http://www.osnews.com/story/8168/Which_Browsers_Do_Techies_Use_ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:02:15 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The statistic for a *tech oriented* website looks pretty horrible for linux

Windows - 78.0%

Linux/BSD/Darwin/Unix - 19.6% Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yes your win2k is low because Windows 2000 is NT5.0 and XP is NT5.1 Wow it was such a change. So numbers are off quite a bit since you assumed 5.x is XP Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I really think that most techies really aren't overly concerned with this trivial assessment except on the grounds of security. Personally I use Firefox, IE, Opera and whatever else displays a web page on my screen. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OSNews' browser stats are here: http://bilbo.counted.com/2/42699/400/?sub_page=0&date=0

Note: while OSNews is an OS-independant site, we seem to attract mostly Linux users because there are many linux distros and so Linux manages to generate more news daily than other "single entity" OSes.

Also note, about 25% of the osnews daily hits are NOT recorded by Counted.com's statistics engine at all, however their browser breakdown should be accurate enough for the purposes of this discussion. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Frome the reasons why the author uses Opera:

# The "g" key cycles through showing all images, showing cached images, and showing no images. I've been told by a Firefox developer that this behavior is impossible in any Gecko-derived browser for esoteric architectural reasons.

# The "z" key ultra-conveniently backs up one page.

The remarks about why Gecko-based browsers cannot implement this feature is this: Gecko-based browsers now have a quick "search in page" facility that Opera can *never* implement without breaking the above two "features"! Try it it firefox/mozilla: Start typing a word without the cursor being in a text field and it will jump to words on the page that match your type string. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use Firefox on Win/Linux/Solaris/OSX. I give it to all of my customers as well. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>The statistic for a *tech oriented* website looks pretty horrible for linux

It could be that the Windows hits are coming from Linux/BSD users at work/school where they have only Win machines. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? .. would be that technical savvy users are typically well off (i.e. have money) and are more likely to use their money for online purchases (because they know how to do this). Therefore, especially sites that try to sell stuff online should take note of these figures.

Also sites that depend on on blogs for positive exposure (e.g. news sites) and advertisement revenue, would do well not to scare away the non IE user. The reason is that especially with bloggers, alternative browsers seem to be popular and bloggers don't blog about what they can't see in their browsers. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? primarily firefox,
opera,
konqueror,
internet explorert.

and iam urging everyone i know _not_ to use msie, but only for windowsupdates. because i stopped cleaning up spyware and such from their pc's. if its broke or doesnt work well, i might reinstall the os, but nothing extra anymore.

and for windows i highly recommend http://www.proxomitron.info as a webfilter. havent seen an equivalent for linux though. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>>>The statistic for a *tech oriented* website looks pretty horrible for linux
>>It could be that the Windows hits are coming from Linux/BSD >>users at work/school where they have only Win machines.

This being true for me and most of my friends. - We're surfing OSnews/Slashdot etc. in the schooltime because of lack of interesting things to do (writing essays isn't that interesting when you can read interesting stuff instead ). So as you said - I do believe the hits are rather biased.

-- As a side note Opera comes with IE identification by default - however, if you search for "Opera" before you search for "MSIE" in the string, Opera will get the vote.

I also use the IE identification on FireFox on Mac, because for some strange reason many sites doesn't work without it. (Linux FireFox works all nice) Fri, 03 Sep 2004 06:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I am part of the 25% that isn't counted by the Bilbo server. I suspect I have the site blocked via Adblock and my hosts file. If anyone wants to know, my user agent is: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040823 Firefox/0.9.3. Sometimes I run: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1), or: Mozilla/4.8 [en] (Windows NT 5.1; U), but it's all the same browser, Firefox.

As for the Proxomitron, it runs just fine under Linux via WINE. It loads and sits in a KDE task bar just as well as the Windows one. Yes, it's a superb, powerful filter. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Firefox is showing as Mozilla on Counted. Counted hasn't updated their database to check new browsers, for 2 years now or so. So, if a browser is Camino or Firefox, it will show up as Mozilla. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I looked at Eugenia's stats and compared them to the article's stats and the one thing that jumped out was the difference in the numbers for konqi (konqi is my favourite browser). Eugenia reports that 6% of hits come from konqi, but you have 1.3%. My proposed explanation is that the article contents would be more interesting to a windows user, while konqi can only be used on linux boxes.

I would also support the idea that people surf from work, where there is less choice about what you can install and run. for example, where I work at present will let you install firefox, but linux is against the rules. Also, when at home, I have both my windows box and linux box running, I am normally working on my linux box but it is useful to surf the web from my windows box so I can leave both my browser window and my working window open. once again, I am surfing with firefox when I would prefer konqi.

just a couple of things to keep in mind,

pete

PS konqi isn't better than firefox, it just fits in my kde desktop better. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? it's all those schools and backward universities which only run windows on their machines. one would think that a tech-uni runs linux instead of windows (at least for their IT dept). is that so? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I found this a rather interesting article-- well written, and the author mentioned possible shortcommings in his statistical survey.

I indeed also expected to see more Gecko-based browser in the poll, the fact that people might be surfing while at work cannot explain everything. Interesting!

I prefer to assume that the 2.3% "other" in the breakdown by OS is actually BeOS Of course that doesn't make sense, but hey, it's statistically possible Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Youd be surprised how many people actually dont use Linux all the time. I visit this site mostly from Firefox, here at work, in windows, when im at home im doing other things lol. Id like to see stats like this from somewhere like forums.gentoo.org, haha i thik that would be very interesting. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree that Konqueror works well most of the time, but if you want Firefox to fit in better with KDE, there are a number of themes that do the job. I use Plastikfox, and it blends in well if you use the Plastik style and the Crystal SVG 1.0 icons. I believe there is support for other styles and icons, too.

http://kdelook.org/content/show.php?content=11442 Fri, 03 Sep 2004 07:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "The remarks about why Gecko-based browsers cannot implement this feature is this: Gecko-based browsers now have a quick "search in page" facility that Opera can *never* implement without breaking the above two "features"!"

I don't think losing the ability to have keyboard shortcuts (and hence easy access to more functionality) would be worth having the ability to search like that to be honest.

After all Opera allows you it's own quick search in page facility. Hit the "." and then type for a quick search text in page or "," and then type to search for text in links on the page. So for an extra keypress, you get a bit more functionality there plus the ability to have lots of other key combinations that do useful things.

Correcting that misconception aside, the article was a pretty good stab at it. The guy didn't hide his preference for Opera and highlighted the potential problems with his stats. It was avery small sample but hey, was interesting to see.

I can tell you from a site that I run for the the non-technical general public that the percentages of people using IE and Windows cf non-IE and/or non-Windows is rather more gaping than the article writers stats for his technical oriented site.

Another vaguely on topic addendum. Just today I had a friend IM me telling me he was absolutely pissed off with the amount of viruses and spyware and adware he had to keep on cleaning off his PC. He isn't a technical computer user and so was surprised when told him he was using IE. I suggested he give both Firefox and Opera a go because browser choice is definitely a personal thing; what suits you best. He's trying Opera first as I told him that although Firefox was more popular, Opera was my preference and he's giving it a whirl first. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Try it it firefox/mozilla: Start typing a word without the cursor being in a text field and it will jump to words on the page that match your type string."

OK, now where I tried it I can assure you that it doesn't work at all - it's horribly broken. I am not impressed. Firefox 093, btw Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "if its broke or doesnt work well, i might reinstall the os, but nothing extra anymore."

What a unique idea - how about reinstalling IE only, instead of killing the entire installation?! Never mind... you got the time, then go for it... :-) Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I try to Not use IE as well. But i found so many website that i revisit don't render well with Firefox. Therfore i am forced to use IE with Maxthon. ( Myie2 )

As not as i do safe web surfing and update IE regularly, have Av/Firewall i think is more than enough. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? One problem I find with trying to pick out browser usage in geeks makes it even hard to oddball it with the method your using. Normally when I check osnews, it's morning, night, and whenever I'm bored as hell inbetween, now I prefer and do use firefox as my browser, but if I'm on school computers or some other comptuer that doesn't have firefox installed I'm not about to go downlaod it. So as an example, I probably end up checking osnews more when I'm bored and that would mean I'm probably not at my own computer, which unfortunately means I'm coming off an ie browser about 1/4 of the time. So in what I actually use(and would come up in these statistics), ie is in the mix, but in what I prefer to use, it's firefox 100%. I have no idea how big of an effect this would have over everyone at osnews, but I generally get the feelings 75% of osnews readers are respectably intelligent, so no more than 25% of readers should be running ie . Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i feel weird today Fri, 03 Sep 2004 08:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use IE. I used to use netscape until IE5.5 or 6.0 and then defected for reasons unknown. the only thing about IE i hate is bookmark management.

last month I tried firefox for two weeks and then promptly deleted that piece of shit. I have opera browser on my handphone which I don't use either.

I'm primarily windows user simply because its familiar. but I'm techie enough to program C in solaris/bsd/aix in a corporate environment.

I should think anyone who doesn't know how to work around IE's security flaws is a total noob anyway. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BSD (http://people.freebsd.org/~wpaul/daemonette/Dcp00473.jpg) vs. Linux (http://www.osnews.com/images/eugenia-lq.jpg). Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "while konqi can only be used on linux boxes."

Konqueror runs on Windows via Cygwin. Its not a popular choice though. It also runs just like Mozilla fine over VNC/X11. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "while konqi can only be used on linux boxes."

Konqueror runs on Windows via Cygwin. Its not a popular choice though. Konqueror also runs on MacOSX ("Safari"), *BSD, Solaris and most likely various other platforms. It also runs just like Mozilla fine over VNC/X11. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Not really... most will use windows boxes as main environment even if they work with linux servers...

One thing doesn't relate with other. Actually, it complimentary for linux to have such an high score...

(and i use firefox as main browser... and IE when i need for dev purposes...) Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? one more thing that needs to be factored in, skewing the statistics, other than opera or firefox posing as IE.

on my home PC I would not touch IE with a 10 foot pole, except for Windows update (got Suse 9.1/Windows XP double boot)

however, in the office IE is the only possibility. my suspicion is, other people are in the same situation. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 09:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? that a person can't be multi-platform.

i own an ibook (os x)
i manage a small fleet of slackware servers (linux)

and most of my personal x86 systems dual-boot xp, linux or freebsd.

i have nothing against XP or windows...but if that's all you do, you better know it _very_ well. or your just another sheep. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I should think anyone who doesn't know how to work around IE's security flaws is a total noob anyway.

Yeah, not to mention all those who don't have to.
(like users of any other browser) Fri, 03 Sep 2004 10:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I usually look at my web stats and after I write something on OSNews I get a heap of people having a wonder around my website.

It varies but (from memory) it's somethng *like* this:

Win XP 25%
Linux 25%
Win 2K 20%
OS X 10%
FreeBSD 6%

Browser wise Mozilla/Firefox is usually 60%+ Fri, 03 Sep 2004 11:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You can use Javascript Browser Sniffer (http://jsbrwsniff.sf.net) for statistics. It works on client- side and on server-side. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 11:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Depending on what I am doing, I use various. For instance, when I am not in X, and doing something like compiling, I use Lynx in other terminals. OSNews is pretty readable on Lynx. Firefox is the one I use mostly in X. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 11:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I wonder why more people don't use Lynx or Links to browse news sites like OSNews. Maybe they enjoy watching the advertisements (and waiting these adwertisements to load). For simple and fast browsing there's nothing like the GUI mode in Links 2.1. You only need Opera, Moz, or IE for browsing frames and other more interactive stuff. Especially with modem or ISDN connections it would make perfect sense to use two browsers: Lynx/Links/Dillo for fast browsing and reading news, Opera/Moz/IE for interactive browsing. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 11:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I should think anyone who doesn't know how to work around IE's security flaws is a total noob anyway.

("I should think"?)

Some references please? What can one do against unpatched flaws which are known. Beg MS for a fix, which they won't do, for the sole reason there ain't an exploit in the wild? Cause, that's reality... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 11:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Some of you may know why Fri, 03 Sep 2004 11:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Mozilla has a link jump built into the rendering engine.

Open a webpage and cick in the center of the page, not on a link or text input box. The start typing the name on a hyperlink. it will jump right to the first part.

Most useful for sites that are all links. Since I travel a lot, I post my home bookmarks.html file(yea mozilla) to my personal website. I can type my home page in and bring up all my links. I then can start typing the name of the place I want to go, and it comes up. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? RE:I should think anyone who doesn't know how to work around IE's security flaws is a total noob anyway.

yeah, i agree, my workaround was to abandon Windoze completely and wipe it off my harddrive, and use Linux instead Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You assumed that accesses from the same IP address represent the same user. This is flawed for two reasons: (1) proxies and NAT, (2) multiple users on the same box. I have heard it is otherwise in USA, but over here in the Old World, customers of ISPs rarely have fixed IP addresses (it costs extra, or is not possible at all). Effect (2) would tend to penalize unixlike systems: Windows boxes are usually one per person, but it is common in unix world to have several users.
Not sure what would be a better solution. Maybe this kind of survey would be an acceptable use for cookies? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? if you access the site from work
or school you are more likely to use IE EVEN if you prefer firefox or something else at home. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? fully updated short of service pack 2.

i have ie 6 fully updated

i have mozilla firefox 0.9.3 on this pc

i also have netcaptor 7.5.2 installed

i spend a lot of time on the web and browse a great deal. i try many different browsers looking for the one that is:

1) fastest
2) renders the best
3) is most customizable to fit my exact browsing preferences

my experience and testing shows me that:

ie 6 is the fastest and most reliable and renders the sites i visit the best.

firefox is improving in every area.

opera one moment can be lightning fast and then the next it can hang loading a tiny page. its too erratic. it renders pages very oddly at times as well.

i like tabbed browsing so ie 6 on its own wont do.

so i have tried several tabbed browser wrappers for ie 6 and find:

myie2 is slow and buggy.
avant browser is likewise slow and buggy.

netcaptor 7.5.2 retains ie 6's speed and reliability...though it is does act just a tiny bit odd at times. enough to deal with.

try out netcaptor if you are on windows:

http://www.netcaptor.com/index.php

i have one suse linux box i use for learning linux and i run firefox on it. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? 80% of hits on my website are Safari users and would be higher because most of the IE stuff come from viruses on Windows 9x and Windows NT hosts. So beware IE's share may actually be not be any users at all. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't know in what order you searched for parts of user agent strings, but Konqueror in KDE 3.3 displays:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.3; Linux; en_US) (KHTML, like Gecko)

by default. Konqueror also has built in user agent changing functionality. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd recommend having at least one anti-spyware program as well; there is a lot of junk which anti-virus programs do not catch.

[I've disinfected -far- too much junk off Windows computers this summer]. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 12:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > last month I tried firefox for two weeks and then promptly deleted that piece of shit. I have opera browser on my handphone which I don't use either.

Would you mind mentioning a few of the problems you had with it?

> I should think anyone who doesn't know how to work around IE's security flaws is a total noob anyway.

Please tell me you're kidding. You -cannot- work around most of IE's security flaws. Sure, some configurations are more vulnerable than others, but there are always a large number of unpatched, public vulnerabilities, often allowing things like arbitrary code execution; a firewall isn't going to protect you from that.

Anti-virus? It's reactive. Ditto for anti-adware.

I'm not sure which is more amazing - how people who barely use the Net at all get large numbers of viruses and adware - or how lucky IE users have been, that more websites don't exploit their browser, and those that do tend to only install relatively innocent malware.

Using IE any more than absolutely necessary [Windows update, corporate policy, whatever] is dangerous.

Unless you've thoroughly audited IE yourself, and have a lot of custom binary patches, I suspect your confidence in your configuration is misplaced. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The statistic for a *tech oriented* website looks pretty horrible for linux

19% is not horrible. It's not a majority, but it's considerably higher than the 1% - 3% that those sytems get in the normal population. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? In response to kwr2k's "'g' and 'z' key 'features' of Opera" comment, by default, that only searches for links. Of course, you can make it search for all text, or optionally turn it off altogether.

It's a shame, it seems to break accessibility keys. But then again, it implements a sort of accessibility key in itself that's easy to use, even on pages with no accesskey attributes coded in. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Try pressing '/' and then typing the text that you want to find. That's the default behavior (changeable in options). By default, if you just type text, it only searches within hyperlinks. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? about the choices they have since IE is shoved down everyones throat.... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd like to add that NT 5.2 is Windows Server 2003.

My user-agent string is: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2) Opera 7.5 Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? a default isnt "shoved" down anyones throat.

is safari shoved?
or is any linux distros default shoved?

aol users choose on a monthly basis to subsribe to aol which uses ie.

many other isps like earthlink likewise use ie. those customers choose their isp.

millions subscribe to magazines like pc world and pc magazine that discuss browser choice. large newspapers all over the usa at least have given a great deal of press of late to ie and svc pk 2 and exposed tens of millions of pc users to options they may not have known about.

a few have chosen things like firefox. ie numbers have gone down a percentage point in recent months.

most dont care. they just use whats there in front of them.

has nothing to do with shoved.

i am informed and test many choices yet continue to choose to use ie, though with a tabbed wrapper with it. same engine though.

a default doesnt preclude choice. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.2; Linux) (KHTML, like Gecko), since February 2004, I haven't used any other browser. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 13:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? i primarily read OSNews usig the Jpluck document toolkit and the XML newsfeed on my Palm Tungsten E. For regular web surfing, Firefox. I'm typing this right now via te lynz text browser from a Linux box. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Althow I think you know perfectly well and are only trying to troll, let me explain what the OP probably meant...

IE is not only the "default" browser. Is the "embedded in the OS so much we don't let you uninstall it" browser.

Go ahead, uninstall IE, let me know of your progresses.

And before you go down the usual "then don't use it" road: it it is in the system, you system is NOT secure. A lot of other software use IE as a rendering engine (most notably Outlook, both, and MSN Messenger). Guess what, almost all holes in those programs stem from a bigger hole in IE.

Get a clue, and bring it always with you, please. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Renato hit the nail right on the head...
Way back when win 98 (which we all know is when IE started getting "integrated" into the core os) just came out I did an upgrade from 95 to 98, the funny thing was that after the upgrade was complete, I still my choice to uninstall IE from (initial install of IE was done under 95) the add remove programs, I uninstalled it to see what would happen...it was a disaster to say the least...
BUT the funniest part of the whole thing was that the side image on the start menu reverted back to saying Windows 95!
So the lesson...remove the browser and ruin your os??
And you're telling me it wasn't shoved down MY throat?
Who's trolling who? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? HE WORKS FOR ACCENTURE****

Accenture hires NO Americans they are a OUTSOURCING ALL jobs to INDIA... If you don't believe me READ his website he is wearing their clothes and married one of them.


How funny, India is now the 'TECH' country of the world....


There is NO need for anybody in the United States to get
a computer science degree anymore.

Accenture made sure they located overseas to get out
of paying taxes in the USA and Offshore ALL jobs to
cheap labor in INDIA....


Offshoring sucks, it destroys the economy and
taxes the hell out of the middle class. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Those bastards, hmm... I blame Bush. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>HE WORKS FOR ACCENTURE****

so

>>Accenture hires NO Americans they are a OUTSOURCING ALL jobs to INDIA.

so should we make a law against it? what kind of country do we have when the government is consistently meddling in business? we have shit.

>>There is NO need for anybody in the United States to get
a computer science degree anymore.

my aunt has her computer science degree. she knows about punch cards, she can't get her system to run because it's infected with about 40 viruses and scored 800 on adaware.

if you want to be competive get your masters in math or engineering, start programming early in life, and augment your programming at home with a few classes here and there.

i've never been impressed with computer science majors.

>>Offshoring sucks, it destroys the economy and
taxes the hell out of the middle class.


the bubble has bust(years ago). no one ever guaranteed you to make a living in a certain way.

adapt or die. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Anyone who has common-sense KNOWS what ACCENTURE does

when it partners with an 'American' company....

All of the Programmers,Web Dev guys, and so on

are soon sent packing after their code is sent

overseas to India for 'cheap labor'......


Offshoring has DOOMED the Technology sector

***jobs in America***

If you work in this field it is 'when' you will be
replaced by some India (cheap-o) labor horrible
programmer....
They are nothing but cheap labor in India nothing more
nothing less.....

Hell, in India they are starving and they will not
EAT cows for Christs sake!!!


Come on, and they are smart,,,ha ha Fri, 03 Sep 2004 14:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? THE BEST THING TO DO IS NOT TO GET A COMPUTER SCIENCE
DEGREE****

THANK GOD, mine is not and I am able to move on to another
field, Accenture is based in Bermuda so they don't
have to pay TAXES in the United STATES... Very low.



Anyone, who is coding for a company 'traded on the stock' market is in danger of being outsourced for cheap labor in India......



It is all about CEO's and share holders wanting more
money and they don't give a dam if anyone has a job
or if people go starving.... GREED


It is about CHEAP-O labor, it does not matter if
India is full of crappy programmers who can't code anything without errors.

It is CHEAP that is all that matters!



But people are BLIND they do not want to read the FACTS! Fri, 03 Sep 2004 15:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have a personal website where I distribute some ruby software I've written as well as a few other program and an article or two on Python and MySQL. I'd mainly describe my "audience" as geeks, and I get about 5,000 hits a month. My useragent info breaks down quite differently.

1 1544 30.76% Mozilla/5.0
2 1290 25.70% MSIE 6.0
3 481 9.58% msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
4 326 6.49% MSIE 5.0
5 130 2.59% Program Shareware 1.0.0
6 119 2.37% Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
7 55 1.10% NaverBot-1.0
8 46 0.92% MSIE 5.5
9 37 0.74% fmII URL validator/1.1
10 32 0.64% Missigua Locator 1.9
11 31 0.62% Tutorial Crawler 1.4 (http://www.tutorgig.com/crawler)
12 31 0.62% ia_archiver
13 29 0.58% Mozilla/4.7
14 26 0.52% Lynx/2.8.3dev.9
15 25 0.50% Konqueror/3.2 Fri, 03 Sep 2004 15:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? **** YOU CANNOT NOT ADAPT IN THE TECHNOLOGY SECTOR ****

WHEN THE JOBS ARE BEING OFFSHORED TO INDIA, THERE IS NO

WAY TO ADAPT... UNLESS YOU ARE AN IDIOT AND THINK YOU

CANNOT BE REPLACED BY 'CHEAP' LABOR IN INDIA...

GOOD LUCK YOU WILL NEED IT ON THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINES...


Go into ANOTHER field don't waste your time in this one
it is a DEAD-END.


LISTEN TO HOW MANY JOBS ARE BEING OFFSHORED TO INDIA****

READ THE NEWS, READ ONLINE NEWS, OPEN YOUR EYES!!!

It is about CHEAP labor, NO DEGREE OR EDUCATION CAN HELP
YOU TO ADAPT WHEN THE JOBS ARE BEING OFFSHORED TO INDIA!!!!


Ignore the FACTS and go without a job... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 15:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >aol users choose on a monthly basis to subsribe to aol which uses ie.

This is flawed, akin to saying that 'people choose on a monthly basis to live in their apartments', where that's simply not the case. People live in their apartments, and the only time they really choose anything is when they get so annoyed they want to move out. Other than that, the fear of uncertainty and effort in moving out of their apartment (or of switching ISP's) keeps them there. Or they're happy.

The same is the case with ISP's, and also with browsers. It took a long time for me to get my parents not to use IE because they were afraid their favorites would get lost. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 15:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Personally, I like Konqueror specifically for the split-window browsing feature. I don't understand why more browsers haven't implemented this incredibly useful feature (granted, it's best on a big monitor).

However, since I don't use linux much anymore, I use Safari on my Mac and Firefox on Windows at work. Also use Firefox as a second choice on the mac if Safari has a problem with a site.

I attempted to use KDE on my mac via fink, and did get it running, but had too many crashes with Konqueror to find it useful. Besides, it's SO heavyweight for my needs (I'm a programmer and use the browser heavily for reading documentation). Would be nice to have konqi without all of the other kde baggage.

Please, someone (Apple, Firefox are you listening?) ...implement split-window browsing. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 15:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? but now I use khtml-based browsers more. On my main machine, my Mac, I use Safari 100% of the time. In my development system running Linux, I run Konqueror about 95% of the time. The other 5% is for the sites that still break konqueror, which is quickly dwindling. Konqueror has become quite good since KDE 3.2 and especially since KDE 3.3.

All the khtml world needs is a native Windows port. I think a native khtml browser on Windows would have a better chance at converting IE-folks than Firefox because of it's leaner size. I think you could probably produce a khtml-based browser in less than one meg if you tried hard. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 15:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The user string agent can be changed in IE, however I prefer to use Mozilla for various reaons:
1) tab browsing
2) typing to get to links and text. AKA better than average key board navigation usibility.
3) Speed of loading pages. There are some perfomance tips that you can take advantage of in Mozilla and Firefox.
a) network.http.pipelining.firstrequest (true)
b) network.http.pipelining
c) network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
d) network.http.max-connections
e) network.http.max-connections-per-server

These are just a few tweaks that can be done, I have done more myself, but these would be the basics. This would depend on how your connections are set up for their respective values. For a quick way to change most of these settings use "about:config" in the URL and modify to your hearts content. The fastest performance change would be to enable pipleling and that can be dong though your preferences:
Preferences ---> Advances ---> HTTP Networking
Enable pipleling and keep alive.

FYI: some other posters mention that there are more windows hits using IE because corporations only allow IE and not Mozilla. In my case that would be true. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Sorry about the 2nd post and the type o's.

http://khtml-win32.sourceforge.net/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/khtml-win32

There looks to be a port of KHTML to the Windows platform:

I wonder what new kinds of browsers will be spawned off of this code. Gecko has spawned various browsers such as kmeleon or k-meleon. I personally wish that the folks at http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/ would port this over to other platforms. :-( Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I didn't even read the whole article because I found some pretty unserious points (to say the least). I even noticed that the author isn't competent enough to do correctly the charts themselves.

785 log entries, IMHO, are far from enough to try to answer the question "Which Browsers Do Techies Use?"

> Opera can change its user-agent string to make look like
> it's actually another browser (this is useful for fooling
> some commercial sites that only allow access from certain
> browsers). I rarely use this feature when I'm browsing with
> Opera, but it may be popular with other users. For this
> reason the Opera pie slice might be artificially small.

The author doesn't even know how to detect Opera using the UA string no matter what identification the user has selected. Although this is more than simple.

So I personally find the article pretty unserious. :? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I KNOW, ActiveX is nothing good secure wise, but many Web site are still using it. Microsoft is heavily using it (doh!). You allways need IE when faced with those site.

I try to only use FireFox, it's realy good and fast, has a couple of nice feature that IE miss. But still, once a day I find myseld loading IE just to check if the site is showing right in FireFox....

Some things will never change. I guess we will allways need IE around.... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eveyone has their right to there own browser choice. I for one, have not used any other browser other than Safari when I got my first of many Mac computers. I know mozilla's browsers are doing fantastic in the windows world, especially Firefox. I for one believe that if Apple ported iChat and Safari it would be dominate net tools on windows. Just my two cents. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? im currently useing the mozilla suite but im leaning towards useing opera. what i am waiting for tho is for thunderbird to hit the magical 1.0 and then install the firefox/thunderbird combo to see that in action (i may install thunderbird before 1.0 if they can get a nice gui for moveing the mail over from mozilla proper working in one of their betas)... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=116753 Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? telnet. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Alpha Geeks don't use Windows. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? AOL made a deal with the devil before the Netscape merger, so they're contract-bound to exclusively bundle Internet Explorer with their online service. It's re-branded with an AOL logo, but it's still got the same rotting heart.

I'm sure if they still had a choice, they'd be bundling Mozilla or Firefox. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > I KNOW, ActiveX is nothing good secure wise, but many Web site are still
> using it. Microsoft is heavily using it (doh!). You allways need IE when faced
> with those site.

Personally I take the other option when faced with those sites: I go someplace else. The Web is big, and I don't know of any site out there that reqires ActiveX that doesn't have some viable competition someplace else that doesn't require ActiveX. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? AFAIK the current Mac version of AOL is still using Gecko at its heart, not MSIE. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? firefox and konqeuror on Linux. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Personally I take the other option when faced with those sites: I go someplace else. The Web is big, and I don't know of any site out there that reqires ActiveX that doesn't have some viable competition someplace else that doesn't require ActiveX."
Do you also take this attitude when looking for the best deals on the web?
I really wish e-commerce sites would fix their horridly done systems and use something standard. And if e-commerce can't be done on the standard, well then well it can so that's not a problem.

And for Windows users, windowsupdate.com is kind of a needed site... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd be astonished if there hadn't been some sort of migration away from IE over the last few months, but inertia can be a powerful force: a lot of people are just plain used to IE by now and they may figure that the hassle of changing outweighs the risk of security breaches.

How difficult can it possibly be to try a new browser and move your bookmarks over? Come on, for crying out loud. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I would guess, talking about regular and *willing* use of a browser (I still have to use IE sometimes at work, e.g. for the intranet):

1. Mozilla (Regular + FireFox)
2. IE
3. Opera
4. Safari
5. Other... Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use Firefox on Win/Linux/Solaris/OSX. I give it to all of my customers as well.

Once I can figure out how to store a copy of my bookmarks on another computer... Probably bring up the G4 and rsync files over or something.. then I will go with firefox full time. Safari is good but Firefox is DAMN good. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Do you also take this attitude when looking for the best deals on the web?

Would you like to get users be infected when it is well known ActiveX is mostly used by crackers to intrude inside PCs? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I try to Not use IE as well. But i found so many website that i revisit don't render well with Firefox. Therfore i am forced to use IE with Maxthon. ( Myie2 )

I re-coded the IT department's page at a company I used to work for about a year ago. The page would render just fine in IE but horribly in any other browser.

It turned out the page was coded badly. It did not comply with standards, but IE rendered it as if it was. So I re-coded the page using Mozilla as my QA test bed. Once the page was coded properly and looked correct in Mozilla I tested it in IE as well. Surprise... well not really.. it looked great.

Point is, IE allows bad code to render correctly. This is why so many sites look good in IE but crappy in other browsers. IE and Microsoft as a whole allow substandard code to pass. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? well, my first guess on looking at this is that he didnt get techies, he got script kiddies. script kiddies are interested in techie stuff, but they generally lack the forsight and attention span for something like security, which explains the huge amount of ie users. i dont know any compitant windows user that uses ie with the vulnerabilities that have been comming out lately. even microsoft zealots use firefox.

as for the windows/linux thing, its smaller then i would have though (again, the kiddy factor may be in play again). my guess would be alot higher, 30-40% at least. remember, we are talking techies here which is 100% of the linux desktop market right now. Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? links -g is what i use Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Not sure if it's been mentioned...

Konqueror -> Tools -> Change Browser Identification Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Competence is usually decided from other factors than what WWW browser one chooses to use...
The problems I have encountered while trying other browsers have made me stay with IE and/or systems based on IE. Still there is no problems with pop-ups, viruses etc. at any of my computers, so I'm perhaps 'compitant' anyway? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 20:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? no openwave? Fri, 03 Sep 2004 23:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Most people I know are broken down by drugs and/or alcohol.

The only one I know that might qualify as being broken down by OS would be Eugenia. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 01:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "it's all those schools and backward universities which only run windows on their machines. one would think that a tech-uni runs linux instead of windows (at least for their IT dept). is that so?"

Why? Because you dont like Windows, so no one should use it? Sat, 04 Sep 2004 02:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I prefer to use IE. I have tried Opera, and found it just too complex and a hassle to use. I also have Firefox installed on my machine and tried that for a while. In the end, I went back to IE. I just love the way that its so tightly integrated into Windows. Being able to just flip to the internet in the same window while browsing files and vica versa is wonderful. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 02:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "AOL made a deal with the devil before the Netscape merger, so they're contract-bound to exclusively bundle Internet Explorer with their online service. It's re-branded with an AOL logo, but it's still got the same rotting heart.
I'm sure if they still had a choice, they'd be bundling Mozilla or Firefox."

That's just not true. They've evaluated there options at least once (possibly twice) since the Netscape acquisition. They chose to renew the contract and continue on with IE. From memory, that occurred fairly recently (approx 2002). Sat, 04 Sep 2004 06:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You can easily change the user agent string in Safari as well, if you enable the Debug menu: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030110063041629 . I usually use "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.2)" for sites that complain about my browser. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 14:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use Konqueror 3.3 on FreeBSD 5.3-BETA3 and everythings fine, java and flash too. I'm just happy with a simple browser that does everything I want. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 15:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm not pro-IE, I just wanna be able to buy stuff from newegg without booting into Windows. Last time I did it, it failed to process my order in firefox 0.9.3. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 17:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? the thing is, IE is about five years behind everyone else functionality wise. it isnt standards compliant, and if the first two arnt enough, has countless vulnerabilities. its more getting to the point where you really have to trust the sites you visit on ie, cause any of them could execute arbitrary code on your computer with very little hassle.

so lets see... nothing to make it better, free alternatives have way more features, and using it can break your pc. this doesnt seem like much of a choice to me.

honestly, this isnt a troll. i would honestly like to hear why ie users stick with ie if they know enough to install something else. i have a windows zealot friend who hated all things netscape with a passion. i had to literally install firefox (or firebird at the time) on his machine when he wasnt looking. now he is alwas raving about it, and installs it on all his clients machines (he is a windows repair guy).

i havent had a problem with a website in firefox for quite a long time now. i know early mozilla was ass, maybe you havnt tried it in awhile? i highly suggest giving it another try, look at the features, look at the extensions, and learn how you can use a browser that actually makes browsing more enjoyable. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 17:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm posting this from NCSA Mosaic 2.7b5
The formatting is a little screwed up, but the site is
still navigatable.
No comment really, I just wanted to see if I could still use Mosaic to browse the web. Sat, 04 Sep 2004 19:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OK, now where I tried it I can assure you that it doesn't work at all - it's horribly broken. I am not impressed. Firefox 093, btw

OK, if you're familiar with firefox, you probably already know this, but find-as-you-type only searches for links in the page. If you want to search for any text in the page prefix phrase your looking for with a /

Oh, and one annoyance I have is when I go from firefox to ie and my find-as-you-type doesn't work anymore or when I go from linux to windows and my select/middle click to copy paste doesn't work anymore. It just drives me nuts ;-)
Sam Sun, 05 Sep 2004 05:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "AOL made a deal with the devil before the Netscape merger..."

That's just not true. They've evaluated there options at least once (possibly twice) since the Netscape acquisition. They chose to renew the contract and continue on with IE....


Of course, the cynics among us KNOW that they got a big pile of money for "choosing" IE. MS won't let a 20-25% marketshare go down without a fight like that.

As for AOL, they could have a free browser engine, or they could have a better-than-free browser engine AND a free browser engine in their back pocket. They'd have to be fools to turn down MS's perfectly good money.

Of course, if MS starts tightening the screws, we know AOL can simply call the shots. (AOL version 90.0 or something like that). Sun, 05 Sep 2004 12:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? My browser is not IE 6, but I have set it to inform the website that it is. I do this because there are too many websites which "don't work" for the wrong browsers.
In this case, I would help skew your results in favour of IE6. It would be interesting to find out how many others also set their browsers to "Lie mode" Sun, 05 Sep 2004 12:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Firefox.

Why use anything else? it's quick, minimalistic, and not bloatware. Opera can't say that, Mozilla can't even say that, and, of course, nor can IE. Safari isn't bad, but I'm on an i386. I prefer Camino over Safari though. Sun, 05 Sep 2004 13:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? OS X

Camino
Safari

Linux

Firefox
Konqueror Sun, 05 Sep 2004 14:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Your poll apparently records IE-inspired browsers such as Slimbrowser as Internet Explorer browsers. This is misleading. I virtually never use Internet Explorer itself, but use Myie or Slimbrowser or Avant browser when I'm in a Windows environment. Sun, 05 Sep 2004 15:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As I sit here reading this on a Mozilla browser on a linux box only a few feet away from my WinXP machine with only IE installed, I remeber back in the late 90's while woking for "Syracuse Langualge" the exact opposite problem. At that time many pages worked "best" in Netscape 4.x. I long for the day when a site will look correct regardless of browser. But, until then the pendulum will just continue to swing. Sun, 05 Sep 2004 16:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I abandoned IE years ago. Used opera, using FF on all my Win/Lin boxes. And the reason? I couldn't open web link in background tab/page. It's probably still impossible, but most IE users do not know that anything else exists. Did MS put this simple thing in? Ah well, who cares. Sun, 05 Sep 2004 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? first, find as you type doesnt work for you? ive been more or less keeping current with releases for a good six or seven months now (im an opera convert ;-) ) and its alwas worked for me, and been a feature i use several times a day.

i know where your comming from with finding using other browsers/operating systems frustrating. i cant tell you how many times ive pressed mouse three five or six times in ie before i realised why it wasnt working. or hit / and start typing ;-) Mon, 06 Sep 2004 01:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The news panel in Opera is my favorite, too bad I can't subscribe to OSnews. Mon, 06 Sep 2004 16:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Best browser ever, nuff said. Tue, 07 Sep 2004 04:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments