The best-known web client is the browser.  What browser or browsers do you
use?  What are the reasons for your choices?

32 responses total.

Firefox, Camino and Safari; Firefox on the Mac and my Linux desktop at work.
Camino and Safari on the Mac.

I use Camino primarily, and Shiira for some things (as a second browser
with different settings).  Once in a while I'll use Mozilla or Safari. 
I keep a copy of MSIE just in case I have to do something really stupid.

My primary web browser is Mozilla Firefox. It is installed on my Linux
workstation, Windows laptop, and Powermac. However I use other browsers
to see how certain web pages will look in them.

Lynx and links2. For things that are inconsiderate enough to not work with
those, I use Konqueror or, if a site runs into its missing features, Firefox. 

Konqueror, or Firefox. If a site only works with IE, it's not worth bothering
with.

Firefox.  Cause all you smart Unix guys said so.

Being a good citizen of AppleLand and an OS X user, my default web 
browser is Safari!

Seriously, several different browsers do an excellent job of rendering 
(Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera), so that's not really the issue.  I use 
Safari because it's fast, standards-conforming (mostly), and for a 
couple of other reasons that some folks might consider trivial but which 
matter to me.  For example, the zoom button (the green '+' button in the 
upper left-hand corner of the window) does the right thing when you 
click on it - which is NOT to go full-screen.  There are some 
annoyances, like the limited options in the GUI preferences menu (not 
being able to select default link colors or opt for non-underlined 
links), but there are ways around those.

I use Firefox with appropriate extensions when doing serious web 
development.  The "web developer" and "DOM inspector" add-ons are really 
nice.  And thanks to the Quicksilver program, when I'm viewing a page in 
Safari, I can bring up the same page in Firefox using a simple keystroke 
(option-cmd-O).

I use Firefox, unless I'm on a crappy work computer, in which case I use IE
because it usually takes less RAM.

Re #7: I know Firefox has a "web developer". but I don't understand it. Can
it be used like the Netscape Composer, to create web pages without knowing
HTML?

No, the Firefox web developer add-on is intended for a different audience, 
people who are already web developers familiar with web publishing 
technologies like HTML and CSS, or who want to learn more about those 
technologies.  It provides a toolbar interface for display and editing of 
HTML and CSS, but to use it effectively, you have to have some familiarity 
with those formats.  For students, it provides a nice sandbox for 
experimentation.

Rane, Dreamweaver is the HTML-creator for people who don't want to learn HTML.
It is easy to learn, and you can create webpages without ever learning HTML.
It even cleans up the HTML created by the Word-to-Web save feature.  

That said, I find even dreamweaver benefits from looking at the code, and
creating good CSS folders.  

I like editing my HTML by hand instead of through some Wysiwyg editor.
One thing I liked about Dreamweaver was it's code viewer which
highlighted things nicely and did autocompletes. However, I have found a
free program that does that. It's called jedit and is Java so it runs on
multiple platforms. 

(I'll start a new item on tools for creating webpages...)

Okay, item:6 is for discussion of tools for creating and modifying web 
pages.

I primarily use FireFox, though I haven't got the new update. How long does
it take? Because when I'm on my laptop, I don't want to have to wait 10
minutes while FireFox updates. And is there an advantage over the old version?

I keep IE on my laptop because unfortunately there are still websites out
there that conform only to IE and I have to use them (It seems that all the
lawfirms conform mostly to IE, very annoying). And I use IE at work because
it's the only thing installed. I use IE as rarely as possible.

As coincidence would have it, I started Firefox just now and was notified 
that a new update was availble (2.0.0.3).  Took about 5 seconds to 
download and install.  I was running 2.0.0.2 before.

You don't mention what version of FF you're running.  If you're updating 
from version 1 to version 2, it might take a bit longer.

I think I'm on 1. I know there was a big brouhah about an update that I didn't
install - that would be 2, I guess. Any advantages of 2 over 1?

You can find a detailed discussion of the major changes from version 1 
to version 2 here: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?
article=20112 . These include improved security, enhancements to the 
search feature, improvements to tabbed browsing, session restoring 
(useful after a crash), and friendlier RSS support.

Firefox isn't my regular browser, but I've used it enough to notice that 
version 2 feels faster than version 1 on my Mac.  Tab handling is 
significantly improved - you can drag tabs to new positions, each tab 
has its own "close" button, and there's a tab menu that you can activate 
that's very useful if you have a large number of tabs open.  Firefox's 
RSS handling via "Live Bookmarks" is still a little too primitive for my 
taste, but in user preferences you can select a default newsreader to 
invoke when you click on the RSS icon in the browser's address box.

I think it's a worthwhile upgrade.

Sorry the URL wrapped in the response above.  Here it is again:
http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=20112

What is your regular browser, John?

Safari, as I indicated in resp:7.

i just use good old Internet Explorer (pauses) uh....
i dont know which version this is......

and on another pc i use firefox. but now that IE has tabbed browsing, 
well IE does the job.

when doing serious web design ill use a pc that has ie, netscape, 
opera, firefox, and a text based browser to make sure the images and 
site looks ok to all users.

I was using Firefox when it notified me that it had just downloaded the update
on its own and would install it the next time it was restarted. I wasn't sure
if I liked such presumptuousness or not.......it could have been something
nasty.

Hmmm - maybe you set some sort of automatic download default? I haven't
gotten any such updates.

 Automatic updating became the default in version 2.0.  I agree that I'm
 uncomfortable with software programs deciding to alter themselves.

When i'm devleoping on my windows box I use Firefox 2.0 and sometimes IE when
someone mentions that I need to test in IE.  On my mac I use firefox but
safari has been drawing me in with it's speed lately.

Regarding #21; D'oh!

Regarding #23,24,25: Automatic updates can be disabled in the preferences.

Now when IE has Tabs is so batter then Firefox, becouse eats less RAM

Mozilla seems to have better security.

It's been almost five years since the last response in this item.

What browsers do people use these days?

I gave up on Camino, and switched primarily to Chrome.  I still use
Safari on the Mac, and Firefox occasionally, and sometimes Opera
for testing.

For my own web site, I made a conscious decision to not care about
Internet Explorer versions less than 9.  But paradoxically, I'm
trying to remain compatible with text-mode browsers such as lynx,
w3c and links.

Why text browsers?  Mostly accessibility for visually impaired
users: looking at a page in a text-mode browser tells me, the author,
that all the content I want is actually there and organized the way
I intended.  I figure if Lynx can display it reasonably, then a
screen reader probably can as well.

Secondly, I embed math into some of my pages (e.g.,
http://pub.gajendra.net/an_explanation_of_the_rsa_cryptosystem).
I'd like the underlying LaTeX markup to be accessible in the page
source, and by looking that page with something like lynx or w3m,
I can verify that it is there.  Again, this is mostly for visually
impaired users: some screen readers are capable of interpreting
LaTeX math commands.  Also, I believe that command-line interfaces
are both useful and good, so compatibility with them seems like
a good goal.

Of course, I only care about recent versions of these browsers.
For instance, the version of lynx here on Grex doesn't deal well
with some of the unicode character literals (encoded as UTF-8
sequences) on my pages (newer versions just map things like
opening and closing double quotes to the ASCII doublequote
character).  I don't care about that.  The OpenBSD people need
to catch up.

Friends my age are enthusiastic about chrome or firefox.  Because firefox is
run by a non-profit organization, I chose that browser instead of chrome. 
More then one person has told me that they found that "the only good use for
Internet Explorer is to download Firefox (or Chrome)".

The first tiem I ever used lynx was at a weekend class in unix administration.
I haven't used it since, but I do prefer sites which are simple.  Some new
elements to the web, such as video playback and image sharing have a
good reason to be available, but there are sites full of graphics and ads that
are a cluttered mess, when they really don't have to be.

A different uses. For a game in a browser? Chrome because it's fast.
For serious reading? Safari. The reader function is invaluable. 
For reading the web at work? Lynx or elinks. I have been using them for
many  many years. Because more and more websites are less compatible
with them I  now read the mobile sites. Thank god for those!

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