OSDev.org

Eero R?nik wrote: I don't know why everyone uses Firefox, though.

Adblock.

Seriously. Having a normal news site not flashing around (pun intended) is a very good thing for your eyes and your concentration.

It's not the safest, nor the fastest browser around. Even Internet Explorer can be safer than Firefox, after little patching and securing (IE is a lot faster anyway).

Well... if you disable all stuff that IE "extended" on the internet, it might be as safe as the rest. I expect it to be. However, for some IE exploits you have to disable javascript, which is something that makes it impossible to use most sites nowadays.

According to Symantec, Mozilla browsers are the buggiest around at the moment and Opera was supposed to be the most secure mainstream browser on PC. Why is it used so rarely, then?

Mozilla is a very public thing, it publishes anything it finds and assigns it a normal rating according to the severity of the problem. It fixes these problems and is done with them.

Microsoft has public relations to care about. It doesn't publicise stuff it doesn't find dangerous enough, or assigns it a very low severity rating and ignores it. Look at the most recent IE exploit, which was for a 6 MONTH old bug, which was back then classified as not important. It could've been fixed before, but the bug count would've gone up.

I have a feeling that most of the people think that if they use Firefox, it magically makes the internet a safer place. It doesn't.

If you use firefox, you're auto-immune for activex exploits and IE-only exploits. You are however more vulnerable for firefox-only exploits. Since IE exploits and activex exploits outnumber the firefox exploits, in a way it is true. It is however only true for the "safer" bit. It's still not "safe".

Eero R?nik wrote:According to Symantec, Mozilla browsers are the buggiest around at the moment and Opera was supposed to be the most secure mainstream browser on PC. Why is it used so rarely, then?

Because, after all the propaganda hyperbole, for 98% of all people Open Source is about free as in free beer, and Opera - up until lately - did cost money to get rid of the ad plugin.

And humans are herd animals. When all the press hyperventilates on is MSIE vs. Mozilla / Firefox, that is where you'll find the masses.

Look at your average company using Windows on the office PCs. What have they installed for ZIP handling? WinZIP, usually. Why? There's FilZip, for one. Free, identical / superior functionality, same user interface. It just never made it to "household name".

Being used to something can be a very great incentive in it's own right. Like the Start button. Unintuitive, unproductive, yet still every post-1995 OS ran to copy it, because people are expecting it to be there.

I have my task bar at the left border of the screen, upright. Much more ergonomic IMHO. Every time a colleague uses my desktop, they are utterly confused because "it's not supposed to be this way".

Better mousetraps can become failures simply because they don't work like old mousetraps.

Sorry for the rant, had a bad commuter ride this morning.

Well, Opera's not that great, really. It crashes all the time on random moments, is incompatible with Javascript (it fucks it up to no end), has as much a popup blocker as IE, even though it claims it has a decent one and I've noticed that it doesn't always release its memory used per opened tab, and if it does, it only does so after closing the browser entirely, not just the tab. It's one hell of a memory leak. Bookmarks exported into a file, I've never managed to import into Opera, either. All in all, it's just no good. I'm switching to full-time Firefox at home the moment I get all my bookmarks transfered correctly (which, efficiently, is after the re?nstall... which's after taking backups of everything, which I can't be arsed to do ::) Too much to burn)

Edit: Top that for a rant, Solar

It crashes all the time on random moments

I don't know what you did to your windows installation, on my computer opera at best crashes every other month..

Is incompatible with Java Script (it fucks it up to no end)

Most compatibility problems are due to poorly written sites that only aim for IE and without complience to the w3 standards. I frankly doubt that mozilla really does so much better at interpreting buggy scripts.

As much a popup blocker as IE, even though it claims it has a decent one

Are you sure that it's actually enabled (F12 -> block unwanted popups) ?

regards,
gaf

I originally installed Firefox to run Javascript sites that Opera couldn't run properly. They run smoothly in there. As for crashes... Opera's the only browser that does so. Neither IE or Firefox does so, so I see it as the problem laying with Opera, not Windows. My popup blocker's standard on: "Open requested popups only", which'd mean links that open in a new window when you click them, not when you load a new site or so.

My popup blocker's standard on: "Open requested popups only", which'd mean links that open in a new window when you click them, not when you load a new site or so.

Hmm, with the filter enabed I never get a single pop-up..

As for crashes... Opera's the only browser that does so. Neither IE or Firefox does so, so I see it as the problem laying with Opera, not Windows.

Since you mentioned in your first post that you wanted to switch to firefox after a reinstall I just assumed that there might be some other problems with your windows installation. If it's however not windows then I could imagine that some of opera's configuration files might have got currupted during an update. In that case reinstalling opera from scratch might already solve the problem:

[*]Download the latest version of opera (3mb)
[*]Open C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\ and look out for a folder called "Application Data". If you can't see it, your explorer is set up to not show hidden files which we'll have to change first. Click "Tools"|"Folder Options", choose the "View" tab and toggle the radio-box you'll find there to "show all files and folders". Close the dialog and open the folder "application data".
[*]Copy the folder "opera", which contains all configuration data, to your desktop. The backup will allow you to restore your settings (favourites, addresses, mail, wand) after you've installed the new version.
[*]Uninstall opera the normal way and make sure that "C:\Program Files\Opera" aswell as "C:\Documents and Settings\<user_name>\Application Data\Opera" are actually gone. Also run C:\windows\regedit.exe and check if "hkey_current_user\Software\Opera Software" respectivly "hkey_local_machine\Software\Opera Software" have been deleted correctly.
[*]Install opera, run it and import the old settings from the backup you stored on your dektop ("file"|"Import Export": favourites -> opera6.adr, e-mail addresses -> contacts.adr).

regards,
gaf

I've installed Opera when I installed that comp, but didn't do any updates since, so that can't be it either.

I've installed Opera when I installed that comp

I suppose it was working perfectly fine back then, otherwise you would probably have wiped it of your hard-disk soon after. Win98 is notorious for decaying in time and configure files can also get corrupted by system crashes, for example, and not only updates. I don't have any problem if you just prefering firefox for whatever reasons, after all it's a quite good browser too, but you in my opinion shouldn't complain about a program if you're not willing to take some 15min of time to make an attempt of fixing the problem (at least if it's that obvious that the problem only exists on your computer).

Give it a try once you've found out that winXp is much slower than win98 and that firefox takes ages to load on old computers (my other machine has 700mhz/256mb)..

regards,
gaf

I'm on Firefox/XP/ReziNet at Uni and the same with the exception of being on NTL Broadband at home (with mein parents).

I used to use IE and my mate spent about a year and a half trying to get me to switch to Firefox. Then I used it for day for a completely unrelated reason and found I couldn't go back to IE. I literally couldn't use IE's interface anymore, lol. Every time I use IE on my mum's laptop I keep trying to middle-click on links or use the quicksearch box (one of which doesn't work and the other of which doesn't exist). Plus I love plugins anyway...

Well, I really am in a minority then. An OSX user with Safari. I guess everyone will think I'm stupid since I have Firefox sat in /Applications purely for design testing.

The Polar One wrote: Well, I really am in a minority then. An OSX user with Safari. I guess everyone will think I'm stupid since I have Firefox sat in /Applications purely for design testing.

Why would we think you're stupid? Just because you use something else?

Wasn't that the point of the OSDEV part of this forum? People who disagree with the status quo and any other common alternative?

Only teasing - as I have no reasons for my browser other than simple satisfaction and Firefox users are ever growing with many reasons.

Opera on SuSE Linux 9.3

Only IE6&Windows XP, an I have no major problems