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What is the most stable browser?
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:57 am
by matthijs
So just a moment ago I had another browser crash. Mozilla 1.7.13 on XP. Very very annoying. Happens quite often actually. Often it has to do something with either viewing PDF, advertisements on a page or wacky javascript. I also use Firefox. Have both running at the same time, Moz for browsing because I've all my bookmarks in them, FF for developing.
But I'm wondering: does anyone know how browsers compare in stability? What are your experiences? Do you know of any tests?
Restarting a browser takes only a few seconds, but finding and opening all 50-100 tabs I had opened takes some more time. So you can understand how frustrating that gets. Would be interesting to hear your experiences.
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:58 am
by jamiel
FireFox on Windows
Konqueror on Linux (FireFox on my Gentoo crashes about 2 times a week)
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:13 am
by Chris Corbyn
jamiel wrote:FireFox on Windows
Konqueror on Linux (FireFox on my Gentoo crashes about 2 times a week)
Yeah I have to say, Firefox on my linux box occasionally either self-closes without warning or the window suddenly drops all it's borders, title bar etc and just hangs (though that could be a Gnome issue).
Konqueror? Stable? It never used to be stable in the slightest a couple of years back which, apart from it's poor rendering is why I stopped using it.
I'd move to Opera if it would start rendering CSS correctly.... it's pretty close now but FF still seems to beat it on that count for me. I'm pretty sure it's more stable than FF though.
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:25 am
by MrPotatoes
FF Crashes much more than opera with more slowdowns.
but i prefer Opera's interface before 9
Re: What is the most stable browser?
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 7:04 am
by Roja
matthijs wrote:So just a moment ago I had another browser crash. Mozilla 1.7.13 on XP. Very very annoying. Happens quite often actually. Often it has to do something with either viewing PDF, advertisements on a page or wacky javascript. I also use Firefox. Have both running at the same time, Moz for browsing because I've all my bookmarks in them, FF for developing.
Couple of quick hits:
- You can use the Google bookmark sync to keep bookmarks sync'd between Moz and FF with little effort.
- Viewing PDF's is 100% due to the plugin, not Mozilla. There are alternative plugins for PDF viewing, by the way.
- Ads can be tamed with AdBlocker.
Do those three, and each of the situations you listed would be avoided - potentially reducing your crash likelihood, without touching the browser.
matthijs wrote:But I'm wondering: does anyone know how browsers compare in stability? What are your experiences? Do you know of any tests?
In my experience, Firefox on Windows is the most stable. Opera crashes on some javascript pages I visit, and will "blink away" (close without notice) about once every few hours. I haven't narrowed down the cause yet.
On Linux, I will echo the other comment about Konqueror. I'm honestly amazed at how stable it is lately. Back in the day, it was an unimpressive browser, but these days? Very smooth, very solid.
matthijs wrote:Restarting a browser takes only a few seconds, but finding and opening all 50-100 tabs I had opened takes some more time. So you can understand how frustrating that gets. Would be interesting to hear your experiences.
Use
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=47184 , (Session Saver for Firefox), and it won't take even a few seconds!
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 7:29 am
by matthijs
Cool. Thanks for all the responses guys! Good tips Roja.
Luckily I'm in the process of moving to my mac so hopefully that will be better. But then again I'll have to sync both systems. But I see that Google bookmarks sync can take care of that too. Cool. (whether I want Google to know even more about me is another question, but hell, it's too late anyway

).
I'll check out other plugins for PDF's. In fact, it would be the best if they didn't open in the browser at all.
Adblocker I'll check out. Sensionsaver looks cool too.
Re: What is the most stable browser?
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:19 pm
by AKA Panama Jack
matthijs wrote:So just a moment ago I had another browser crash. Mozilla 1.7.13 on XP. Very very annoying. Happens quite often actually. Often it has to do something with either viewing PDF, advertisements on a page or wacky javascript. I also use Firefox. Have both running at the same time, Moz for browsing because I've all my bookmarks in them, FF for developing.
But I'm wondering: does anyone know how browsers compare in stability? What are your experiences? Do you know of any tests?
Restarting a browser takes only a few seconds, but finding and opening all 50-100 tabs I had opened takes some more time. So you can understand how frustrating that gets. Would be interesting to hear your experiences.
I have been using Opera since version 5, that came out many years ago. Over all these years I have had Opera maybe crash on me twice and those were old 5 versions. I always upgrade to the latest version as soon as it comes out. This includes even the beta versions.

I am currently running Opers 9.01 build 8533 that just came out today.

You can find the weekly builds here...
http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/
I am online using Opera 6-10 hours a day and for the the past 6-7 years only a couple of crashes using version 5 is damned good.
If you don't want to try the beta versions you can get the Opera 9.00 final version here...
http://www.opera.com/download/
If you want to be able to run Java Applets be sure to download the latest version of Sun Java JRE (J2SE(TM) Runtime Environment 5.0 Update 7).
http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
Like I have said before I use Opera for everything. I am a web developer and use it as my developement browser as it is the most standards compliant browser on the market.
Also Opera is one of the Fastest browsers on the market. It smokes Firefox.
http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:22 pm
by AKA Panama Jack
d11wtq wrote:I'd move to Opera if it would start rendering CSS correctly.... it's pretty close now but FF still seems to beat it on that count for me. I'm pretty sure it's more stable than FF though.
Actually Opera renders CSS correctly. It is the most compliant browser out there when it comes to CSS. Opera 9 also passes the Acid 2 CSS rendering test. Firefox doesn't even come close to passing that test.
http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html
Plus, Opera has some of the people who created the CSS standards working on their browsers.

Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:31 pm
by Roja
AKA Panama Jack wrote:Opera 9 also passes the Acid 2 CSS rendering test.
Firefox doesn't even come close to passing that test.

Not true any more!
Firefox's Reflow branch now correctly renders the Acid2 test:
http://diary.e-gandalf.net/2006/04/12/meet-mr-face/
http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2006/0 ... cid2-test/
Also, remember, the Acid2 test does
not test compliance to CSS - it tests key features in CSS and HTML that are poorly supported in browsers, and which (if consistently available) would deeply improve CSS coding on the web today.
AKA Panama Jack wrote:Actually Opera renders CSS correctly. It is the most compliant browser out there when it comes to CSS.
I'd disagree with that statement as well.
Opera has more than a few bugs with its CSS implementation:
http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/Opera9Bugs/
http://www.geocities.com/csssite/opera/bugs.xml
Notably, at the least, Firefox gets border-collapse right, while Opera doesn't.
I'm not saying Firefox is better, I'm simply saying that Opera "renders CSS correctly" is not == true, and "Opera is the most compliant browser" is not == true in all cases.
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:50 pm
by RobertGonzalez
I don't use IE if I can avoid it. I like Opera because of its memory use and load time, though for some reason Opera 9 is choking on the StyleSheet for DevNet. FireFox is still my favorite and I have never had an issue with the browser itself. The extensions and themes are unbeatable in FF. But Opera is slowly working on me. I'm not ready to become and Opera devotee, but I am liking it more and more each day.
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 4:48 pm
by AKA Panama Jack
Maybe you should find a more up to date site.
I mean the last version is build 8321, which is from March and was still in beta, that he has apparently tested on and we are at build 8533. And he is apparently not really that accurate and more than a little biased as he doesn't have any real list of Firefox CSS problems and they are many.
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:44 pm
by feyd
Stability has little to do with CSS compatibility and support level. There's no reason to talk about such things in this thread PJ.
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 5:49 pm
by Burrito
<very_ironic_side_note>
as soon as I opened this thread my firefox crashed...and I'm dead serious
</very_ironic_side_note>
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:01 pm
by RobertGonzalez
This discussion (or a similar one) yesterday led me to update my Opera to version 9. As soon as I did it stopped reading the stylesheet for the Sherbet theme here. Back to Firefox with ye (at least for devnet).
Side note: With the exception of loading a PDF once (before the PDF viewer FF extension) FF has never crashed on me. Am I lucky or did I just get the good download?
Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 6:48 pm
by Chris Corbyn
feyd wrote:Stability has little to do with CSS compatibility and support level. There's no reason to talk about such things in this thread PJ.
Sorry, that's actually my fault I think... I brought it up and now I'm dropping it
