Poll Which internet browser do you use to visit Orbiter-Forum.com?

[Linguofreak]

Ditto. I find myself gravitating back to IE8 in certain situations. FF seems to be a memory pig. Did a few tests and took IE8 and FF to the same webpages, especially those with flash and java content, and the FF mem usage just kept going up, and up, and up...

I'm not entirely familiar with Firefox's mem usage since I use Opera instead, but Opera on Linux can be a bit of a memory hog. I'm not sure if it's a leak or just really aggressive caching. I've not really payed much attention to its memory usage on Windows, but it doesn't seem to do too badly on our old Win2k machine with 256 megs RAM (it is rather slow, but everything is slow on that machine).

In any case, both of the machines I primarily use have enough memory that Opera's high memory usage isn't a problem for me. It does tend to be the number one memory user on my system, though.

One thing I noticed while doing a few of these tests was that, a lot of the websites look much nicer under IE. Fonts appear more bold and sharp.

I've never been really big on aesthetics, but that is going to happen since Web designers are going to tend to build to cater to IE since it at present has a majority market share. I myself tend not to use IE unless a site absolutely does not work with another browser, even if it does look a bit screwed up without IE. I refuse to play the "Microsoft sets the standard" game.

 

[cinder1992]

To all the people that have problems with Firefox: clear out the cache every two or three months. Firefox loads the cache into memory and leaves it their for the browser to use if you ever re-start it, That is the apparent "memory leak".

now, I use firefox for security reasons (running seven servers from the same computer requires the extra effort ), but I would happily switch to Kommander. also, firefox appears to have a "real" memory leak when I updated to 3.5.7, It doesn't shut down properly and when i try to start it up again it says that another firefox program is not responding and to kill it. this has caused me to instinctively hit CTRL+ALT+DEL.

 

[Linguofreak]

One problem with comparing browsers by performance is that so much can be machine and OS dependent, and sometimes even with the same machine and same OS can change after an upgrade or reinstall, or for no apparent reason at all. Flash works perfectly on this machine in both Opera and Firefox. When I installed Ubuntu on our desktop back home, Flash made Firefox absolutely unusable, but it worked well on Opera. Then, various things happened (upgrades, reinstalls, etc.) and it got to the point where Flash worked acceptably, but not great, in Opera.

 

[Bj]

Ditto. I find myself gravitating back to IE8 in certain situations. FF seems to be a memory pig.

bah, FF doesn't crash as often and IE has a few security holes. I would rather take memory pig than security holes...

 

[Turbinator]

Cromius Maximus here.

 

[eveningsky339]

I use Firefox 3.5 on both of my OS's, Ubuntu and Windows XP. It runs at approximately the same speed on both, albeit a bit faster in Ubuntu... then again, most things are faster on Ubuntu.

I've used Opera in the past. I genuinely enjoy it, but it seems a bit heavier on the resources than Firefox. Still, I have it installed, because you can't have too many web browsers. I would call it my second choice.

As for Chrome, I've given it a few tries. It's definitely the lightest browser I've come across, but I like the customization you can do with Firefox, and Chrome has very little in the way of a user interface.

As for IE, I won't come near it. I've read that on average, a Windows machine takes about 40 minutes after the OS is installed to get infected using IE. Security issues aside, it's slow and cumbersome for me.

I think I'll go try Safari...

 

[doggie015]

I used to use Firefox but when Chrome came out; I switched ASAP. I am a security freak and so I like Chrome; because it is built in such a way that if any vulnerabilities ARE found; they can't be exploited. And sometimes when I am going to a new and possible hi-jacked site; I run it in a sandboxed environment (Sandboxie can provide that!) so that way if Chrome's sandboxing fails; it can take up the slack.

 

[Linguofreak]

As for IE, I won't come near it. I've read that on average, a Windows machine takes about 40 minutes after the OS is installed to get infected using IE. Security issues aside, it's slow and cumbersome for me.

Of course, "on average" assumes an "average" user, who is likely running around with no firewall, clicking on way too many adds, may be downloading porn, etc. etc.

I used IE before I switched to Opera, and I can count on one hand the number of times one of our home computers has picked up a virus since our family started using the Internet heavily. More security problems are PEBCAK issues than browser issues. (Which isn't to say I'm any great fan of M$ or Internet Explorer.)

 

[T.Neo]

may be downloading porn

...


:rofl:

 

[RisingFury]

FF FTW!

 

[Fabri91]

Firefox 3.6 here.

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Chrome 3. Came as a recommended download with a Google Pack.

If slowly deteriorating system speed is the worry, I find that the use of the features of these utilities every couple of weeks keeps both the browser and the system in general reasonably zippy...

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

Also, keeping bare minimum exceptions in the firewall, and occasionally having a look at msconfig in run to see what's in the system startup.

Has anyone got any recommendations or comments regarding these habits? Safe? I am very wary about keeping my system in good nick.

 

[Arrowstar]

FF3.6 as of a few days ago.

 

[doggie015]

If slowly deteriorating system speed is the worry, I find that the use of the features of these utilities every couple of weeks keeps both the browser and the system in general reasonably zippy...

http://www.piriform.com/defraggler

...

That looks like a good defragger; but for whole-hard-drive defrags I use MyDefrag http://www.mydefrag.com/ which is also free and I have tested the claims made on the site. I can tell you that after one run; I had an easily noticeable performance improvement.

 

[computerex]

Chrome 4.0.295.0 unstable/Firefox It's nice.