Will you be moving away from IE?

[gemini06720]

I had a look at Opera 10.5 the other day -- very nice too

I have that 'gut' feeling that Opera will eventually replace Firefox as the number 2 browser, as, even with widgets, Opera is still faster than a bare Firefox. David, have you tried that new Opera Turbo mode...

Seems a bit odd not to test how your site will work for over 50% of your visitors - even if you don't like the browser they use. But that's my opinion.

Mark, it MY site and I will not support a software from a company that produces a browser I do not trust...

If my pages can be viewed without problem in Firefox or in Opera or in Google Chrome, then the pages should display correctly into Internet Explorer - if the pages do not display properly, then it is up to Microsoft to support the agreed upon Internet standards and not create their own...

[daj]

David, have you tried that new Opera Turbo mode...

I did but I was not sure it was for me -- albeit my tests were brief, it employs image compression which results is slight distortion to images. I can see it being really useful when I am on the road using my mobile broadband but not when connected up at home/work.

In Operas favor, it has really moved on -- Previous versions did have problems displaying some pages but so far in my highly scientific test(!) it has displayed all pages well.

[Gina]

Yes, I've found Firefox is getting rather bloated too - in it's Linux version.

[EvilV]

Yes, I've found Firefox is getting rather bloated too - in it's Linux version.

Lots of stuff is bloated nowadays, isn't it? Remember when computers had 100K, 5.5" floppy drives for storage, 48 to 100k of ram, and seemed to work pretty well for general office tasks? I have to shake my head to realise that this was only 25 years ago. I remember my green and black screened Amstrad 8256. It had (I think) 180k 3.5" floppies for storage, and about 100k of ram. It seemed powerful, and I made large databases on it with a piece of software called Dbase 2. All this ran on CPM, an operating system that a scallywag, geek called Bill Gates reverse-engineered into a system called MS DOS that he sold to IBM and turned his tiny company into the biggest and richest in the world's history. CPM looked exactly like MS DOS, did (to the likes of me anyway). The commands were a little bit different, but I'f you'd used one, you could use the other.

Happy days - and of course they now tell us all that Apollo 8 had a computer much less powerful than the most basic mobile phone now has. On that Apollo flight computer that made the Moon landings possible, the programmes were stored in a weird box in which wires had been threaded different ways through ferrite rings. Straight through the ring was a 'one' and wrap it around the ring was a 'zero'. You couldn't exactly re-flash the software in those days. LOL.

More about this here. You should see the ladies programming the computer like it was knitting.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8148730.stm

[nking]

Ah the good old days... alas too many bits and bytes have made me rather bloated over the last 25 years

[EvilV]

Ah the good old days... alas too many bits and bytes have made me rather bloated over the last 25 years

Ha ha ha - tell me about it - I just had a Chinese from the take away.

[Gina]

I had a friend who had an Amstrad like that and we did some programming on it. Yes I remember CPM

I had a BBC B computer. I wrote a word processor for it with a special 6x8 pixel font to get 80 chars across the screen. Written in assembler. It was fun. I still enjoy programming but things are very different these days

[EvilV]

I had a friend who had an Amstrad like that and we did some programming on it. Yes I remember CPM

I had a BBC B computer. I wrote a word processor for it with a special 6x8 pixel font to get 80 chars across the screen. Written in assembler. It was fun. I still enjoy programming but things are very different these days

I remember going to an educational conference on technology teaching, with a group of bright sixth form lads with BBC B computers that they had made a fibre optic networking system for. The old Beeb had an rs432 serial port and we made a simple transistor switch that operated a bright led and transmitted the data to another Beeb via a photo diode at the other end. They had to write the program to send and receive the data. It was asynchronous as I recall, but it is a long time ago. Anyway, it was pretty edgy as a school project in the mid eighties, even if it wasn't rocket science to make it work. Anyway - they made it transmit a programme file across and then run it at the other end.

[nking]

Some of my latest stats on browsers visiting my site. I know they're not big numbers but interesting none the less, particularly the overall shift towards Chrome, Opera and Safari.

Browser Visits % visits
Firefox
15 Mar 2010 - 21 Mar 2010 71 38.59%
8 Mar 2010 - 14 Mar 2010 76 33.93%
% Change -6.58% 13.73%
Internet Explorer
15 Mar 2010 - 21 Mar 2010 65 35.33%
8 Mar 2010 - 14 Mar 2010 90 40.18%
% Change -27.78% -12.08%
Chrome
15 Mar 2010 - 21 Mar 2010 25 13.59%
8 Mar 2010 - 14 Mar 2010 24 10.71%
% Change 4.17% 26.81%
Opera
15 Mar 2010 - 21 Mar 2010 11 5.98%
8 Mar 2010 - 14 Mar 2010 19 8.48%
% Change -42.11% -29.52%
Safari
15 Mar 2010 - 21 Mar 2010 9 4.89%
8 Mar 2010 - 14 Mar 2010 5 2.23%
% Change 80.00% 119.13%

[keithatrochdale]

Been on Firefox for ages.

[PeterP]

I'm with Google Chrome, very fast, and there is a new add-in, its an IE compatibility tool, if a page doesn't display properly you just push the icon and voilà!https://cumulus.hosiene.co.uk/posting.php ... 3c88688097#

I was using Firefox but got a bit sick of all the constant updates slowing it down.

[Repairman77]

Firefox with NoScript, Adblock+ and Flashblock add-ons is reckoned to be one of the safest browsers around according to the techi forums I post on.

Been using it for years; just use IE7 for banking and Opera occasionally.

Mike.

[nking]

just use IE7 for banking

Hi Mike,

I hope you mean you use IE8, if you are still using IE7 then update it to IE8 - it's safer.

Regards

[GraemeT]

I've used Firefox as a browser and Thunderbird as a mail client since they were first released.
I keep Internet Exploder handy for those websites (fortunately not many) that refuse to co-operate with Firefox.
My wife's employer is one example - she gets her payslips from their website and can only log in using IE6 or later,
no other browser is accepted.

[casacota]

I did check "stay with IE", and I'm writing with Firefox. Anyway, I use Windows XP 64 bit (that's in fact windows server 2003 64 bit with XP interface) and use IE 64 bit, wich should be invulnerable for most virus - running without antivirus on a 4 core AMD it does fly... I love speed!