Browser Wars MMXI

[Keelandson]

Firefox 4 downloads surpass 51 million, far surpassing those of IE9, The Inquirer says.

A week on Mozilla is still finding significant demand for its web browser, with its publicly available download counter glow.mozilla.com showing about 2,000 downloads per minute when we looked just now. . . .

glow.mozilla.com

. . . Firefox runs on just about every operating system out there and perhaps most importantly Windows XP. As Windows XP users look for an up-to-date web browser, it is likely that both Google and Mozilla will see their usage shares increase.

In my case it's much more important that I'm not stuck with Apple's craptacular Safari for OS X.

 

[Ambrocious]

LMAO! Yeah Mozilla is doing pretty good. I would have to say that IE9 isn't looking too hot right now. Chrome is zooming along as it always has. All the new browsers (IE9, FireFox 4, and Chrome) are in very close competition of course. IE9 is really screwing it's self over though cause it can only run on SOME Vista computers and all Windows 7 computers, NOTHING else. They might be forced to adapt it to run on Windows XP and other OS's if it wishes to stay in the race properly.

 

[Paws]

Today I found out that Chrome has a direct link to the Flash options on Adobe's website, so you can delete those "supercookies". In Firefox, this is only possible by visiting the Adobe website yourself, for which you need to know that there's such an options page, or install an add-on.

 

[Keelandson]

Today I found out that Chrome has a direct link to the Flash options on Adobe's website, so you can delete those "supercookies". In Firefox, this is only possible by visiting the Adobe website yourself, for which you need to know that there's such an options page, or install an add-on.

That add-on is BetterPrivacy, and it's the bees' knees. I also have an Applescript (Mac) saved as an application to kill them:

tell application "Finder"
if every item of folder "Macromedia" of folder "Preferences" of folder "Library" of folder "Keelandson" of folder "Users" of startup disk exists then
delete every item of folder "Macromedia" of folder "Preferences" of folder "Library" of folder "Keelandson" of folder "Users" of startup disk
end if
end tell

Any Mac user can copy and paste it into an Applescript blank, change Keelandson to whatever the name is that the machine runs under and save it as an application. Since it's an app separate from any browser, it works for all of them.

BetterPrivacy, of course, is cross-platform.

 

[T-Rexx]

People tend to accept what they are given in life and never change, even when change is better and costs nothing. When people are forced to choose, they tend not to pick ms products.

FF became the #1 browser in Europe almost overnight (over IE) after the EU forced ms to offer users a choice of which browser would be defaut (rather than make IE the automatic default with the option to install others).

 

[TimT2011]

I stopped using Firefox for the Mac after version 2, but picked back up once 4 got in beta. It still has problems spiking processor usage so I would never leave it open while I was gone for any period of time.

I also use Chrome and Camino--sometimes Opera, if all else fails. I still prefer Safari though as I've found it the most compatible and best renderer.

On the iPad though I've yet to see anything that beats Mercury Pro.

 

[Keelandson]

^^^ Ars Technica has a story saying Camino might switch to WebKit.

 

[TimT2011]

^^^ Ars Technica has a story saying Camino might switch to WebKit[/B].

Wow! I had not heard that. That's really surprising.

Although it does seem webkit is the way things are going these days... I suppose iOS is a good part of that.

I remember when Apple first introduced Safari everybody thought they had picked the engine least likely to succeed.

 

[Corny]

well to be fair .. webkit's rendering is hardly apple's success ..

 

[TimT2011]

well to be fair .. webkit's rendering is hardly apple's success ..

No, didn't mean it that way... Just meant that Webkit is successful in that it's still being used today and has grown to power another popular browser, Chrome. Back when they chose it, I don't think anyone would have expected that.