24th May 2006, 2:58 PM
ABF, what is your problem with Firefox? Do you ever actually code HTML? They are making a standalone application for that if that's the feature you are missing, and they have a standalone email client as well. Standalone in this case seems to be better. I will confess the name is a little silly but so was Mozilla. I prefer much more straightforward names like "Netscape" (even though that browser at this point is just a rebranding of Mozilla which I don't bother with anyway).
IE at this point is desperatly playing catchup, and Opera, while uninstalling leaves a nasty aftertaste to clean up, is so far the ONLY browser to pass the ACID2 compliance test so many browsers are aiming at, including IE7. I've been reading the IE7 developer's blog recently. Developer blogs are far more open than the monolithic company "press release" guys, so I'm getting all sorts of info. For example, the IE guys admit fully just how buggy IE is. They basically state the first order of business is cutting IE away from Windows, which was a major security blunder to begin with. Then more security. After making it at least as secure as the competition (meaning basically that the user will, as always, be the weakest link in the chain), they intend on making it complient. They have stated right off the bat that unfortunatly IE7 will NOT pass the acid2 test upon it's initial release but they hope to eventually have it fully complient with some future updates.
In general, these guys actually seem to know what they are doing, and with all the various browser makers of any import working towards the same standards the devastating horrors of the "netscape explorer" browser wars which left countless webpages not fully compatible with either browser (and let's face it, by the end of that war, IE was better than Netscape was at the time), we're going to end up with just being able to pick the browser we like best. Now, if only Macromedia would make their Flash a fully open source thing (or someone else make one that is that takes the net by storm) so that each browser didn't have to wait for Macromedia to design a plugin for it, we'd have a fully compatible internet. What's nice is that with the internet, backwards compatibility isn't too much of an issue. Once something becomes popular enough, the old standards just start vanishing as web pages either update themselves or just drop off the net due to not being updated in 2 years anyway.
For my part, I just want a browser to take up minimal space in memory. I get what I need and don't clutter it down with stuff I don't need. Why would I need a bar to search for movie information at the touch of a button? I don't find myself doing that every single second of every day. I can just pull up a shortcut IF and WHEN I need to pull up that information and the rest of the time there's no memory hogging during my net surfing.
The weather, maybe, but I really don't concern myself with it that much. If it rains, it rains, if it is sunny, it is sunny. I don't do much that requires advanced knowledge of the weather conditions.
IE at this point is desperatly playing catchup, and Opera, while uninstalling leaves a nasty aftertaste to clean up, is so far the ONLY browser to pass the ACID2 compliance test so many browsers are aiming at, including IE7. I've been reading the IE7 developer's blog recently. Developer blogs are far more open than the monolithic company "press release" guys, so I'm getting all sorts of info. For example, the IE guys admit fully just how buggy IE is. They basically state the first order of business is cutting IE away from Windows, which was a major security blunder to begin with. Then more security. After making it at least as secure as the competition (meaning basically that the user will, as always, be the weakest link in the chain), they intend on making it complient. They have stated right off the bat that unfortunatly IE7 will NOT pass the acid2 test upon it's initial release but they hope to eventually have it fully complient with some future updates.
In general, these guys actually seem to know what they are doing, and with all the various browser makers of any import working towards the same standards the devastating horrors of the "netscape explorer" browser wars which left countless webpages not fully compatible with either browser (and let's face it, by the end of that war, IE was better than Netscape was at the time), we're going to end up with just being able to pick the browser we like best. Now, if only Macromedia would make their Flash a fully open source thing (or someone else make one that is that takes the net by storm) so that each browser didn't have to wait for Macromedia to design a plugin for it, we'd have a fully compatible internet. What's nice is that with the internet, backwards compatibility isn't too much of an issue. Once something becomes popular enough, the old standards just start vanishing as web pages either update themselves or just drop off the net due to not being updated in 2 years anyway.
For my part, I just want a browser to take up minimal space in memory. I get what I need and don't clutter it down with stuff I don't need. Why would I need a bar to search for movie information at the touch of a button? I don't find myself doing that every single second of every day. I can just pull up a shortcut IF and WHEN I need to pull up that information and the rest of the time there's no memory hogging during my net surfing.
The weather, maybe, but I really don't concern myself with it that much. If it rains, it rains, if it is sunny, it is sunny. I don't do much that requires advanced knowledge of the weather conditions.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)