I'm sure thay can get regardless of which browser I use (gmail, gDocs and plain old Google will take care of that).

Hence why some of us don't use any of that xx--xx

Xaromir · « **Reply #9 on:** February 21, 2011, 02:01:47 pm »

Sorry for being gone so long.
Yes i had it from SF, and yes it had most of the crap i'm struggling with in FF, wouldn't work with adblock for some reason, and then some...
Deleted it, but i also deleted my bookmarks and addon. Will try palemoon, i guess i also give midori a shot,
who knows, maybe i like it.

I thought of iceweasle as of some sort of FF-Light, without looking into it, bad error as it turns out.
I used to have debian at some point, i remember the installation, an epic 3 way battle between me, 12 CDs and sleep deprivation.
I had a odd mindset at that point like "i spend a whole day downloading all of it now i have to install all of it".
Yes i'm using windows, rebooting for games is to much of a pain imho, and who wants to emulate almost everything normally used on a daily basis?
I really used to love slackware, but just don't have the space at the moment,
guess it will have a dedicated hdd later this year as i want to build a new pc for tes-skyrim.
Well either slackware or gentoo.

Concerning google:
I agree, but once you get into it it's hard to escape that really, you have to give them that:
It's really comfortable and actually works.
Used GMX on the side for a while, bad bad spam filter. What good alternatives are there really?
I know dan uses xs4all, is their web client and spam filter any good?
Something else maybe? I used to be a educated and reasonable user at some point. What happened?
Dunno, i guess google happened.

Dan Graves · « **Reply #10 on:** February 21, 2011, 02:22:33 pm »

Xs4all are really decent Xaro, i've yet to receive any spam in any of my 4 inboxes.
But they are mainly an ISP, not sure if they still provide seperate mail services these days, besides the Business type email service.

As for google, i am 100% Google free these days.
Yahoo and DuckDuckGo replaced it easily in terms of search, and all their other xx--xx i didn't really need.
Not that Yahoo is that great, but the search results are the same as Google's.
Also, i dumped Youtube, and killed my Gmail.
Killed it dead, wif FIRE !

LievenDV · « **Reply #11 on:** February 21, 2011, 03:49:37 pm »

for me it's FF because of the added value with the plugins.
Ok it gets bloaty from time to time and sites like gmail and facebook need to be closed or they "alt-tab" my games and pull my pc out of "sleep".

I only launch IE for testing when I'm building a site, just as chrome.

Xaromir · « **Reply #12 on:** February 21, 2011, 07:49:41 pm »

DV: Doubt it's "sites like" it's propably firefox.
I also had the problem that i got thrown on my desktop,
it was because firefox was minimized to the task bar.

Dan:
Well i may check it in the future.
Getting rid of YouTube is even harder, since it isn't only my own decision.
There is so much stuff on it.
It still may be the most logical thing to do, and it probably is for most providers of original content,
since it practically offers one of the biggest audience you can get today,
it can also easily embedded into blogs many forums and social networks etc etc,
while many may not support blip or vimeo etc, at least not in a idiot friendly way.
But yes, it's a pain, i had a bird in america for a little while,
when she tried to send me a video it usually wouldn't work because i'm in the wrong country.
Back then people used to say the internet is a place that doesn't know boarders, bla bla bla.
What happened to that? Big company stole my interwebs. :<
I know i still can use a proxy, but it's always so darn slow, and still not the real thing.
Well some day i may go back to using metacrawler, it wasn't so bad back then.

DeadlyChicken · « **Reply #13 on:** February 21, 2011, 11:30:18 pm »

I still like google chrome, I never got the fuss about having a million plugins that all the firefox people always raved about. Then again I like doing things the manual way so I remember how you are supposed to do them

if there was an even more minimalist browser that was as fast as chrome, then I would probably use that instead

Xaromir · « **Reply #14 on:** February 22, 2011, 01:29:14 am »

Oh there is a lot my friend.
I tried Midori as Dan mentioned it.
I actually like it, but some aspects i don't like, which is mainly the look,
which reminds me a lot of when i used netscape. I'm sure it can be modded, it seems to be open source,
and i don't like certain things are done, i guess it's a getting used to thing, but it's very clean (bit sterile),
quick and everything is sorted, you can change the major things like the fonds, character encoding,
and i think you can turn off pictures, you can make it delete cookies after you close it.
So it got the basics and some more, but everything very down to earth and with a purpose which i like.
It also got a netscape mode - no xx--xx, and it's turned on, couldn't be bothered to try it without right now.
But i bet it's one of the quickest things around if you turn off pictures, and even with it's darn fast.*/**
If you look for something really stripped down you try lynx it's text only.
Screenshots at the bottom.

I'm using palemoon right now, how can something with such a xx--xx name be so good?
It really is nice, it's quicker then ff after i practically re-seted it, with the addons/plugins.
So far i only got: adblock, fxif, personas (i'm a visual person), stumble and greasemonky.
Plugins are a bit more plentiful so i will not list them.

*well, why don't i use midori then? It just doesn't appeal to me, mostly a visual thing,
and how things are done, for example i can't use the buttons on the side of my mouse to go back or forward,
but otherwise a really nice little browser, and i had fun trying it.

**i should mention that my connection also is quite quick.
I know i can get up to 25/5, maybe the server had a bad day.

Midori:

http://i394.photobucket.com/albums/pp26/Xaromir/mio1.jpg

Lynx:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/b/b8/Lynx_Browser_2.png

Dan Graves · « **Reply #15 on:** February 22, 2011, 01:33:24 am »

Lol, i use Lynx to talk to my Fido server

close2u · « **Reply #16 on:** August 01, 2011, 08:25:15 am »

Firefox is now becoming a right pain in the backside for me on my laptop.
New tabs take ages to open.
Sometimes 'Not Responding' hangs for ages, especially when running youtube.
Sometimes it crashes.
The latest IE on my main PC is also a nightmare.

What are the most recent and recommended browsers?

How do I cleanly and fully uninstall firefox and IE if I make a change?

How do I transfer my favourites/bookmarks if i make a change?

Thanks

Gandalf · « **Reply #17 on:** August 01, 2011, 01:12:03 pm »

Close, it is possible to uninstall FF and not loose all your bookmarks when you reinstall.

If you want, pm me your phone number and I will talk you through it.

Wishbone · « **Reply #18 on:** August 01, 2011, 01:22:40 pm »

Alternately...... you could use Mozbackup. It's a fairly handy tool for backing up bookmarks and settings in Mozilla to a single backup file.

close2u · « **Reply #19 on:** August 01, 2011, 01:39:09 pm »

helpful answers / offers fellas - thanks

main question - which browser would be better than FF or IE latest?

Wishbone · « **Reply #20 on:** August 01, 2011, 03:00:22 pm »

Just a thought, Close........ but have you set a rule in your firewall to allow 'plugin-container.exe'?

Mine ran like a pig until I sorted that out.........

LBro · « **Reply #21 on:** August 01, 2011, 03:03:36 pm »

Hi,
In IE 9 and erlier you can export favorits by doing the following:

The way you do it in IE8 and earlier is: "Click the Favorites button, click the arrow next to the Add to Favorites button, and then click Import and Export".

There is no arrow next to the add favorites button in IE9.

It's been moved under "File". Click the File button, then click Import and export, then either export to or import from a flie; then follow the instructions to complete the file import or export.

LB

Dan Graves · « **Reply #22 on:** August 01, 2011, 03:38:50 pm »

IE ?
Are you kidding ?
Please tell me you're kidding.

@ Close : PALE MOON !!!!

Cue Zephyr · « **Reply #23 on:** August 01, 2011, 03:53:27 pm »

Quote from: Wishbone on August 01, 2011, 03:00:22 pm

Just a thought, Close........ but have you set a rule in your firewall to allow 'plugin-container.exe'?

Mine ran like a pig until I sorted that out.........

Can you tell me what exactly is going on there? What is there to sort out, exactly?
Thanks.

@Dan
Cool, thanks - will try that one as well!

Dan Graves · « **Reply #24 on:** August 01, 2011, 04:43:36 pm »

The plugin container takes care of the flash and java plugins and such, and if your firewall blocks it, it will slow everything down like mad, beyond causing crashes.

But yeah, use Pale Moon and it's migration tool.
It's Firefox without the bloat or the other crap.

Author Topic: Which browser? (Read 8775 times)

Rucario