Page 2 of 3

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 9:25 pm
by omniuni
Firefox still, for main browsing. It is reliable and fast. Certainly faster than IE.

IE is a horrid browser. Aside from not being standards compliant, it has poor JavaScript support, and is a memory hog.

Firefox may not be 100% standard compliant itself, but it has a reasonably efficient JS engine, and plenty of nice plug ins. The biggest thing that Firefox has as a browser are the plug ins themselves. It's what makes the web developer utilities so nice; they're easy to develop. Opera is a good browser. I have nothing against people that use it, but I like the philosophy of open source software. At least Opera is Open Source friendly, as is Chrome.

Konqueror is one of my favorite utilities, it's more than a browser, and I use it all the time for light-weight browsing and file management.

Oh, and also, the two who defended IE? I second, or third, or fourth, or whatever, their banning.

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 1:29 am
by alex.barylski
IE7 is much better than IE6, but it's still holding back the web with it's proprietary technologies and lack of standards compliance. Not that I expect Microsoft to know better based on their track record, but they certainly can not be commended for this
Shows to go ya...money, marketing and monoply really help in business.
It is reliable and fast. Certainly faster than IE
You sound like an advertisement for Smarty template engine. :P

Faster than IE in what way exactly? Faster adoption rate amongst open source developers? In that regard, sure.

Faster in terms of rendering speed? Prove it, setup a test scenario using MSHTML, WebKit and Gecko under a Windows system, feed each one 10000 different web pages (cached on the local disk) and I would be blown away if MSHTML didn't win...

Without even profiling, there is a visible latency with all renderer's but IE's is clearly the fastest, and there are many other sub-systems all playing along, such as HTTP download, etc. Microsoft might even deliberately throttle back browsers Internet access speed, who knows. IE still runs faster on my system and I'm willing to bet it runs faster on most Windows systems.

Cheers,
Alex

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Tue Dec 30, 2008 4:22 pm
by Luke
Firefox runs plenty fast for me. If I don't notice the difference without "tests", I could give a crap if IE is faster (although I don't think it is).

Also, Microsoft's business practices and refusal to respect standards are enough to make me not use the browser. Even if it was obviously twice as fast as anything else I wouldn't use it, just out of principle. The fact that IE7 came out and was still a pile of crap, although a bit less steamy has caused me to hate the browser even more.

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 1:36 am
by JAB Creations
I don't use Firebug, I use Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar.

Per rendering engine browser highlights (since clientside is my specialty)...

Gecko/Firefox: Best customization though default GUI is unusably minimalistic. Second best CSS3 property support. Downfall: developers are implementing extensions as features instead of actually improving the browser which is degrading it overall; there will be no customizable New Tab button in Firefox 3.1 and the missing go button is no where in sight. How much longer until they get rid of the back forward buttons? Who knows, but I know this: minimalism isn't good if it's unusable. Best potential browser overall though it is exceptionally buggy and the developers are slowly destroying the GUI which was one of the critical points of creating Firefox to begin with.

Presto/Opera: Reasonably customizable GUI though no vertical positioning of GUI toolbars (tabs should be displayed underneath the address bar in example). No worthwhile CSS3 property support though the best overall CSS style-able form elements. It's fast and you can use a tab if other tabs are still loading unlike Firefox. No really that customizable via extensions (where are they?) and is targeted more for unusable loving tech crowd (IRC and other user-unfriendly software). Opera 10 will only end up being super Opera 9 as passing Acid 3 test isn't as important as CSS3 property support which I will continue to harp on. Standards are half descent but it takes them forever to fix CSS2 bugs. Opera's most redeeming feature is it's superior JavaScript debugger which describes errors in more details.

Webkit/Safari: Reasonably fast though feature poor. Best overall CSS3 property support with the most cutting edge CSS3 if you follow the Webkit blog. However it renders all text as bold (and you can't argue against this it's BOLD). Safari's most redeeming feature is being the first browser you can test useful parts of CSS3.

Trident/Internet Explorer: Really the only thing redeeming about IE is when something is supported (ten years after every other engine has supported it) it doesn't come along with all sorts of nasty related bugs...like Firefox. In example you still can't control Flash and press F11 to toggle full screen in Firefox but no such bug exists in IE. If IE9 adds application/xhtml+xml, enough CSS3 properties, and native SVG it will likely rival Firefox save for customizability. However with IE7 Microsoft committed GUI suicide and based their results on idiots. The new and improved GUI never showed up and only minimal customization has been implemented (IE8 beta 2). IE's most redeeming feature is (when a feature is actually properly supported) it is not plagued by numerous user-unfriendly bugs like Firefox.

I still use Firefox by default for both web design, web development, and personal browsing.

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:49 am
by onion2k
JAB Creations wrote:I don't use Firebug, I use Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar.
They do different things...

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 8:07 am
by Eran
overall though it is exceptionally buggy and the developers are slowly destroying the GUI
Huh? exceptionally buggy? I constantly use it with over 15 open tabs and didn't crash once in the last couple of months. What is your definition of buggy? and what do you mean developers are destroying the GUI? it is your prerogative to choose what plug-ins you use

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:26 pm
by Luke
onion2k wrote:
JAB Creations wrote:I don't use Firebug, I use Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar.
They do different things...
That's the exact thought I had when I read that. What do you mean you use web developer toolbar instead of firebug? How do you compare these two tools? :?

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2009 4:52 pm
by Syntac
Firefox, duh! Mainly because it has every feature I want (and no more). While it usually fails to create decent-looking native UI elements, that's a small disadvantage.

Not Safari because it isn't extensible and doesn't have enough features.

Not Opera because while it has plenty of features, its native UI fails even more than Firefox's. Also, many settings are in obscure locations (shouldn't Theme be in Preferences?).

Not IE because I don't use Windows and it often fails to properly render otherwise perfect code.

Maybe Chrome, if it ever comes out for Mac OS X.
PCSpectra wrote:Shows to go ya...money, marketing and monoply really help in business.
:rofl:

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:37 am
by JAB Creations

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 7:08 am
by kaszu
All browsers have bugs, but I don't think "exceptionally" would be appropriate. 95% of the problems I have during development are with IE. Those bugs for FF doesn't affect my work.
IE: http://www.gtalbot.org/BrowserBugsSection/MSIE7Bugs/

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 7:14 am
by JAB Creations
True though most sites aren't that advanced to begin with.

The guy who runs that page is a bit too arrogant for my taste.

Like I said when Internet Explorer supports something correctly it does so without asinine bugs. The problem with IE is that IE8 is years behind other browsers in general.

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 7:32 am
by omniuni
@JAB

You listed several engines, but have you tried KHTML?

Your complaints with Safari, I do not think are present with the KDE branches. I've noticed personally that they tend to get to bugs like that pretty quickly. Although they're still struggling with the WYSIWYG editor, everything else works quite well. I use Konqueror for most of my primary design work, because it has the most standard-compliant engine. One should expect Safari to be more buggy in terms of the general rendering anyway; it's a browser for consumers. Konqueror/KHTML was and still is the fastest and most up-to-date display engine, because as per the name, that is their focus. That's why Apple chose to base WebKit off of it. WYSIWYG editing? It takes a back seat to correct SVG rendering.

Latest versions of KDE applications should work on Windows and OSX as well as Linux (Their native platform).

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 7:47 am
by JAB Creations
@omniuni Visit my site using Firefox on XP first, then visit it using a KHTML browser. Be sure to open up "Site Options" at the top right once you've entered past the first page.

The problem with KHTML/Konqueror (and Linux in general) is that developers simply have not been able to produce a usable version of Linux for the common person. Hell if I want to use Linux I have to go in to the command line just to install Opera or any other browser should it not be listed in the magic installer list...which what I use hardly ever is. I have over forty browsers/versions on XP, think I'm even remotely interested in spending the time to install one copy of one browser using Linux in the time it takes me to setup all of them on XP because I don't have to use a command line at all? Great for web servers and people who prefer command lines...horrible for a production environment and the common person. Granted Ubuntu cleans things up nicely but still quickly encounters those same issues.

Any way I tested Konqueror 4 (months after it shipped because I as a user shouldn't have to compile jack-squat) and it shipped with a default minimum font-size that was too large for the tabs on my site's prompt. Granted too many websites use excessively small font-sizes for their main content though this is was an instance of the browser dictating what the spectrum of "allowable" design is.

However from what I've read (and minimally tested) KHTML does support some nifty CSS3 properties...but it's half baked GUI, inability to render websites normally (such as my own), and obscurity due to the unusable state of Linux in general (for the common person and I myself as someone more interested in production rather then dancing to an OS's tune every five seconds) consider it behind even IE overall. Granted I want to see Konqueror succeed but so long as design croaks underneath the general developer mindset this simply won't happen. That is why as people resist Vista most of them stay at XP and only a small percentage migrate to Linux. Now would be a great time for Linux to steal Windows OS market share but design has to become the main priority now and the developer versus designer aspect is not what this thread is about. :P

I'd be happy to look at KHTML applications working on XP if you have a link please?

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 8:26 am
by omniuni
@JAB

Your website works fine in Konqueror

Currently, I have Konqueror and Firefox and Opera installed on my system. Epiphany, Midori, and Dillo are three other browsers available in my package manager.

I installed Internet Exploder through IEs4Linux and Wine, and even for software that doesn't appear in the package manager, I don't know why you'd use the command line. If I go to Opera.com, the home page has a download button with a link to the installer for my version of Linux, Ubuntu Intrepid.

Choosing a browser to test your website on should also be more than just "can it display my website", it's "will this help me find out if my website works properly for the widest audience possible that I care about". I find that if I get it to work in Konqueror, it will most likely work in everything else, save IE. I expect to have to work harder to get my website to work in IE.

Your website is pretty cool, but in all honesty, it's amazingly heavy. Were it not for the obvious sophistication of the code, I would liken it to a particularly over-customized myspace profile. It may work in some browsers, and even Konqueror may get it right, but is such a difficult to render design really PRACTICAL?

Firebug and the Web Developers tool bar are indispensable, tools, but so is a lean and highly standards compliant browser, and so is an OS that I know will JUST WORK. Installing Ubuntu takes me about an hour, including most of my software base.

And 3 browsers.

Make that 4: I keep Dillo around for testing what my sites would look like on mobile phones, although I would not use it as my main browser, even if it did have Firebug!

Re: Which Browser Would You Use If It Had Firebug?

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2009 8:58 am
by JAB Creations
Load up my site in Internet Explorer 4 and Opera 4. They might not work as good as current browsers though it's going to be at least viewable whereas most sites are not. I'm abandoning that level of backwards compatibility though with Version 2.9 of my site, I did it and have screenshots as proof, good enough for me. :mrgreen: The key to this is knowing how to properly program CSS1 (and have it validate as only CSS1). Also I don't think I've mentioned this yet but I have to cloak for Gecko browsers because of the second tab cycle bug and I do so for the purpose of accessibility.

I last tested Konqueror in Kubuntu I think, this was at least half a year ago though.

The design of my site encompasses the main goal of my site's very existence: for me to learn web design and development. I'm actually a day or two tops from publicly releasing Version 2.9 Alpha 2 with emphasis on breaking away from third party modules (Phorum and WordPress for starters).

A MySpace page though? Hardly, my code wasn't fished from the local sewers before being dipped in to drums of radio active waste. :twisted: For me it's more about where I'm going with everything then what you see. If you play around with this enough you'll start to get an idea (and it doesn't work in any version of IE)...
http://www.jabcreations.com/blog/?promp ... leffects=1

As far as my site being heavy it should load (with all options disabled) in ten seconds or less on dialup. But then if you visit in a browser that uses WebKit or Gecko and enable CSS3 you'll see some CSS3 properties in action. Enable DHTML and then if the browser supports jQuery (what browser doesn't?) click on any of the purple headers.

I have Firebug installed though never use it. I haven't seen any reason it'd be useful in addition to the Web Developer toolbar. I use Firefox's error console first and foremost and when I encounter something that leaves me scratching my head I load it up in Opera because it's error console is more detailed about specific errors.

I've actually been clearing out all the JavaScript warnings on my Alpha 2 builds the past few days. I've found (even more) bugs in Internet Explorer and have had to adapt JavaScript to take care of many issues. Thanks to object detection I am no longer getting errors in IE 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, Firefox, Opera, though I'm not sure Safari won't open up the error console or web inspector for some reason?

Kudos to you, your site's layout is fluid like mine. :wink: Seems to work fine in IE 5.0+ and Opera 6.0+ and if your layout works fine in 5.0+ then you've got businesses covered and that's what matters most. :mrgreen: