Or, “IE Sucks, Firefox Sucks, Krypton Sucks.”
This is the third installation of a series on the state of personal computing. Scroll down for the two previous parts, and be sure to come back later this week for the stunning conclusion.
Back in Part I, I pointed out that there were two web browsers running, and another two that I use fairly frequently. Why so many browsers? Quite simply because I need them.
Firefox is my primary browser. It does tabbed browsing fairly well, and I am a woman who often has 3 or 4 tabs open. I sometimes have a dozen tabs open if I am working on a post, as it allows me to have all my links handy. It gladly opens links from other applications in a new tab. It allows better cookie management than most browsers. It allows me to Google from the toolbar, and plugins are available to let me search different places selected from a pull-down menu. It also blocks pop-up windows, but only most of the time. It is still necessary to check now and then. In fact, just before I wrote that sentence, I discovered a pop-under from University of Phoenix. Sometimes, Firefox will decide that for whatever reason it needs to use 90% of the available processor resources. Then I must hunt down whatever is causing this behavior and make it stop. I could just quit Firefox, but then I lose whatever items I had loaded into tabs. Depending on the information, it can be a pain in the butt to find it again. Other times, the SPOD will appear, and it will be necessary to force quit. In fact, I will have to switch applications to get the operating system’s attention long enough to be allowed to force quit. This happens with enough regularity that I refer to it as “the weekly Firefox crash.”
The second most regularly used browser on my computer is OmniWeb. In fact, I almost always write posts in it. Why? The one truly compelling feature it has is spellchecking in forms. My spelling is okay (OmniWeb insists that ok is not a word and I must mean auk), but it’s nice to be able to correct typos before publishing. Furthermore, browsers being what they are (see title), there is something to be said for working in one and having references in another. I only have one annoyance with OmniWeb, that it has problems if you try to log in to a site you have logged out of. Quitting and restarting makes everything happy. In the end, I’m not sure that these days any web browser is worth $30. After all, the other 3 browsers I use regularly were free. The guys who wrote it are entitled to make a living, but I have to ask myself whether or not there is $30 worth of value over and above Firefox, which is free.
I also am forced to use Microsoft Internet Explorer, or MSIE. I am “forced” to use it because certain sites will not work in anything else. I do not have the option to just “don’t go there,” as I need these sites to get very limited and specific things done. I am not sure whether it is because of some lazy web designer using an obscure IE only feature, but the great irony is that most of the sites that require it are of the “secure login” variety. Irony, because IE is generally considered one of the least secure browsers. Of course, I am using the Macintosh version, which isn’t quite as up-to-date. It is also only about 90% compliant with the things that demand IE. There are times I have to boot a windows machine just to use a site that demands whatever Windows IE security widget is needed. So if you like, consider IE two browsers.
The final browser in regular use on my computer is Safari. When Safari was new, there were a lot of things to like about it. However, all those things are now done better by one of the other browsers. You can search Google from the toolbar, but only Google. It does tabbed browsing, but if you have what it considers too many tabs, it shunts the “extras” into a difficult to access and impossible to close area marked only by an arrow. It has a built in but inferior RSS reader. It too theoretically blocks pop-up windows, but somehow that “gets unchecked” now and then. It is theoretically faster, but at the sacrifice of compatibility. Lots of things just don’t work right in Safari. It also has a propensity for unexplained crashes. Why do I use it at all? Primarily to check compatibility of code; if it works right in Safari, it will work right almost anywhere. The other reason is that it is not possible to export my bookmarks to one of the “standard” browsers in an automagic fashion. As a result, I just check back in when looking for “something interesting I found once.”
There are other browsers, and while I am sure each has advantages, I also am sure that each has its very own flavor of sucking. In fact, the existence of legion browsers is damning evidence that they all suck. Each of them was created to address whatever issues the creators had with one of the big browsers. None of them is good enough to rise from the cyberdebris as a competitor to the big players. Few of them are even good enough that the big players have come knocking on the door to buy whatever unique bit of superior code they might possess. We are stuck with browsers that suck, and no superior answer is poised to come over the horizon.