Sorry, Micro$oft, you let me down again. I installed Internet Exploder 9 shortly after it was made available, because it's supposed to be the most modern browser there is, supposed to be faster than Chrome and Firefox, and supposed to be up to speed on all of the latest standards.
I knew from the start that it wouldn't be, but I expected it to be better than what I'm seeing. Still, I gave it the chance, and it proved that it's still just a little behind.
My experience is on my home PC, which is a desktop Dell PowerEdge SC440 with a Pentium D 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM (although Windows only sees 3GB), with a NVIDIA GeForce 6200A 256MB PCI video card. It's not the most powerful or modern machine, but it does pretty well. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate x86.
Installation was kind of interesting. It didn't require a full reboot, which was surprising, but did require that I specifically close nearly all of my open programs, including Windows Explorer, in order to install. Why it needed access to the files used by TweetDeck, Trillian, KeePass, Thunderbird, or Toad, I don't know, but turning off my anti-virus and especially not turning it back on when completed seems a little sketchy to me.
Immediately the first thing I noticed was that it's just not quite as "peppy" as Chrome or Firefox. Scrolling up and down a page using my mouse wheel is how I spend a significant amount of time on the web. In Chrome or Firefox, it's very smooth and consistent. In IE9, it's just a little jumpy. We're talking milliseconds here, but it's enough for me to notice.
Watching Flash videos on YouTube is clearly worse in IE9. Simply moving my mouse around the page, hovering over links, or hovering over the video causes the video to be choppy, even stop completely. This doesn't happen in Firefox - the videos are smooth and consistent.
Javascript is definitely improved from previous versions, but it is not faster than Chrome in the apps I tried. A good test is dragging and dropping on the Netflix queue page. IE8 and previous were basically unusable on this page, because it just took so long for the browser to understand what you were doing, while Chrome worked reasonably well. IE9 handles this page about as well as Chrome does. However, there are scenarios that just aren't up to speed yet. Using jQueryUI for custom animations works perfectly in Chrome, but on my machine, it's still a little choppy and not a smooth animation - it's performing about the same as Firefox 3.6. The example I'm using is my own homepage, jtenos.com, where I have links that pop up a jQueryUI dialog box.
There's still no "Paste and Go" option when pasting text into the URL bar. Chrome and Opera have this feature (Firefox, still waiting...). When I right-click in the URL bar when I have text in my clipboard, 99.99% of the time I'm going to want to navigate to what I'm about to paste in, so that should be a no brainer.
One of the major HTML5 testing sites, html5test.com, gives IE9 a worse score (130) than Firefox 3.6 (155) and significantly worse than Chrome 10 (288). One of the big IE9 selling points was that it was HTML5-ready, but that was apparently all fluff. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories on why some tests crowned IE king, while others show it failing miserably. Unfortunately, as a developer, I'm not using the new fancy HTML5 stuff myself yet, so I can't really make an unbiased judgment on this. I guess we'll find out soon how the various browsers handle the new and upcoming standards.
Oh, and one more thing - it's not available for Windows XP, so the millions of us who are still using XP (we're still on XP at work) will not benefit from IE9. I guess that makes Firefox 4 that much more appealing.
It's not all bad. Here's what I liked:
The color-coded tabs seemed a little silly at first, but I think it's a decent idea, that at worst, doesn't hurt anything. It gives related windows the same color, so if you have two original tabs, and click various links from each of the originals, you'll have two sets of colored tabs and can see which one came from where. I don't think anyone asked for this feature, and it was completely unnecessary, but it's not bad.
Middle-clicking the last open tab closes the browser completely. I've liked this feature about Chrome, and I'm glad IE has implemented it.
Overall application speed is significantly better than before - it opens and closes as fast as Chrome now, and when you consider how integrated IE has been in the operating system for the past 10 years or so, you really start to wonder what took so long.
Hardware acceleration is noticeable. IE9 does outperform Chrome and Firefox in some graphics-intensive tests. Whether those tests are legitimate or optimized for IE is debatable, but in any case, it proves that Microsoft does care about performance.
IE9 is nowhere near good enough to pull me away from Firefox and Chrome, but it's definitely a major step in the right direction. Personally, I'd rather see Microsoft abandon what it's not good at (browsers, source control, etc.) and let the industry specialists take over, leaving Microsoft to do what it does best (operating system, development tools, etc.). But that's never going to happen, so instead, I'll settle for them following accepted standards and providing a web experience that's satisfactory for casual surfers, serious web users, designers, and developers. If IE9 is a step in that direction, then I'll take it.
"it's not available for Windows XP, so the millions of us who are still using XP (we're still on XP at work)" .. oh dear! You poor bastard, still using XP! o.O I remember when in 1999 people were insane to still be using Windows 95 ..
Date: 2011-03-23 07:04:01
Name:
Joe Enos
It really doesn't bother me. XP is a good operating system, and aside from a few minor things (like the Start Menu searching or Ctrl-Shift-N), it does everything I need of it.
Date: 2011-03-23 10:23:00
Name:
Jason H (via Facebook)
Are you surprised? I'm not.
Date: 2011-03-23 12:40:06
Name:
Joe Enos
I was expecting it to be better - I didn't think it would be great, but I figured it would be better than it was.
Date: 2011-03-23 21:36:00
Name:
Jason H (via Facebook)
I'vee grown to lower my expectations with Microsoft so if it turns out well you can be pleasantly surprised. For example Vista, what I expected. Windows 7, pleasantly surprised.
I've supported Mozilla Firefox for a long time. I'm not changing my opinion that Firefox is an amazing piece of technology, but it's time to switch my official favorite browser to the newest version of Google Chrome, version 4.0.
Chrome has made amazing leaps in the industry, starting in late 2008, and already being the browser of choice for a significant number of people across the world. Speed has obviously been Chrome's biggest selling point - application speed and javascript speed are significantly better than any of the other major browsers. With open-source code, and security and basic user-experience on par with the competition, Chrome already had what it takes to be great.
However, with version 4, Chrome introduced the Firefox-killer: extensions. Extensions are what made Firefox special, and Chrome is off to a great start. Firefox has over 5,000 extensions for a wide variety of customizations, from simple appearance to bookmark management, social networking integration, privacy, development, language support, blogging, download management, and dozens of other categories. Basically, if you want to do it online, chances are someone wrote a Firefox extension to help you. I personally have used many extensions in Firefox, and have found them to be invaluable. For example, Linkification converts plain-text URLs into clickable links, saving copy/paste time when saving a bunch of plain-text links. Video DownloadHelper will save nearly all Flash streaming videos (like YouTube or Today's Big Thing onto your disk to watch later, with a simple user interface. And developer tools like Web Developer and Firebug are very useful for developing and debugging web applications.
Chrome now has their own extensions, and while they may not number in the thousands just yet, they're well on their way. Installation couldn't be any easier - most are one-click, like with Firefox. More are being added all the time, so it's just a matter of time before they catch up with Firefox.
Chrome seems to lead the industry in HTML5 support. This support, combined with its fast javascript rendering, make it the perfect browser for new web demos, like the Browser Ball, Intergalactic Oddyssey, and Canvascape.
The speed, support, and especially the introduction of extensions, make Chrome the best of the browsers at this time. Of course, in this ever-changing market, that can change at any time. Firefox 4 or 5 might figure out how to imrpove their speed and get back on top. Who knows, maybe IE9 will even top it. And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.
Date: 2010-01-31 11:13:13
Name:
Ricardo S (via Facebook)
Joe, do you have stock in Google? If I didn't know better I would believe that you also had stock in Firefox! You are a walking endorsement.... LOL
Date: 2010-01-31 11:14:10
Name:
Joe Enos
No, I just want to see Internet Exploder die a horrible death like it deserves, so the web can actually function properly. That would be enough to make me happy.
I've got a new page on my website, Free Software, listing my favorite free applications for software development, data security, and other utilities. Some are open source, some are freeware, and some are free software, but no shareware or trialware.
The latest version of the Opera web broswer, version 10, was recently released. While this broswer enjoys only a tiny share of the non-mobile market, it is definitely noteworthy in any discussion of web browsers. Opera has always been an early adopter, if not a pioneer themselves, of new browser features and functions.
Version 10 introduces several new and improved features, some of which are discussed below:
Opera Turbo Probably the most talked about new feature is Opera Turbo, a feature designed to improve download speeds in slow internet connections. The concept is nothing new - it's a proxy server that compresses large web content before sending it to the browser. But being streamlined inside the browser, and backed by a large company like Opera, makes it more easily accessible to the general public (you can turn it on simply by going to Tools->Quick Preferences->Enable Opera Turbo).
HTML compression is nothing new - GZip and Deflate are designed to compress data from the web server, and decompress on the client, in order to speed transmission of HTML. However, web server compression isn't turned on everywhere, and Turbo does more than just compress text. Images are permanently compressed (with loss of quality) and Flash is initially disabled, so there is literally less stuff for your browser to process, which can improve speed more than simple compression alone.
There are concerns about privacy any time you talk about proxy servers. Basically, a normal web connection means your browser requests data from a web server, and the web server responds directly to you. With Turbo, your traffic is routed through Opera's servers, so all of your requests and responses are visible to them. While they claim that your privacy is important (and there's no reason to doubt that), some people may not like the fact that a third party such as Opera has access to their history - in any case, users should at least be aware of what's going on. In addition, all secure connections (banks, credit cards, and any legitimate commerce sites) will not go through the Turbo servers, for a couple of reasons: first, it gives you piece of mind knowing that your secure information is not going through any unnecessary routing; and second, these connections are truly secure and made up of encrypted data, so compression wouldn't be as effective anyway, since there is no text or images like on normal connections.
Resizable Tab Section One of the cool new features of Opera is the resizable tab section. You can expand the tab section vertically at the top of the screen, and you'll see not only the titles, but a thumbnail preview of the tab as well. Thumbnail previews are really becoming standard in operating systems lately - Windows Vista, improved in Windows 7, and the latest Linux distros like Ubuntu 9.04 have recently adopted this type of preview for their applications, and this type of concept is quickly becoming standard in the browser world as well.
Browser Speed Opera 10 claims to be 40% faster than its predecessor. This is something that all browsers have been focusing quite a bit on lately. Everyone is fighting to be the fastest, and while Firefox has greatly improved their speed lately, Opera and Google Chrome still appear to be the top two when it comes to rendering speed - there is no single reliable browser speed test, so any discussion of speed is not conclusive.
Conclusion When it comes to browser customizability with extensions and add-ons, Firefox is still by far the best of all browsers. Internet Exploder has come a long way with version 8, and Chrome is still the fastest and lightest as an application, although available for Windows and Mac only. Safari is a quality browser, but seems to be a little bloated, at least in the Windows version (I haven't actually used a Mac since junior high). In the browser industry, Opera combines good speed and performance with quality built-in features and a decent selection of downloadable widgets.
Opera has been my number 2 browser at home (with Ubuntu) for awhile, and version 10 may be good enough to steal the number 2 spot from Chrome on my Windows machines. Opera owns a significant portion of the mobile browser market, and if they continue to improve on their fine product, they may start to see a little more usage in the full browser market.
Today was the official release date for Firefox 3.5, the most advanced browser to enter the market. The Mozilla project is by far the most important community in the web today - their goal is to ensure open internet standards, a necessary step in providing the best experience for all parties. They've taken the next step in that goal today.
After only about 12 hours, there have already been over 2.8 million downloads of Firefox 3.5, nearly 1 million in the U.S. alone, and is currently being downloaded at a rate of about 40 per second. (Stats available at http://downloadstats.mozilla.com/). That's some amazing work - it proves how much people care about Firefox, and how excited we all are at the idea of a new version of the product.
Below are some highlights of the new version:
Faster Javascript: Speed has been a major concern for all browsers lately. One of Chrome's big selling points has been its speed - same for Opera. The web is becoming more and more javascript and AJAX intensive, and javascript speed is a big factor in the overall user experience. Firefox 3.5 is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3, and many times faster than Firefox 2. Javascript speed is dependant on what you're doing, so there is no single "fastest" browser - but Firefox is absolutely back in the same ballpark as Chrome and Opera, and surprisingly Internet Exploder 8, which is putting up a pretty good fight in the recent browser wars.
Private Browsing: Safari, Chrome, and IE8 all already have this feature, allowing users to browse with zero trace left on the machine once their browsing session ends, and Firefox now has this option available as well. This is targeted toward people using shared computers, who don't want any cookies, temporary cache files, or history of their session left on the machine for unscrupulous people to find. It's also for people who want to "want to shop online for gifts for their spouse without them finding out", and let's leave it at that.
Enhanced Tabs: Tab organization has improved significantly. Tabs can be dragged between Firefox sessions, in case you want two windows open and want to move one tab between windows.
HTML 5: HTML version 5 is an exciting new standard that is still in progress. However, Firefox has implemented several new features that will be part of that standard. For example, new <audio>, <video>, and <canvas> tags are now available. Video tags will replace the majority of Flash videos out there, allowing browsers to play multimedia (things like YouTube, Google Video, or Today's Big Thing) without using the Adobe Flash Player. This will allow standardized video formats, along with a standardized user experience. The canvas tag allows for scriptable rendering of images - so far, it seems to be limited to simple drawing, like a simple paint program. However, I'm sure there will be interesting uses for this before too long.
For a more detailed explanation of some of these new or improved features, visit http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/. Although a lot of the new stuff is just catching up to Chrome, Firefox's stability, incredible user community, platform independence, and ability to adapt itself through thousands of addons make it the best browser out there right now.
Last week, the makers of Opera, one of the top mobile browsers and a reasonably successful full-scale browser, promised a new technology that would change the web forever, without providing any additional details. This announcement caused all kinds of speculation, from enhanced cloud computing, to advanced syncing software, to personal web servers. It turns out that personal web servers is what it was.
Today, Opera announced the new feature, called Opera Unite. It promises an easy and safe way to share files, media, web sites, and notes, without a lot of technical knowledge that's typically required for such an undertaking. Of course, hosting a personal web server is not anything new, but it has never really been anything that the average person has been able to do. Opera's goal is to bring this technology to the everyday user.
There's plenty of support out there for easily sharing files with people. Social networking sites like Facebook let you easily share things like pictures and videos, with no technical knowledge required. Sites like Flickr are designed to let you share and organize photos, again with no technical knowledge. However, all of these force you to rely on other companies to host and store your data. If they are undergoing maintenance, or if by some chance get attacked and lose your data, then you're out of luck. Hosting your files locally gives you full control over your data. Store what you want, where you want, and you don't even have to upload them to a central server. You're not limited to file sizes, picture resolution, or anything other than the size of your hard drive and your outgoing bandwidth.
There are plenty of concerns with this technology. First and foremost is security. I haven't found any information on exactly how this will work, but I can only assume that this requires opening a port on your PC (and router) to the outside world, which exposes you just a little bit more to hackers and other low-life dirtbags out there. I'm sure Opera is doing everything they can to keep your system safe, but hackers get more and more creative every day.
EDIT: I found some more technical details on how the server connects to the world, and it turns out that you don't need to open ports. Users from the outside world connect to a central Opera server, and your home server also connects to that server, asking if anyone is making a request. So your home server just connects via normal outgoing channels to the server, instead of someone connecting directly to you. This has the effect of being safer, but also means that if the Opera servers are down, then you lose connectivity to your server, which was one of the benefits of having a home server in the first place.
One complaint that has already come up is the fact that this is not scalable, the way centralized servers are. You are limited to your network's upload speed, and your PC's performance. Multiple people connecting at the same time will experience pitiful download speeds, compared with the majority of the web. However, thinking about your target audience, I'm sure this is fine for most people. The people who use this won't have thousands of people connecting to their site - probably just a few, and probably not all at once. If you are planning on running a full-fledged business or multimedia center for the public, then this probably isn't for you.
This solution requires that the host keep their computer on and connected at all times, if they want their data available for download/update. This is an unreasonable requirement for users on laptops, and many others who don't want to leave their machines on 24 hours a day.
Data would be protected via passwords, but from what I've seen, there is no encryption of the requests and responses, meaning basic hacking techniques would succeed in stealing passwords, and therefore data. Obviously, sensitive materials should not be stored in any way where the application can see it.
Although Opera claims that they do not monitor people's files, they do have the power to block users who they have received complaints against - people sharing copyrighted materials, for example. This may be too much power for a software company to wield. This type of control currently exists only with your ISP, and that's really where it belongs.
I predict that Unite will be a good start to this self-hosting phenomenon. However, Opera has enjoyed only very limited success as a browser, and I don't see the majority of the community adopting this first attempt at a simple home web server. I'd expect to see other similar products arise from competitors, each with their own benefits, and a clear winner not determined for years to come. And until home servers are commonplace the way desktops/laptops are, and a new bandwidth paradigm is reached, I don't expect this to be widely used.
The newest build of Windows 7 beta comes with the option to disable Internet Explorer 8. Although not confirmed by Microsoft, this is most likely due in part to some legal action in the European Union dealing with antitrust issues.
The whole thing seems kind of silly to me. Windows comes with a calculator, rich text editor, games, networking utilities, disk utilities, email client, media player, instant messenger, file manager, and dozens of other programs that have other third-party alternatives. It's only natural that Windows should come with a web browser. What's so special about a browser, other than it is used by a lot of people? Doesn't really seem like a legal precedent.
If you know me, you know I'm a huge Firefox fan, and a fan of the Linux operating system. I only use IE in very rare cirumstances where web developers were inconsiderate enough to use IE-only standards, that don't follow true web standards - aka "lazy development". However, I have no problem with the fact that IE exists, or that it's part of the Windows OS. Users are free to download whatever browser they want - Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and other less-popular alternatives are all out there, and there's nothing stopping anyone from using them.
In reality, people mostly buy computers that come pre-loaded with Windows, from their local electronics store, or direct from companies like Dell or Compaq. I find it very unlikely that these pre-loaded machines will have IE excluded. The other group of people are ones that install the operating system themselves, usually slightly more advanced users. These users have two choices: include IE in their installation, or exclude it, and be left without a browser (I doubt the Windows installation disk will include the option for an alternate browser to be installed). Of course, they will choose to install IE8. In either case, anyone who wants to use a different browser will likely download it from the web, which requires a browser. And once IE is installed, there's no reason to remove it - if you don't like it, just don't use it.
The new beta release for Apple's Safari web browser was recently released. Safari 4 offers several new features, some of which are pretty nice.
Top Sites: The new Top Sites feature gives the user the ability to see several of their favorite sites at the same time, even telling you which of these sites have changed since your last visit. Really a cool feature that looks like it could be useful for a lot of people.
3-D Previews: There are a few places where Safari allows you to view page previews exactly as they were last rendered, as large thumbnails in a 3-D flipbook. This appears to be much like the 3-D window switching in Windows Vista/7 Aero and in various Linux extensions. Not really something that will make or break a browser, but it's kind of a cool feature.
New Tab Handling: Someone on the Safari team apparently saw Chrome's tab style and decided to put this into Safari. Tabs have been moved to the title bar, which may look ok, but in my opinion isn't a good idea. I use my title bars as they were designed, to move and maximize/restore my windows, and having tabs up there just throws a wrench into a process I've been used to for 15 years. The other Chrome feature that was picked up was the ability to drag a tab off of the window to create a second instance of Safari. However, unlike Chrome, it does not create a new process. So I would expect an application crash to still destroy all instances, not just the one that crashed.
There are several other smaller features that Safari 4 is introducing. However, even with these features, Safari is still not on par with Firefox. Safari may look nice, and may be fine for the average user, but the latest release just isn't good enough for me.
Just found a new Firefox extension called AQuikWiki. This is a cool plug-in that allows you to quickly look up a word or phrase without leaving your page. You just highlight it, right-click and select AQuikWiki, and it will give you a quick definition.
For example, suppose you are not up to speed on the awesomeness that is the Arizona Cardinals, and you check out the page on Yahoo! Sports. You come across the name Ken Whisenhunt, and want to know a little more about him.
Highlight the name, right-click, select AQuikWiki, and you'll get more information.
Click again, and the information expands. Click again, and a new tab opens with Wikipedia's entry.
Just one of the many thousands of Firefox Add-ons that make Firefox the most customizable and greatest browser in the market.
I just started looking into HTML 5, the new version of the HTML specifications. This is the first change to the specs since version 4 in 1999. The goal of version 5 is to introduce new elements to streamline modern web development.
The designers wanted to make it easier to build web pages that are prevalent in today's web culture - blogs, multimedia, and things of that nature. To that end, they wanted to get rid of the majority of the "div" elements that make up the majority of most web pages, and replace them with more common-sense names, like "section", "article", and "nav". They also wanted to include a "video" and "audio" tag, to standardize the many different multimedia tags that currently exist. These changes are supposed to make it easier for web designers and developers, and easier for all kinds of standard and mobile browsers to display the content.
Frankly, I'm skeptical about many of these changes. There's a reason HTML 4 has been around so long - it works. Nested divs may not be pretty, but they are definitely well-known by web developers and programming frameworks, and they function in a predictable and consistent way. I worry that a totally new way of writing web pages will introduce a new wave of conformance and compliance issues - we're finally at the point where the majority of websites will function in all major browsers and operating systems, and all of these changes may just start the problem over again. With any luck, the major browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Konqueror, Opera, and the various mobile browsers) will all release new versions in all operating systems that handle the changes in a consistent manner, but based on what we've seen in the past, I wouldn't count on it. I'm expecting a new generation of "must be viewed in Internet Explorer" websites, which would be tragic for the open nature of the web.
HTML 5 is still just a draft, so I'm sure there will be plenty of changes before it's released. But it looks like it is an inevitable change, so we need to be prepared. With any luck, the major players in the web industry will work together to make this transition as smooth as possible.
I came across an issue not too long ago that caught my attention - using javascript to access elements behaves differently in IE and Firefox/Safari/Chrome. IE accepts casing differences - Firefox, Safari, and Chrome (let's call them the "good browsers") do not.
Clicking the button in IE populates the span - in the good browsers, it does not, because it does not find an element with that ID.
In my opinion, the good browsers are "right" - elements should be properly cased. Your opinion may vary - please tell me if you disagree - I'd be happy to hear an argument in IE's favor.
In any case, this is just another reason to test in at least Firefox in addition to IE. A few extra minutes of testing can greatly reduce headaches in the future.
it is actually much worse because not only does it fail on the case check, but it also returns elements that don't even have an ID! because it will match on the name attribute too.
@Frank: Thanks for the link. Looks like IE8 is going to be worth looking into. Maybe I'll put it back into the 'good browser' list, if it really delivers all it promises.
I've been experimenting with different web browsers lately, and just downloaded Chrome, the recently released browser from Google. It's still in beta, so I'm not expecting it to be perfect, but from what I've seen so far, I'm very impressed.
Chrome is open source, which pretty much guarantees that it will be better than Internet Explorer, since it's built on open standards, and will be improved by people who are passionate about their work, not just money.
I've been a big Firefox fan for a long time - they've always been one step ahead of Microsoft, and just provides a better browsing experience than IE. But it's starting to look like Google may just have a winner here. Google has the best search engine, free email, and maps, and has an impressive array of other stuff - so it makes sense that they'd build a great browser as well.
You can check out some of the features at http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html. Some of the features are very nice, like dynamic tabs, crash control, and their new javascript engine, which is supposed to be significantly faster than any others out there.
Yeah, but the ADS!! Ad Muncher does a great job of getting rid of them, but I'm not sure I want to pay for an ad blocking program to use a browser. Then again, I may just get Ad Muncher and boot Google Chrome. ;)
Internet Explorer dominates the browser industry - it comes with Windows, which is by far the most popular family of operating systems. However, just because it's the biggest, doesn't mean it's the best. Mozilla's browser, Firefox is superior to IE in many ways. It's more secure, HTML compliant, customizable, and just a better browsing experience.
TheBetterBrowser.com is one of many sites out there devoted to Firefox - users submit their own reasons for preferring Firefox over IE. One of the most common reasons is Firefox's wide assortment of extensions - add-ons available to add to your browsing experience - from standard plugins to download management to feed management.
The Firefox Community Marketing group is pushing for a world record of the most software downloaded in a 24 hour period, with the new Version 3 being released. I fully support the Mozilla project, and will begin downloading and using this browser immediately upon its release (release date coming soon, but exact date not yet announced). I highly recommend Firefox, as well as the Thunderbird email client. If you'd like to be involved in the world record, visit the link below.
FireFox 3 was just released - apparently the world record site is currently overwhelmed due to all the support - if the above link does not work, or if it is after June 18 at 17:00 UTC, you can go to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html to download without going through the community marketing group.
I've had Firefox 3 for a few weeks now. My Ubuntu 8.04 came with the beta version, and a few weeks ago it automatically updated to the final release. I guess Linux gets stuff like this first. Open source rules.
Another pretty good browser that I've been using is Epiphany.
Epiphany does look kind of interesting - built to be simple instead of feature-oriented. Since I'm getting a little more involved with Linux, I'll take a look at it - most browsing I'd do on Linux wouldn't require anything powerful or with millions of features, so maybe it would provide better performance.
Date: 2011-03-22 23:38:31
Name: Jon Davis
Website: http://www.jondavis.net/
"it's not available for Windows XP, so the millions of us who are still using XP (we're still on XP at work)" .. oh dear! You poor bastard, still using XP! o.O I remember when in 1999 people were insane to still be using Windows 95 ..
Date: 2011-03-23 07:04:01
Name: Joe Enos
It really doesn't bother me. XP is a good operating system, and aside from a few minor things (like the Start Menu searching or Ctrl-Shift-N), it does everything I need of it.
Date: 2011-03-23 10:23:00
Name: Jason H (via Facebook)
Are you surprised? I'm not.
Date: 2011-03-23 12:40:06
Name: Joe Enos
I was expecting it to be better - I didn't think it would be great, but I figured it would be better than it was.
Date: 2011-03-23 21:36:00
Name: Jason H (via Facebook)
I'vee grown to lower my expectations with Microsoft so if it turns out well you can be pleasantly surprised. For example Vista, what I expected. Windows 7, pleasantly surprised.