Browser battle: Firefox 3.1 vs. Chrome vs. IE 8

[Daniel ~]

Written by Daniel
Thursday, 18 September 2008

Mozilla's second alpha release of Firefox 3.1 ups the ante in its browser battles with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome

By JR Raphael, PC World
September 18, 2008

Mozilla's second alpha of Firefox 3.1 is upping the ante in the next-generation browser battle. So how do the main contenders stack up so far now?
[Frontpage...]

[PorPorMe]

I think that, for me at least, if FF 3.1 has addons to put some of the qualities of Chrome then that's for me. I'd be useing Chrome now if they didn't have their security problems. It's difficult for me to believe that the people in development didn't put just a little more time and effort on something so important. That is so basic a requirement I would think it would be a top priority. I would guess they took a significant hit just when they getting started. Loosing the publics confidence is notthe way to get started.

[Gizmo]

Originally Posted by PorPorMe

It's difficult for me to believe that the people in development didn't put just a little more time and effort on something so important.

Whether it's some coder working out of a garage, or a developer at IBM, you'd be surprised just how low a priority security gets in application development, PPM.

My company's new flagship software application is so riddled with security holes it looks like a colander, but that's ok because it's built using Java and .NET and AJAX and CSS, with all the latest tech buzzwords thrown in, so the marketing guys like it.

[PorPorMe]

Originally Posted by Gizmo

Whether it's some coder working out of a garage, or a developer at IBM, you'd be surprised just how low a priority security gets in application development, PPM.

My company's new flagship software application is so riddled with security holes it looks like a colander, but that's ok because it's built using Java and .NET and AJAX and CSS, with all the latest tech buzzwords thrown in, so the marketing guys like it.

I understand that part of it to some degree, greedy people being what they are, but [There I go useing that word agian] somebody must be able to think in a out fit like that-or yours. I know I'm on the outside armchair quarterbacking but it's so damn obvios. I'm sure tha Chrome has a piece of code that reports back to Google a number of different things so they can see what people like and don;t like. I'll wager I'm not the only one that bailed out as soon as the security leak was reported. That "should" register with somebody.

I guess the hardest part for me to grasp is that little hole in security will probly end up costing google millions in the long run and I, little 'ol me, can see it but they don't or won't or whatever. mind boggling

[Gizmo]

I'll tell you the same thing I told the VP of Engineering just the other day:

"I'm just a dumb country boy; I don't understand these big city ways of doing things."

[Aedan]

One of the problems with security is that unless you put it in right at the beginning - during the thinking process, it won't be right. Even then, security features can work against each other to effectively nullify them!

[dsio]

I'm actually going with Opera 9.52, more because I like the "gestures" you can use, ie.

Dragging my finger along the bottom of my touchpad left or right operates "back" and "forward"

Dragging at the top scrolls left and right through my tabs.

Some tap functions do interesting things too, which I like.

I also find that Opera is very fast compared to Firefox/Gecko based browsers and fairly on par with Chrome/Konqueror/Safari Webkit/KHTML browsers.

[Daniel ~]

I'm using Opera for back page stuff as FireFox does a bunch of stuff I neither understand nor can prevent when cutting and pasting...some sort of formatting I guess. I use FireFox for the rest... er this is all in Fedora of course! ":O}

[Gizmo]

I might be more inclined to use Opera, were it not for the fact that they STILL have a CSS formatting bug that they haven't fixed, which causes AOAFiles to render incorrectly.

That and there are a couple of tools I use in FF (Firebug being the main one) that I haven't found in Opera.

[Daniel ~]

When you cut and paste in FireFox for news items to our back end does it do some dodgy formatting stuff? Can you tell me how to turn it off so that it cuts and pastes as Opera does?

[Gizmo]

I've not had any problems with it. Normally, I post using FF in Windows, but the article I just posted up was done using FF in Fedora 9. No issues either way.

[Daniel ~]

When I try to move Info about things gett really messed up!

[Gizmo]

Where's the problem? Can you show me the site you are trying to cut-n-paste from?

[Daniel ~]

If I try and edit Format dots appear and want to move whole sections...hard to explain, here's sourse, I'll try and get a pic of what I mean.... Say, didn't FF have a speed dial feature like Opera? I can seem to find it now!??

[Daniel ~]

I can't seem to get it to do it now, it treated some blocks of text as if they were a picture, couldn't change spacing or move things about without gradient type lines and dots out lining the text space, like I was resizing or moving a picture....

How do I get rid of the high lites in the text I copy, never happens in Opera...":O}

[Gizmo]

Ah, ok, I understand your problem now.

When you copy something in FireFox, it actually copies the underlying HTML, so that you get all of the formatting of the original web page. If that formatting includes styles that don't exist here, then the formatting can appear a little jacked up. By the same token, since FF is copying the actual HTML, when you copy a link in an article it will be pasted as a link in the editor (that's the reason for the highlighted and underlined text that you are getting, as well as weird tables and stuff).

I've not tried this extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/134 but it claims to allow you to copy stuff as plain text. You might give it a whirl.

[Daniel ~]

OK! I Installed it andf copied in the normal way to the first box of our back end, then copied it choosing "Copy as plain text." into our second box.

As you can see this seems to do the trick for me! ":O}

Trouble is that the "Speed dial in FF, called "fast dial" can only use an older version ,In Fedora and to be honest it's buggy as hell. Won't close when told to, has trouble up loading the sites to the "dial" page for use. So I'll probably be with Opera for a while, hey these are tears of happiness! LOL

[Gizmo]

Well, at least it is partly solved. LOL

I'm a little puzzled though, as the FF plugins are written in javascript; the OS shouldn't matter...

[Gizmo]

Try this one, it's called 'Speed Dial' and some former users of 'Fast Dial' (noting FD's bugginess) seem to be rather pleased with it: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810

[Daniel ~]

ALRIGHT! Many thanks! Seems to be working OK now! Loading up my News sites now...":O}