IE would be great if the engine wasn't such crap.
IE8 has been ongoing for so long, I'm starting to doubt its success.

People still use IE?

People still ask this question?

Clearly most people still do, and you know they do based on both common knowledge and what you just read above, so why ask a dumb question like that?

I think you were meant to see through the question.

I personally like IE. I don't have issues with it. I'm not sure what your issue is, other than hating Microsoft?

Maybe it's Adobe Flash player crashing because of Adobe's crappy flash code?

I love IE's zoom feature. And it prints a page very nicely too.

I've used the latest firefox also and just don't see the huge difference... Sorry.

"People still use IE?"

Only for printouts (FF is very inadequate for
printing) and when Windows Live (Hotmail) has
managed to break Opera.

Opera totally rocks.

Yes, it sure does at .75% usage and its total lack of any sort of extensibility (not just extensions, but third party code being allowed to function with the browser to enhance capabilities). Good call

Opera Widgets:
http://widgets.opera.com/

Opera spellchecking:
http://www.opera.com/sup...orials/opera/spellcheck/

Inferior to Firefox in terms of popularity but usable nevertheless.

Regards,
Ruemere

OK, Didn't I say third party code in my original post? That is all opera based items. You have to use their UserJS which is useless for most of the purposes I and thousands upon thousands of others have been requesting for years from Opera.

You're safer using IE6 than Opera, this is one browser that went downhill fast. Still as long as you keep posting such riveting reviews we'll be able to remember the good old days, when it was indeed the best.

In-built spell checking, afaik, is supposed to be included in the upcoming version 10.

Im really glad FF has reached these high numbers, although it would not have been possible without such heavy advertising on the web, nevertheless it shows the browser is here to stay, for better or worse :)
Im also not surprised chrome has captured about the same amount as Opera has, but this again shows the advantage of being backed by having the browser advertised on youtube, and google front page. One should think it would have a bigger market share than this with that i mind.

Opera is a small company that spends all their income on developing new browsers, and thats something that I like to know. I also think Opera would be a lot bigger if webdesigners follow webstandards, as some webpages does not render correctly in this browser, and Opera is NOT to blame for that, however it makes people switch to other browsers.

However with IE8, I expect webpage designers to follow web standards more (I hope) which will come in handy for Opera and FF.

Anyways im glad that we not have such a great selection of good web browsers, something we could not say a few years ago at all.

And who was it that was claiming Opera was more widely used than Safari? LOL! No wonder the iPhone needs it!

Of course, to put that brohaha into perspective, how many really care about either?

Chrome is a bit of a surprise - but considering how closely aligned it is with FF, I guess it shouldn't be...

I agree with Tool regarding FF 3.1. Anonymous mode would be nice too.

Not a big Google fan though...They are simply the other half of the coin so many are want to complain about.

And IE 8 is going to have to fix far too many weird gotchas in IE7 for me to even look forward to it. Hell, The fact that you have to select open of save or cancel in a popup when opening an email attachment should be enough without having to give the browser permission with EACH #$%@ message! The ONLY thing I like better in IE is the screen scaling feature in the lower right corner. That would be a nice feature or add on for FF.

Actually, Chrome uses the same browser engine as Safari does, not the engine that Firefox does, so Chrome and Firefox are hardly "closely aligned".

OK, I was thinking Google and the Mozilla group shared personnel and thus the base was similar...or something to that effect...

My bad... Thanks

Opera IS much much more used than Safari on the mobile browser market.

"And who was it that was claiming Opera was more widely used than Safari? LOL! No wonder the iPhone needs it!"

Erm... not me. I didn't claim that at all.
*Edit* Ah, maybe you did mean someone else.

I was talking about Apple not allowing any programs to be created that are already available in a different guise on the iPhone (though they've never officially said this).
This is not the thread for such discussion though. I did semi-reply to that (I don't think it was the same article though).

"Of course, to put that brohaha into perspective, how many really care about either?"

Not many. And that wasn't my point.

Anyway, you spelt brouhaha wrong. :)

Could you explain how Chrome is using the same browser engine as Safari? You make it sound like they reused the code or work together with the Safari development team. I was under the impression that Google is using v8 as the browser's engine:

http://code.google.com/p/v8/

Let us know where the details of the engine are, I think this is interesting to hear...

V8 is the javascript engine.
WebKit is the main engine, which is the same as Safari.

Ah, now that is true.

Yup, with .000000000000x percent of the market.

Watch out world. LOL!

I don't disagree with you.
It is dominant in the mobile device market though. I'm not saying anything about the size of that market or whether it's important.
You're just having a flame attack because you want to feel big again.

haha, better luck with your flame war bait next time, pal!

Google does a lot to help the Firefox team, and you'd think they would have used the same engine but for some reason they didn't.

I think Chrome will get a higher user base also, it is made my Google so it'll be advertised well. Will it pass Firefox? That depends on the addons. Firefox does so well because it has a ton of addons. If Chrome makes it easy to make and distribute addons then I think it could have a good chance at tieing with FF.

IE8 will do well because people who use IE7 will auto update to 8 and when Windows 7 comes out 8 (or maybe IE9) will be on it. A lot of people still tend to stick with what comes with the OS, and what their work uses. I think IE8 will have some nice features in it and speed up a little, but it won't be enough to make FF users want to go back to IE. To do that I think MS would have to start from scratch and also add addons which I don't see them doing. Customization is the way to make a good browser.

I was just making a sarcastic smart aleck comment.

Flame war? What is there to debate? Who cares? That was the entire point...

The joke is that both you felt compelled to respond. Poor waffle...

I'm not entirely sure who BelgianWaffle was talking to.

I feel "compelled" to respond as you consistently twist what I've written to make it look ridiculous (granted, sometimes it is). There's no need to do it. It's petty.

I'm usually open to corrections to my opinion, but not if you're going to be a twat about it.

Yes. Just as Mozilla makes its Gecko browser engine (used in Firefox, Seamonkey, etc.) available for other open source products, Apple makes its WebKit engine available (used in Chrome, Safari, Omniweb, etc.).

I do wonder whether V8 will last: all the browser makers are working hard to make JavaScript faster, so there is a lot of duplication of effort, which wastes resources which could be used for other things.

Waffle was responding to Foxfyre.

Talking about yourself in the 3rd person is a little odd.

"Erm... not me. I didn't claim that at all.
*Edit* Ah, maybe you did mean someone else."

mmmmmmmmm...
methinks thou doest protest too much!

If Opera use consists of .75%, and mobile use is so substantial, the fraction of a fraction of a percent is even less significant.

If you like it and find it useful, by all means use it.

But at only a fraction of a market featuring only 7500 people out of 1,000,000, it is not exactly a compelling market niche.

Statistically, this group is insignificant, despite the fact that a few egos may feel otherwise. And who cares how Apple manages/mismanages their proprietary platform. Buy something else if being one of rhe 7500 per million is important to you. But with that market share, why should Apple care either? But count on Jobs to want to control even that...

But even the BluRay crowd would surrender if they had only achieved a .75 percent market penetration - regardless of how you chose to qualify and further subdivide this figure.

I would dare to guess that a higher percentage of kids eat paste in elementary school art than the total percentage of people of all ages who use Opera. ...In any event, its not exactly a percentage that justisfies one parading one's bravado about...

and mistaking a joke for an attack...huh, waffle...

...can't slip anything by him...

Tell that your queen...

Heh. The whole family are a little odd.

And there we go again.

"Statistically, this group is insignificant, despite the fact that a few egos may feel otherwise. And who cares how Apple manages/mismanages their proprietary platform. Buy something else if being one of rhe 7500 per million is important to you. But with that market share, why should Apple care either? But count on Jobs to want to control even that..."

I (somewhere) retracted my monopoly statement about that, by the way.

Yes, it's insignificant overall. There's two points here that need to be clarified:

The iPhone is a mobile internet device. On that type of machine, it is a significant market share that Opera holds. It's useless comparing the desktop browsers as it's not a desktop. If the market for mobile browsers is so small, why do they bother with any browser, or even the whole bloody smartphone? Because they want to appeal to that market. By allowing Opera you are appealing to that market.

The second point is that of what they'd do if Firefox made their browser work on it. What happens then?

"But even the BluRay crowd would surrender if they had only achieved a .75 percent market penetration - regardless of how you chose to qualify and further subdivide this figure."

I agree it's insignificant, but so is Safari for iPhone when it comes down to it.

Wow. I didn't actually think FF would make that kind of a dent. I don't expect Chrome to get anywhere near those numbers and Opera, well...

If they can get 3.1 out without adding a bunch of crap "fluff" to it (Stick to their original intent of creating a lean, tight, fast browser with the ability to let users decide what features they need), they could easily top this.

"I don't expect Chrome to get anywhere near those numbers and Opera, well..."

I do expect Chrome to get a lot more users, mostly because it's made by Google. Once it reaches 1.0 Google will plaster it everywhere.

Opera's doomed as they don't advertise nearly enough. However, it suits me and it's generally the first to adopt web standards. As a web developer it makes me happy.

I'm certainly glad FF has got to this level of uptake, but it's not for me.
Even IE8 is something I look forward to.

"...it's made by Google. Once it reaches 1.0 Google will plaster it everywhere."

Google products reach 1.0? So we can expect Chrome to come out of beta in what, like 2020?

Chrome is never going to have more the an 10% market share and that's being VERY generous. It is a good product though because with it's very open licensing pieces of it will be taken by other browser projects (both in code and ideas) and ultimately that's what Google really wants.

I'm not sure what Firefox's future is. It's doing great now but most projects seem to be moving more toward webkit then gecko. Apple (Safari) and KDE are already khtml/webkit. Gnome is moving toward webkit with Epiphany. Chrome is webkit based.

Does Opera have a next-gen javascript version in the works? I've not heard of one but for them to continue to be competitive they're going to need to have something to compete with Safari, Firefox, and Chromes next gen javascript engines.

"Google products reach 1.0? So we can expect Chrome to come out of beta in what, like 2020?"

You make a good point.