Browsers

I've installed all the major browsers on my AAO but I have a hard time picking a favorite.

Internet Explorer: 7 is slow and lacks features. 8 is also slow but has more features. Also it still uses too much screen real estate for all the toolbars etc. Maybe if you have a 3 GHz Quad, 6GB RAM and a 30" screen.

Firefox 3: Tried and true, and what I use on my desktop machine. There are a few "hickups" when filling out forms or entering URLs on the SSD-equiped AAO. Youtube videos stutter a little if you're playing back while it's still downloading, not due to bandwidth issues, but because of the writes to the SSD. You can customize the browser in almost any way - I only use tiny navigation buttons, and auto-hide the status and menu bars.

Chrome: Seems pretty fast but not enough features. Images don't get enlarged when you zoom, messing up the page layout. No autoscroll by clicking the middle mouse button or wheel.

Safari 4: Surprisingly fast - didn't expect this since iTunes is a useless, memory hogging piece of crap bordering on malware. UI-wise, Safari doesn't integrate too well with Windows but at least it uses proper Windows titlebars for windows now. However the window titlebars are super-thick for some reason. Youtube videos barely skip frames while streaming. Complex pages load quickly. Minimalist navigation buttons and menus. I kind of like this, to my surprise. However it's freaking ugly.

Opera: Uses the least memory. Very fast. Uses a lot of screen real estate by default but can easily be customized. Slower than Safari for Youtube but faster than Firefox or IE. No hickups due to the SSD except for Youtube. The big drawback for me is that you can't have small windows "floating" outside of the main application. Some community sites and webmail services use a small floating window to notify of new messages etc so you don't need to leave a big page open, but with Opera, this window has to "live" inside a big Opera window.

I like Firefox the best, but both Safari and Opera are faster due to the SSD issues. Opera would be perfect because it's so fast and uses so little RAM, but I can't use it due to the floating windows issue. I guess that makes Safari the best choice...but it's so ugly... I don't want to keep switching browsers either, I need to decide on one. What do you use on your AAO and why?

 

I find that explorer 8 is the worst browser on the one.

I have used safari and think its ok.

Opera? Nope too different.

Chrome! Yap. I like Chrome on the One. Pages zip in fast. Minimal controls? Nope All of the essentials are there. And it runs Jscripts fast.

Firefox (2 is better than 3)

Why are browsers so bloated these days anyway?

 

I find that Internet Explorer 8 is the fastest browser. It's much more responsive and loads webpages much faster than firefox 3.
Firefox uses too much screen estate unless you mod it. IE 8 is very clean and much more simple than firefox on stock configurations.

Internet Explorer 8 is my main browser. Firefox 3 is for school which uses a proxy.

I modded my firefox interface so it looks exactly like internet explorer 8 thus making it easier to use and cleaner.
http://tsr-pr.deviantart.com/art/Make-F ... -105565778

On my quadcore desktop with 4 gig of ram, Internet Explorer 8 runs the fastest, then chrom, and firefox being the worst. I think IE8 take advantage of my unused ram and preloads some features or websites for me.

 

There's a lot I like about Chrome, but like I said, there are two features I use daily that it doesn't support. Autoscroll and proper zoom without distorting the page layout. When/if those features get implemented I might look at it again.

I'll have to take a second look at IE8 to see how it performs. Still disagree about screen real estate though. Here's what my Firefox setup looks like.
[attachment=0:3p2z9pwm]browser.jpg[/attachment:3p2z9pwm]
The tab bar and status plus menu bars only appear when needed. I have configured Opera to look similar, and Chrome and Safari both already use very little space.

 

how have you done that?

 

My IE 8 and firefox both looks the same, and uses the same amount of screen estate after modding. Since I always open multiple tabs, it's not feisable for me to hide the tab bar.

Also, I was talking about how much screen estate firefox was using before modding/applying skins/etc.

BTW, how do I modd firefox so it removes the little bar on the top when it's full screened. IE 8 doesn't have that little grey bar on the top.

 

I use these addons for Firefox:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/4762
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/1530

I've also set it to use small icons under View->Toolbar->Customize

That's what I like about Firefox.. You can tweak it in any way you want. On my Vista desktop rig, I've made it look almost like IE, complete with the glass effect.

Unfortunately that flexibility comes at a price, as only IE uses more RAM, and there are a few SSD access pauses when opening new windows, filling out forms or entering new URLs. I wish I had something that looked like Chrome, performed like Opera and had all the features of Firefox...plus the smooth youtube playback of Safari...

 

This thread is as good as any to ask in, I suppose.

Am I just missing it, or is Firefox unable to save web pages into a single file like IE is?

I LOVE LOVE LOVE the ability in IE to save a page, pictures & everything, as a single .mht file. Firefox seems to only save as an .htm & an associated folder with all the pics and such.

I like many of the plugins that Firefox offers, but unless I'm able to save as a single file I think I'm gonna head back to IE land (the Maxthon browser, built on the IE core.)

 

There is a plugin for this, too...... google for it!!!!

 

I prefer Mozilla Firefox 3.0.7 - It's fully customizable, fast and stable.
I have tried Internet Explorer 8 but it opens each tab as a separate process, not much add-ons.
Google Chrome - fast, no add-ons.

A post about seeing more with Mozilla Firefox on my Aspire One Experience Blog..

 

The L2 cache info on your Hacks page is incorrect. If you input 512 as a Hex (like in the pic example you use), you're not accomplishing what you want to be. It has to go in as a decimal number. And, has anyone proven that this either helps or is needed these days? I know that was something that mighta done some good in the past, but I was under the impression that it was no longer an issue.

 

I was talking about my Aspire One Experience Blog, not my hacks/mods website.
I will change that someday...

 

You should change it today if you're going to continue to send people to that hack with a link in your sig.

 

One browser...... Mozilla Minefield.
It is Firefox 3.2 pre build.... it is also memory friendly and very very fast.
Do a google search and get the latest daily trunk build.

 

Opera!
Ever tried to have over hundred tabs open simultanously while running skype, amarok?
No problem with Opera, try this with FF and your machine will be slow as hell (talking about an Acer 150 with 1 gig of ram).
In addition to that, Opera has most of the features that are both essential an require other browsers to install addons, already built in (mail, mouse gestures, irc, adblocker).
There are a few occassions where i use Konqueror (jup, it IS possible to run this on a win-machine) or FF, but normaly there is no use for another browser.

 

who opens hundreds of tabs at once in their browser? I'm using IE 8 and Firefox 3 and i see no lag when i open 25-30 tabs at once. Normally, i would only open at most 5 tabs at once.

Mail, mouse gestures, irc, adblockcers are all useless features to me inside a browser. For mail, i use microsoft outlook 2007. I don't use mouse gestures and irc. All other browser has adblocker. So there's nothing special about opera.

All browsers have the essential features built in. Whichever browser you choose is probably based on the availiability, convenience, and personal preference. You will rarely notice any speed difference unless you have a ultra slow computer or messed up computer.

 

I am running Safari and it seems to be a fast loading browser. However, I can't seem to find plug-ins for Safari for Windows. It seems on every page I go to there are ads for Vimax. I can't let my kids use this browser because the ads are obnoxious and borderline lewd. Anyone know where I can get the plug-in for ad filter. The only ones I found are for OSX.
Thanx

 

I'm running the latest releases of the free XP friendly browsers that I've found stable: FF3.08 (default), IE8, and Chrome 2. (FF3.1 beta was faster that 3.0, but crashy as of a few weeks ago.) Chrome seems the fastest, but the incremental speed differences are pretty minimal. To maximize privacy and functionality, I silo their uses: Firefox for general browsing, NoScript security, and especially image searches, since Cooliris is great for Google and Flickr; IE8 for MS sites including the wonderful new Live Mesh, and some sites that don't seem to render right in anything but IE; and Chrome for everything Snoople and very little else - I do find Hulu video works a little better on it.

Increasingly browsers are going to be evaluated for the suites of cloud applications optimized for them, like the Windows Live and Google offerings. FIrefox is at risk in this area - Yahoo still works well on it but is falling behind on these integrated services.

By the way, IE7/8 users should note that a free extension called IE7-Pro adds some very good functionality, including automatic sync and online backup of netbook Favorites with other computers (like Foxmarks does for FF, nothing comparable for Chrome.)

 

Ever been doing some research?
I do this quite often for university, and 40-60 tabs are normaly beeing opened upon browser start for me.
And i know quite a few people wo have comparable numbers of tabs open while they search the web.

I beg to differ, good sir.
First, while i can see that mail, mousegestures and irc are things that not everybody uses within a browser, the thought of someone deeming an adblocker useless ist totaly beyond my understanding. Second, i realy like efficiency, mousegestures speed the navigation up (only thing faster ist textmodebrowsing with lynx), not beeing forced to run a gazillion apps adds to this. And, just because you don't use those features, those aren't uselss.
There is a good reason why Opera was able to charge people for their browser (and it was worth every cent) and is now one of the most used browsers on mobile devices.
I could run Outlook, an RSS-reader, mirc, a newsgroupreader, a browser and bittoret simultanously, or i could just run Opera which has all those things already built in.
All other browser need some kind of plugins or addons (which slow down the browser) to reach the abbilities of Opera, and even tend to simply copy its inovations (tabbed browsing).
Also, passing Acid3 is quite sexy.

Well, this is plain and simple wrong.
Open up a good number of apps, then monitor the ram/CPU usage of firefox3.
I can't speak of IE since i want to keep my windows installation virus-free, but the difference between Opera an FF is quite notable.
Atm i have 94 tabs open and i am using the irc and rss function of opera on my aspire one.
It is at 12% CPU usage. Firefox with 40 tabs gave mit 52% usage.

 

My research patterns are much more efficient. I copy all the revailent information to MS onenote. That way, i can search through them, record notes on specific parts of the website,...etc. I don't have to open tonnes of tabs to waste my comptuer resource.

With everything integrated into an browser (opera) is very unefficient. It's way too complicated and it lacks the ability to finetune a specific application without going through tonnes of menus..etc. With different apps controlling different things, it's both faster and more reliable. If one app crash, other ones won't crash either. Multiple apps also take advantage of the "dual core (one physicial and one logical)" which AAO has. I like to run my programs more efficient than have to use a single apps for all of my things.

I have everything open, (torrent, outlook, internet explorer with 4 tabs open, MS onenote, winflip...etc) with only 5% cpu utilization and under 600MB of ram used. Everything remains very responsive and consuming only 9W of electricity (very environmentally frendly too).

I have no virus protection running on my AAO and i haven't gotten a single virus. IE 8 is my main browser which is much faster than FF3 on my netbook. I also prefer IE 8 interface. Very clean with tonnes of functions which I actually use. Also, I use a lot of softwares which FF, Opera..etc cannot render probably and won't work except on IE.