Which Web Browsers Are You Using, And Which Ones Are Going Away?
This isn’t particularly an opinion piece, just personal experience looking for your insights. I use multiple web browsers simultaneously to stay logged into different user accounts on Google etc. for business and personal. None of this is ground-breaking but I thought some of you in our community might have different experiences.
For a long time now, I’ve used Chrome and Firefox, with Internet Explorer as a backup when absolutely necessary. No one is surprised that IE is a poor choice these days, but Firefox seems to be falling off as well. It’s getting slower and clunkier, as well as trying to tie in worthless products like the Ask Toolbar with downloads. I wonder if this is a sign of financial problems.
Safari for Windows seems to be abandoned at this point. One big surprise I had this week was trying the new version of Opera. I’d figured this product had disappeared years ago, but so far the browser is fantastic. It seems to operate in a clean and simple way, much like Chrome. It’s fast and intuitive, and will probably become my second screen go-to browser.
My other backup is Tor Browser, which I believe is based on the Firefox platform. For those of you that regularly check up on organic search rankings, Tor allows for truly anonymous searches. You can see where your sites would actually rank for a user located anywhere in the world, and not let your past searching and location alter the results.
What’s your experience, and what am I missing?
Drew Meyers
Posted at 09:23h, 23 FebruaryI’m all chrome. Every once and a blue moon I open up Firefox or Safari.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 11:49h, 23 FebruaryOn Apple products?
Drew Meyers
Posted at 11:50h, 23 Februaryyea. on my macbook…I’m always chrome. On my iphone, safari.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 12:00h, 23 FebruaryInteresting. I’d think Apple would be so intent on Safari dominating a Mac that there’s no way Chrome could outdo them. I suppose the portability of logged-in Chrome across platforms has a big advantage.
Drew Meyers
Posted at 12:01h, 23 FebruaryUntil I have a problem with chrome, then there is zero need to switch. Switching isn’t really something I think about much, and don’t plan on doing it until there is a really strong value prop that some other browser offers that chrome doesn’t
Mike McGee
Posted at 10:54h, 23 FebruaryChrome is my #1, too, with Safari and Firefox being close seconds. (I’m on a Mac.) I had thought in the past that Firefox was falling off, but now it seems like they’re roaring back, to me. They have boosted Firefox’s javascript power and fixed the memory leaks that had slowed it down in the past. My site seems to load faster, snappier on Firefox now than either Chrome or Safari. Firefox seems to execute javascript faster. I’ve seen benchmark tests that say Chrome is the javascript winner, but that doesn’t match my real-world perceptions. Safari seems slightly faster than Chrome, too, but I like the usability of Chrome more.
Basically I use Chrome nearly all the time. I use Safari for it’s user-agent switching to see how my site renders on various devices. (Yes, there are extensions for that in Chrome and Firefox, but I like the was Safari handles it better.) I use Firefox for those occasional sites that don’t seem to work in Chrome & Safari. I use IE via Parallels only to check how my sites render in IE, never for anything else.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 11:48h, 23 FebruaryI guess I can see that on a Mac, there are probably significantly different results. Could also be my Firefox setup. Safari on my i-devices works great, but I’m all PC for desktop. IE for rendering–good point. Try Opera. It’s surprisingly lean/fast on my PC, but I don’t know on a Mac.
Todd Carpenter
Posted at 13:38h, 23 FebruaryI’m all Mac and use 70% Chrome and 30% Safari. My Safari stuff is for non-vital web pages where I want to save log-in information. Especially stuff that’s only available to me when I’m inside of NAR’s firewall (like the expense report log-in). If I didn’t have an Android tablet, I might use Safari even more. They essentially feel the same to me. I have also heard great things about Midori, but it’s a Linux or Windows product only.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 16:29h, 23 FebruaryInteresting, Todd, so you’ve used Safari as your niche intra-office rolodex, but you prefer Chrome? I may have to think about that strategy.
Todd Carpenter
Posted at 17:26h, 23 FebruaryIt’s nice to be able to “clear all” without losing a few key cookies. I also stay completely logged out of Google on Safari. Works well.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 17:38h, 23 FebruaryNice.
Bryn Kaufman
Posted at 08:42h, 24 FebruaryChrome and IE are both buggy, but I have to use them anyway, as my clients use them, and I want to see my website as the client sees it.
For example, look at the difference between Chrome and IE in this bug report filed on Chrome.
https://chromium.googlecode.com/issues/attachment?aid=1376920000000&name=Screen+shot+2012-07-17+at+10.20.22+AM.png&token=OiIRw1le4owO-wKvP9WExv1SXTw%3A1393255429658&inline=1
Bug Report – https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692
They have been trying to fix this for years and have not done it still. It makes all sites including mine look worse. I am moving to a 50px headline font as they seem to have smoothing working at that size.
Here is a bug report I filed about IE not working right in Google Maps, and you can see a lot of people added they see the same issue. This bug Google eventually fixed, after I alerted them about it and others confirmed.
https://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=5944
IE does not stay logged in to Google, which keeps me using Chrome because this bug is just too big to work around.
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie8-windows_7/unable-to-stay-logged-in-googlegmail-once-i-close/1424dc0e-00f2-47fe-b8ea-e7d9ce45d175
I believe browsers are getting less compatible as we develop more using complicated client side code.
I have lost count the times I have found a website that does not work right, and they say oh you have to use IE only, or you have to use Chrome and not IE.
Sometimes I have had to resort to ordering over the phone because the website does not work well enough to get my order through.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 10:35h, 25 FebruaryUgh. I was hoping we were going the other direction. I can’t believe developers have to do this much coding to cross platforms. At least it’s not all Microsoft’s fault any more.
Mark Hankel
Posted at 04:43h, 25 FebruaryI use Firefox (for Firebug). Right click to see image sizes, alt text, quick view for source code, css, xml
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 10:34h, 25 FebruarySo it’s basically a user interface/ease of use functions that make it worth using the combo?
Mike McGee
Posted at 12:23h, 27 FebruaryYou can do the same thing in Chrome and Safari, natively.
Brett
Posted at 09:36h, 25 FebruaryI’m one of those rare developers using Windows and spend most of my time using Firefox and Chrome. I tend to lean towards FF a bit, because of Firebug. Plus our online lead generation application only works in FF.
Sam DeBord, SeattleHome.com
Posted at 10:33h, 25 FebruaryFirebug looks interesting, hadn’t seen it before. Probably too deep for me, but I can see the use for developers.
sarah
Posted at 13:36h, 05 OctoberChrome is too much Google for me, so I use Firefox just to keep the competition alive.