What web browser do you use?

[cardgame]

You can't switch tabs as easily if you have to press more buttons to do it.

An entirely subjective metric. Hell, I don't want single-button tab switching because it's easier to trigger by accident.

 

[Zelig]

I doubt that, as I always use mouse-clicks to switch. So it's a comparison between mouse-click and hitting a key. I can type pretty fast, but still prefer to click between tabs.

It's physically impossible to click as efficiently as I use single-key tab-switch shortcuts.

An entirely subjective metric. Hell, I don't want single-button tab switching because it's easier to trigger by accident.

It's not at all subjective, keyboard shortcuts are objectively faster, and Chrome has no way of enabling single-key shortcuts.


You guys aren't being remotely objective, you're just claiming that the browser you happen to already use is the best, for no reason. I'm not even claiming there's a best browser, just that Chrome has very real, objective usability flaws.

 

[bhsup]

Considering that keyboard vs mouse is a strictly subjective preference, to say that keyboard shortcuts are objectively superior is kinda/totally wrong.

 

[Zelig]

I'm not saying they're superior, I'm saying they're faster, and any browser with the option cannot categorically be the best browser.

 

[Grendeldef]

Sins of the father.

One of the forefathers should've had a vasectomy long time ago.

I typically have many dozens of tabs open across several windows each of several browsers at any given time, and I'm much more efficient because of it.

I knew there were others like me with 100+ tabs open even though I was convinced otherwise. This has now 126 tabs open which is roughly the average ranging between 80-160 depending on the machine & current activity.

Opera Opera and Opera since its early days. Awesome and innovative. I rarely have less than 10 tabs that never get closed.

Roughly likewise - Opera replaced Netscape as main browser '96 and has been it since on Windows and on phones. Linux has more variety while on Win I've only occasionally tested others - most likely nothing wrong with'em but I just haven't found a reason to swap. IE has been blocked by FW for ages to avoid random guests messing around.

 

[cardgame]

Opera existed before the 21st century?

 

[Grendeldef]

^Yep, even the browser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Opera_web_browser

 

[cardgame]

I thought it was a recent thing that came along in like '05 or even later.

Why did it only get popular around that time?

 

[Grendeldef]

I thought it was a recent thing that came along in like '05 or even later.

Why did it only get popular around that time?

Few reasons in no particular order.

- people don't like a changes
- people thought they needed IE for MS site to get updates or whatever and the site was made in a way that Opera surfers were initially shown nothing. However, Opera did have a built-in feature to present itself either Opera, IE or Netscape and if IE was chosen the site was fully functional. People just didn't know or care where the problem was.
- some websites were not shown properly (actually as the webmaster wanted) with Opera. The problem was not Opera itself but those who sadly used Frontpage to create the sites as MS motto was 'screw the standards' and therefore the non-standard HTML was mainly ignored or misrepresented by Opera while IE always showed something so the assumed culprit was Opera, not the code. Netscape was in between the two.
- stuff like speed, memory consumption, convenience, configurability, safety etc were no issues to general public who were still looking for 'any key' in their kb.

 

[History_Buff]

I still use Firefox. It doesn't seem fast like the old days, but I prefer the look that I'm used to. I

Pretty much this. I know how to set up Firefox to be exactly what I want. Though I do keep both IE and Chrome around; IE because I need to it access our very dated provincial land titles registry, which remains super interesting; Chrome in case something doesn't like my Firefox setup and I want to comparitively debug.

Firefox's great strengths to me remain AdBlock Plus, NoScript, and the customizable search bar in the upper-right. I think you get the former two in Chrome, but I never figured out how to get the latter.

 

[dutchfire]

Considering that keyboard vs mouse is a strictly subjective preference, to say that keyboard shortcuts are objectively superior is kinda/totally wrong.

Having the option of enabling keyboard shortcuts is objectively superior to not having that option.

 

[Core Imposter]

Whats a browser?

 

[Agent327]

What's Google?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Whats a browser?

It is short for "brown noser".

 

[Quintillus]

I thought it was a recent thing that came along in like '05 or even later.

Why did it only get popular around that time?

Opera is actually the oldest of the commonly-used web browsers still in existence, even older than Internet Explorer 1.

I think what really happened around '05 is not so much that Opera itself became drastically more popular, but that alternatives to IE became more mainstream in general. Firefox came out (1.0) in late 2004, so around 2005 people were starting to talk more about alternative web browsers, and that concept came into more of the public consciousness. Although Firefox took the lion's share of the conversation, a lot of people likely first heard (or wrote about) Opera around that time, too - just because they started looking for what other options were out there.

What Grendelelf mentioned contributes... but I suspect the reason you didn't know about Opera before 2005 is mostly Firefox. I know my migration path went IE -> Firefox (2006) -> Opera (2007), largely based on the recommendations of friends.

History_Buff, you can also customize the search bar's search abilities in Opera, using pretty much any search feature you like (for example, I once set it up to search using Barnes & Nobles' [a bookseller's] search). I know there are also ad-blocking scripts and extensions available for Opera, though I haven't personally used those.

 

[Birdjaguar]

History_Buff, you can also customize the search bar's search abilities in Opera, using pretty much any search feature you like (for example, I once set it up to search using Barnes & Nobles' [a bookseller's] search). I know there are also ad-blocking scripts and extensions available for Opera, though I haven't personally used those.

Yeah, I'm switching to Duck duck go instead of google.

 

[shadowplay]

I like duckduckgo's privacy policy, but that's about it. It tends to return some really irrelevant search results. Google's algorithms are still king.

 

[madviking]

I use Chrome exclusively on my laptop whilst I've grandfathered Firefox onto my desktop.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I like duckduckgo's privacy policy, but that's about it. It tends to return some really irrelevant search results. Google's algorithms are still king.

That is the reason to use it.

 

[Gamemaster77]

I can navigate tabs faster with single-key shortcuts than you can with a mouse.

I typically have many dozens of tabs open across several windows each of several browsers at any given time, and I'm much more efficient because of it.

I bet you can't. I use the top two buttons in the middle on this mouse for tab-switching in chrome.