Alternative Web Browser

[authenticate]

What is the most user friendly web browser out there as an alternative to IE and Netscape's Communicator? I am running NT 4.0 workstation.

 

[TheCorm]

Mozilla seems to be one that many people like...

Mozilla 1.2.1

Having troubles with IE? Or just don't like it?

Corm

 

[authenticate]

I have always liked IE and still use it at home. However the office installation developed a problem a few months back. It will hang for two minutes when I tab inside an entry field. It's OK for simpler pages like google search. Re-installing and upgrading to 6 didn't solve the problem. I now use Netscape 7 at work. I'll take your suggestion and try Mozilla.

 

[authenticate]

I downloaded and installed Mozilla then upgraded to version 1.3 (as suggested when I ran up 1.2). It seems to be identical to Netscape Communicator 7 and as Mozilla is open source I guess Netscape's is a copy of the original.
However, I can't seem to get anything to display in the tabs frame. I go to Customize My Sidebar and can see bookmarks on the right hand-side but nothing displays after OKing.

 

[Lord Evermore]

1.3 is still in alpha (not even beta version). It may have bugs which may be causing your problems, so you should look at their bug list, or just uninstall and go back to 1.2.1.

Netscape was around before Mozilla. Mozilla was intended to be an open source clone of netscape basically, the "next" version of netscape (although it ended up taking so long that didn't really happen for several versions) and netscape 7 is now based on Mozilla.

As for your problem with IE, do you have an IT guy that could rebuild that machine? Is there something running in the background that might be sucking up CPU cycles? Did you install anything new? Any other problems or only IE? If you don't have a specific IT guy, get permission to do it yourself. You shouldn't be required to go tracking down an alternative browser in order to make your system function well enough to do your job (assuming your job actually is impacted and not just your browsing of the web on company time).

 

[authenticate]

Our office provides database consultancy and tuning. I am OK to rebuild but we have a lot of software installed and running just the way we want. Each of our machines is different so it's not a simple matter of cloning from another machine. The IE problem is very baffling. Task manager points to IE as soaking up cpu when I have tabbed into the form field. Other applications are working fine and continue to work fine when IE is hanging.
Do you think I should go with Netscape or Mozilla?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Netscape is sort of a bloated and semi-crippled version of Mozilla. I've been using Mozilla for a couple of weeks now instead of IE, and for the most part I like it. I've never liked Netscape.

 

[authenticate]

Mozilla 1.2.1 is running fine however I have one question which relates to Netscape too. Often I Alt-Tab to other applications and on occassions when I return to mozilla/netscape I find that their is no longer a focus selected i.e. nothing is selected. Normally one would expect either the url line to be highlighted or even the bookmark that you last selected (if the bookmarks are displayed in the side tab. This means that I can't navigate around the browser using the keyboard and I have to use the mouse. Any idea why this is happening?

 

[Lord Evermore]

Design choice, I assume, though possibly a bug. I hate not being able to hit tab in Mozilla to get to the address bar when I first start it up without first clicking the window. However when I alt-tab or click icons in the taskbar when I already have a page loaded, I am getting focus on either text input boxes or on links on the page so I can tab through them, without needing to click first. But it doesn't seem to always work.

 

[authenticate]

I have found that if a new instance of Mozilla has started (because of the way the hyperlink is coded) then the focus is at the end of the url. This is annoying as page down then just pulls down the url history. I find that in these situations I can hit Escape and two (or three) tabs will get me to the web page so that page down will work.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: authenticate
I have found that if a new instance of Mozilla has started (because of the way the hyperlink is coded) then the focus is at the end of the url. This is annoying as page down then just pulls down the url history. I find that in these situations I can hit Escape and two (or three) tabs will get me to the web page so that page down will work.

I have found the keyboard navigation of Mozilla to be somewhat problematic, as well, so I usually end up just using the mouse. My personal opinion is that their standarized GUI system is causing the trouble, with its trying to be too skinnable and cross-platform. IMHO they should make all the innards and the page rendering cross-platform, and do the outer window stuff (basically just the menus and toolbars) in code native to the three main groups of OSes that it runs on (Win32, UNIX, and MacOS); that would probably solve most of the issues you speak of. It doesn't help that I abhor GUI skins; everything can look the same, as long as it all looks good, thank you very much.

Oh, and since I've spent so much time on negative Mozilla issues, I should make a positive comment: Mozilla is the best browser ever for online forums! The tabbed browsing lets me have 20+ different threads in different forums loading at the same time, without cluttering up my taskbar.

 

[altonb1]

I was using Opera for awhile. It is free, with ads in the system unless you can get it registered by one way or another.

Check out their website: Opera web browser

 

[morijuana]

Opera Rocks! The Tabbed browsing is what hooked me, though NS now mimic it in latest release. It is great to code for aswell, standard HTML implementation

 

[topaz22]

i like using w3m when i'm at work. its lightweight, fast, runs in an xterm, shows graphics, and you can still click the links if you want.