[prx984]

iv been using internet explorer for a long time just because its faster on slower computers and plus its just less memory hogging. but frankly im getting a little irritated with MS and how theyre making a new IE but only for XP and Vista. why dont they at least take the XP SP2 IE 6 and port it to windows 98/ME/2000. id like to see a popup blocker native to IE. plus it would be a nice update for me rather than having to use this 4 or 5 year old IE 6 SP1. if it keeps going this way, im going to FireFox. im not really trying to say much here, i just want to know what everone else thinks in regard to this.

-brian

This post has been edited by brian10161: 03 June 2006 - 07:09 AM

[miko]

been using firefox for a long time now, and i've heard opera is nice too

either of these are what i would advise for any 98 user

i only use ie for the odd site which won't cooperate with the other browser
(and windows update, such as it is now)

ie6 is really old now, ie7 should have been out years ago

i browse with a lot off windows open at once and have been using tabbed browser shells because of this since i first discovered them (myie - myie2 (now maxthon) - firefox )

truth is if i had as many ies open as i have tabs open in firefox most of the time the OS would grind to a halt

This post has been edited by miko: 03 June 2006 - 11:03 AM

[prx984]

lol yah. I don't browse that many pages at once or have that many windows open anyway. So I don't really like the tabbed browsing, just because I dont have that much of a use for it, thats me though.

Plus, I don't like the way IE7 looks right now. I hope they make it so you can change the layout of the buttons and stuff. The main thing I don't like is where the forward and back buttons are. I liked the way IE6 looked, just I dont like how somethings work in it. I'd like to see a native popup blocker in it too. That would be the best. Perhaps maybe an updated version of SP2's popup blocker.

-brian

[miko]

thing is, while IE6 is still current, it's still supported by MS (critical updates etc - even on 98SE) but once IE7 comes out (proper) that will end, MS is not going to do anything more for IE6 at this point

sooo in order to be safe from any future threats/developments etc 98SE users are gonna have to switch to other browsers.

i've been looking at Opera again just recently (which still supports windows 95 btw ) and is apparently the fastest and most secure browser (it also has a nice line in skins )

here's a nice page to have a read through on the subject of free browsers

This post has been edited by miko: 03 June 2006 - 05:15 PM

[prx984]

iv used opera for quite some time as well, and i do like it. its faster and less resource hungry than firefox and yah it does have some really nice skins for it. if IE6 goes unsupported, i might have to start using that on my laptop. so when that does happen, im going to use windows98 lite with IE removed and the old 95 shell and just run it like that with opera. i think that make for a nice fast computer

-brian

[randiroo76073]

Anything but straight IE is better, when I was running IE I used Maxthon shell, it's safer & more configurable. Now I run Fox, Opera, SeaMonkey, each cofigured for a different type of browsing IE only for winupdate, whats left of it.

[Jlo555]

Yeah, if it wasn't for windows update, I wouldn't need IE at all anymore. I'm really starting to find that I don't even care if my software is outdated, with the exclusion of web-related stuff, for security reasons and such. For the time being, I'm just gonna leave IE 6 intact on my computer, and continue to use FireFox. The only thing I have to say to Mr. Gates is this: I don't care if MS drops support for Windows 98 or IE. I still use WMP 7.1 for videos (works perfectly with the proper codecs), MS Office '97 Pro, MS Publisher '97 and whatever other old MS crap their possibly could be. The support for those products was dropped years ago, and it's not like those products self-destructed the second support was dropped. The software I use now is stuff I plan on using for years to come, and I couldn't give two s***s about updating them. The same applies for my OS (win98se), and IE, which I rarely use anyway.

To Summarize: MS is dropping support for its older products... I don't give a rats a**. I reformat so many times anyways that I'm too quick for the "security threats" that I'm gonna be exposed to.

[Fredledingue]

Even that I don't use Opera or Firefox, I don't care too about M$ updates.
Maxthon is my IE update for a while.

[Fredledingue]

miko,

the comparison site dismissed OffBy1

http://offbyone.com/...b1_download.htm

I agree this browser is a litle bit barbarian, but it has the huge advantage to be stand alone, safe and very fast.
It doesn't enter the category of the serious browsers, but it's worht a look.
It's the "Notepad" of web browsing.

This post has been edited by Fredledingue: 05 June 2006 - 01:30 PM

[bristols]

My answer to the question posed here depends on the hardware available to me. On slower computers, it has to be Opera. No contest. In my experience, it's at least twice as fast as Firefox (FF without any extensions installed). And apart from that, it's a fine, fantastically designed Windows browser that puts IE6 to shame. In fact, next to Opera, I'm embarrassed for IE6. Opera is a pleasure to use.

Firefox feels clunkier than Opera, is much much slower to start/initialise. But it is far more extensible. I make web pages, and there are some extensions available for FF that save me so much time in development that I'd be a fool not to use FF just for those.

Whereas FF saves my time, IE is just a maddening time-wasting barrier, because of its relatively poor CSS support, and a range of serious rendering bugs (hair-tearing stuff).

[prx984]

i gotta agree with you, Opera is fast, plus its free like FF so its a double bonus.

-brian