Firefox 3.5: World's most popular browser [Archive] - AusPhotography:: Australia's Premier Photography Forum::

Kym

23-12-2009, 10:47am

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=6498&tag=nl.e539

Data released by StatCounter indicates that Firefox 3.5 is the world’s most popular browser, having edged ahead of Internet Explorer 7.

AusPhotography recommend Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html) to all our members for the best site experience.
We only test the site with Firefox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html) and IE.

Both Opera and Safari are also know to work well with AP but we don't formally test with either.
Google Chrome is known to have issues.

cinvala

23-12-2009, 11:12am

I switched from IE to firefox about 3 months ago. I couldn't believe the improvement in download speed and stabiltiy. I haven't had a "browser has kicked the bucket and needs to shut down" message with firefox.:th3:

pgbphotographytas

23-12-2009, 11:29am

I have been using Firefox for quite a while, I try and get as many people as possible on and using it.

rookie

23-12-2009, 12:04pm

Just downloaded and can't beleive the differance in the speed :xmas31:

Tannin

23-12-2009, 12:22pm

I'm a rusted-on Opera user these days, but there is no doubt about it: all three modern browsers (Firefox, Opera (http://opera.com), and Seamonkey (http://www.seamonkey-project.org/)) are excellent.

There is no consensus as yet about the two newcomers (Chrome and Safari). Both have their fans, but both have had some very serious criticisms leveled at them too. One assumes that they will mature into quality products over time if their developers keep spending the money it takes to work on therm.

No reputable computer expert has recommended Internet Explorer this century.

hackcessor

23-12-2009, 12:36pm

I am a converted fan of Firefox

I keep IE up to date with an icon on the desktop, but only for dire circumstances

Kym

23-12-2009, 12:53pm

seastorm

23-12-2009, 1:18pm

I've switched from IE to Firefox a couple of months ago, and it's definitely faster on AP pages :)

davesmith

23-12-2009, 2:41pm

DAdeGroot

23-12-2009, 2:46pm

davesmith

23-12-2009, 3:06pm

Thanks for the advice, but it doesn't really answer my question

Kym

23-12-2009, 3:40pm

If you're supporting and testing with IE is it possible something can be done about the time it takes to display the screen? Clicking on, for example, a new post I'm confronted with 5-6 seconds of grey screen before anything is displayed.

Sadly no.
It's not our end, it is slow because the IE rendering engine is slow.
The content sent to all browsers is the same, I get slow IE on other sites as well.

W have implemented all possible tuning at our end.
Eg. We have stream compression on (all text is compressed), and we have caching on (all static parts should only load once for a session or longer in some cases).

IE can be tuned - slightly. Google 'tuning internet explorer speed'
Also: Increase the number of simultaneous connections IE makes to a Web server is the #1 fix (google for details).

fillum

23-12-2009, 5:33pm

I started using FF about a week ago after reading some stuff about performance in a thread here. FF was certainly quicker, but other than that I was a bit underwhelmed. Kept getting missing plugin messages and wasn't able to find some config stuff for colour management (in about:config). Tabs weren't as easy to use as IE, etc.

I was running version 1.5.0.3 and the updater wanted to install 1.5.0.12 so I thought I was pretty close to the latest version :rolleyes:. Anyhoo now realise that latest is v3.5, so I just downloaded it.
So far it's all good :food04:

Cheers.

Kym

23-12-2009, 5:59pm

The missing plugins are usually fixed by installing Flashplayer etc. from www.adobe.com

davesmith

23-12-2009, 6:04pm

Thanks for the info Kym. Interestingly the IE issue has only become a problem since upgrading from IE6 to IE7.

Kym

23-12-2009, 6:11pm

Thanks for the info Kym. Interestingly the IE issue has only become a problem since upgrading from IE6 to IE7.

IE 8 is not much better. MS bloat :eek:

Tannin

23-12-2009, 6:34pm

Dave, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to worry about the slowness of Internet Explorer when for zero dollars you could switch to Firefox (which is much faster than IE) or Opera (which is even faster than Firefox). Both are vastly more secure, more compatible with international web code standards, and offer various ease-of-use offer features IE does not.

This site does load a lot of code per page - it's not actually very efficient HTML code - but that is unavoidable with any site powered by vBulletin. There are alternative forum packages, but they tend to be worse, not better. In the context of modern presentation engines, this is actually pretty good. The long and the short of it is - it's time to upgrade to a modern browser.

davesmith

23-12-2009, 7:02pm

Thanks for the advice, but no, it does makes a lot of sense if you don't have the option. I completely understand that FF may be quicker. I know it doesn't cost me a dollar and I use it at home. But when it's said that AP is supported and tested on IE it's a shame that the experience is less than satisfactory now. Having said that, as Kym said though, apparently it's a fault of IE. As I also said though, I never had the same problem on IE6.

I'd be interested to know if I'm the only one having the IE issue though as well.

etherial

23-12-2009, 7:23pm

I love to see Firefox doing well. I have been using it for years, since V1 from memory! With the extensions I like to tweak it to do exactly what I like. It's perfect for my needs.

Tannin

23-12-2009, 7:26pm

Iy's not exactly IE's fault, Dave. It's really just one of those things that we call "progress". Internet connections are much faster than they used to be, web browsers have become vastly more competent than they once were - and actually got faster, which is quite astonishing in a world where software always gets bigger and slower and more complicated over time - look at Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, spreadsheets, or Windows itself for evidence of this.

So we have faster connections, more competent browsers, and significantly more complicated web pages that look better and work better but demand a lot more work from the browser. IE's fault? Well, yes. But then IE (no matter which version it says on the surface) is a very, very old browser. None of the other browsers which were around in the mid to late 1990s (when IE was designed) would be any good today either.

(Well, except for Opera, but Opera never did follow the normal rules about anything.)

Kym

23-12-2009, 7:27pm

But when it's said that AP is supported and tested on IE it's a shame that the experience is less than satisfactory now. Having said that, as Kym said though, apparently it's a fault of IE. As I also said though, I never had the same problem on IE6.

I'm good but I cannot fix MS IE :rolleyes:.
vBulletin is built to support all modern browsers, we won't make AP an IE only site either, and I'm not sure that would actually make much difference :cool:
BTW the primary reason for IE slowness is MS trying to keep backward non-standard MS support while attempting to support the W3c standards at the same time.

As I said above we have all sensible optimisations turned on, and regarding the vB inefficient HTML - it is compressed in transit and cached (365 days time-out).

There are things to improve IE performance - as stated above you will need to do some research (Google) and hack into the registry (which is a risk of course).

Tannin

23-12-2009, 7:58pm

But you would have to agree that vBulletin still writes pretty ugly code, Kym. Without actually measuring it, I'd estimate around twice the size it ought to be, or perhaps four times the size of a carefully hand-optimised site. Compression is all very well, but the best solution is to write neat, efficient code in the first place.

Not that I'm complaining, mind you. vBulletin is no worse than most code generators and a lot better than some (can we say "Frontpage"?), and there are many, many reasons why it is an excellent choice for a site like this one. In fact, I suspect that VB is the best of all choices available today.

cupic

24-12-2009, 11:24pm

Been using FF from the beginning and haven't seen IE since version 5 me thinks

cheers

Grug

28-12-2009, 6:09pm

Flock is another interesting browser that some people here may like. It carries a bit more bloat than other browsers as it links into all of your social networking sites too and presents you with a home page of all recent updates in flickr, picasa, facebook, livejournal, gmail, myspace, twitter, etc, etc associated with your accounts and RSS feeds. It also uses the same gecko rendering engine as firefox (and identifies as firefox 3.0 to websites) and is compatible with firefox extensions for mouse gestures, etc.

This is clearly not an ideal browser for someone that wants a lightning speed startup time, but for those that spend a little too much time on social and news related activities - once configured, it can be a huge timesaver. :)

remin

31-12-2009, 11:56am

mclean8

01-01-2010, 3:09pm

additionally, firefox is colour profile aware and the only mainstream brower on wintel that is (opera, IE and chrome are not). important for everyone, and particularly for anyone with a high gamut monitor.

Kym

01-01-2010, 3:24pm

Safari is actually a far better browser, though most will disagree. Other than photography, I do a lot of bleeding edge web dev, and atm only Safari is HTML 5 compat.
Also, it has far less memory leaks :P.
Still have the last version of Phoenix, which runs stupidly faster than Firefox.

Safari, Opera etc. are good no question. But Firefox is open source and has lots of plugins and that works for me.

HTML 5 is interesting but a long way off. Until most browsers support it there is not much point in using it.

Paul G

01-01-2010, 3:34pm

Sadly, and for reasons unknown, Firefox has been somewhat slower for me lately (but still quicker than IE8). Having a few issues with mouse-clicks not responding etc but I don't know if this is a browser issue or something else again...

I pretty much use Firefox 98% of the time now yet my partner will not even try to get use to the layout/tabs/bookmarks instead of favourites and she still prefers IE8.

Actually that last line brings a question to mind - does anyone else not get their full favourites list displayed in Firefox's Bookmarks? A lot of my IE8 Favourites list does not appear in Firefox Bookmarks list....

ving

01-01-2010, 3:44pm

die hard opera user here too tannin :)

I can report no issues using the browser with this site. :)
i also occasionally use fire fox and it works great too.... MS are gunna need to do something really special to get peeps back