What's the best beta? IE 8 vs Opera 9.5 vs Safari vs Firefox 3

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 3:33am

What about Flock? I am WAY impressed with it. I am completely blown away with their customer service too - the two things I requested they not only fixed, they THANKED me for letting them know!

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 4:38am

I love Firefox. I have tried all the 4 browsers mentioned, and Flock too. I should say that if anything comes near to FF, that is Flock. But then FF rules...

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 4:55am

Flock me.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 5:53am

You can have bookmarks with just the icon showing by using the #160 character (alt-0160) for the name in case anyone was wondering.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 7:11am

Safari 3.1 ?
It's out of beta for windows

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 7:29am

The funny things that all the funboys of Firefox (like CNET) never mention flaws with Firefox 2.0 (like massive memory usage) until it is fixed in Firefox 3.

J RiversWed 19 March, 2008 7:47am

> The funny things that all the funboys of Firefox (like CNET) never mention flaws
> with Firefox 2.0 (like massive memory usage) until it is fixed in Firefox 3.

Please don't just make assumptions; most people in the office have moved from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 because of the massive speed increases present.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 8:14am

fire fox sucks compared to safari

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 9:22am

Firefox is the best of a rotten group. ever open new yahoo mail, or whatever ajaxified web 2.0 app du jour and check your resources? it's massive. outlook uses less resources than firefox + new yahoo mail!!!!!

Some people may want their browser to be the be all end all but many of us just want it to read news, shop, and browse.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 9:43am

Since no other browser has the addons that Firefox does, there's simply no contest. No matter what features other browsers add, I'll always use Firefox.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 9:58am

"outlook uses less resources than firefox + new yahoo mail!!!!!"

obviously you're having trouble differentiating between a dedicated email application and a multi purpose web browser viewing AJAX, which is known to be resource hungry. That's hardly the fault of the browser, in fact you should be grateful for all the standards it supports to make your web experience better.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 11:45am

This entire article was a bit premature; Opera 9.5, IE8 and even Firefox 3 are all STILL IN BETA!!!! Comparing them now is like tasting a cake before it's even finished baking.

Why don't we wait until ALL these browsers are out of beta, THEN test them? Some of the results here may change in the final versions.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 12:35pm

Façam o teste do Acid3 pra saber quem é o mais padronizado, com certeza o IE ão será um dos melhores, nesse caso!!

CartmanWed 19 March, 2008 12:42pm

Firefox is and will continue to be the best of this bunch. From a development point of view it has great add-ons that help in building and debugging sites. It is standards compliant, I was so many hours fixing bugs caused by incorrect rendering in IE.

The freely available add-ons for Firefox is what makes it always ahead of IE. When I checked for IE add-ons they are either inferior or cost money and are few and far between.

Safari browser is nice and quick and light on resources but lack of features and no support for certain wifi hotspots that have a landing page makes it my least used browser.

I'm pleased that all of the browser developers are trying to improve their products but the best thing that could happen is forced retirement of old editions as otherwise it just means I have to support and test in an ever increasing number or browsers for my sites.

CartmanWed 19 March, 2008 12:43pm

Out of the box opera is probably the best but because of the add-ons for Mozilla's browser Firefox is still number 1 for me.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 1:02pm

I just upgraded my Safari to 3.1 and I have to say that it is lightning fast compared to the Firefox 3.03b I am using and my fave browser, OmniWeb (5.7b). There is just no contest in speed which is what most of us crave in all of our apps.

Falcon

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 1:35pm

Might be interesting to look at the other browser shells for webkit. While webkit is pretty remarkable, Safari hasn't really kept up the pace of innovation. iCab, OmniWeb, or Sunrise might provide more features that you like without giving up the advantages of webkit.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 3:08pm

Why the limit to Windows browsers? Safari on OS X is far faster with more features than its Windows version. Camino's not bad either. Realistically, IE8 won't be out for at least 12 more months. Fx, Safari, and Opera will all have betas of their next version out by then.

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 4:02pm

So the best just gets better help us in our campaign wooshare.com/bestviewedinfirefox

AnonymousWed 19 March, 2008 6:28pm

Huh, I've never seen Firefox 2 running over 200MB on a machine, never mind around 500MB. Right now its only using 158MB w/ about 12 tabs open a with about 5-6 plugins. Unless they are testing on Vista, im on XP. But everyone knows Vista is a bloated sack of crap.

AnonymousThu 20 March, 2008 4:06am

Opera 9.50's an ALPHA

Nate LanxonThu 20 March, 2008 4:45pm

Opera says it's a beta, and I'm inclined to believe them.

AnonymousFri 21 March, 2008 2:50pm

Indeed, Opera is beta. But the real difference is, that Opera 9.5 beta 1 is far the oldest release among the contenders. Beta 2 is on it's way.

AnonymousSun 23 March, 2008 11:49am

This is a good.

AnonymousThu 27 March, 2008 12:38am

I don't think Opera was really given the chance to shine in this review. Not much was mentioned about performance increases and stability similar to Firefox's increases performance. Many features that are available to Firefox via extensions are native in Opera, and a lot of them were seen in Opera first.

AnonymousWed 2 April, 2008 1:09am

Opera is better than firefox. I first switched to opera because of the massive resource problems in Firefox, dating back to 2005. Opera has all the features of Firefox and more. The features people think are lacking in Opera are simply not publicized because Opera isn't as popular. (userjs, for example). Opera loads & browses faster and is MUCH more standards-compliant. A common misconception is that it's "less compatible" - this is because of poorly designed sites forcing you to use either IE or FF.

Don't say that Firefox is better because they mostly fixed some huge problems it had before. Opera never had and doesn't have those problems. It took the the FF dev team three years to fix that memory bloat so as far as I'm concerned those guys lost their chance. I'll stick with Opera like always and I'll check out Flock. I've also heard good things about Redit but never used it.

nerdynickFri 4 April, 2008 11:57pm

ZOMG extensions ftw! Even though most Firefox users probably only use a few that are more than likely already natively integrated into Opera. The typical firefox tard doesn't realize how much he gives up just for the ability to heap on leaky bloated extensions.

AnonymousSat 5 April, 2008 8:32pm

I LOVE OPERA.
I have tested nearly all available (windows) browsers including:
Opera 7.2 + 7.5x + 8.0 + 8.5x + 9.x + 9.5x beta, Netscape 7 + 8 + 9,
Internet explorer 4 + 5.x + 6 + 7 (auch mit AOL 7 + 8 + 9) ,
Flock, Safari 3 beta, Mozilla-FireBird, Mozilla-Suite/seamonkey,
Mozilla-FireFox 1 + 1.5 + 2.0.x.x + 3.0 beta, Kameleon,
Konquer 3.x (nur linux)

As Standard-Browser I used at first (leke every AOL greenhorn)
AOL 7/8/9, then change to Internet Explorer 6, then to
Mozilla-Suite/seamonkey, then change to FireFox 1 + 1.5 and now
(since DEZ 2005) I only use Opera (8.5x + 9.x + 9.5x beta)

(sorry. delete my post above, I have vorgotten to write ALL in english and seen
it after summit first)

DavidRGilsonSat 19 April, 2008 12:33pm

What with Opera desktop recording every word you browse and Opera Mini being a proxy service, it all sounds like a privacy nightmare.

AnonymousSun 20 April, 2008 11:51am

Opera would be ideal, had it not the infamous and frequent ntdll crash, something unfortunately persistant in many versions. Has it to do with AMD's processors?

Firefox with NoScript add-on has the best security though so the best solution is for unknown sites to use Firefox, for the standard sites you visit, either Opera or Safari (for this now Safari is my fav browser since Opera crashes) and if you want to do secure tasks like e-shopping or protect your privacy, use either Firefox or Explorer (preferably Maxthon add-on)

AnonymousThu 1 May, 2008 8:01pm

Opera 9.27 and 9.50b2 ROCKS!!!
Its the SAFEST and the FASTEST browser in town...
Opera gives you that glassy look to websites.. which make them look cool(er)..
When it comes to add ons... Firefox is good.. but looking at performance in loading sites/images.. Opera is the way to go
Im waiting for the final releases of all browsers.. so that we can choose the best one to browse the net

AnonymousMon 5 May, 2008 11:47pm

flock and opera are good but i dink ff is still the best except for the s-pee.ling checks in the boxes you type in. THAT SUCKS

AnonymousSun 11 May, 2008 11:27am

well if u hav a resource hog lyk vistan only a gig of ram, lyk i do, then i think safari is the best browser to use