The Shrine

So, after reading an article in the Washington Posts's Sunday Business section i DL'ed Opera for fun and gave it a go.

It is nice, but sometimes things just didnt work, which i cant live with. I had this same problem with Firefox. Some pages open funny or you couldnt cut and copy a table/graph, or there were issues with flash/java games, etc etc. IE, while basic, always had this stuff work.

I uninstalled Opera and now DL'ed the beta for IE's new browser and so far it is great. Tabs, filters, easier navigating, advanced stuff like FF and Opera, and it works. No complaints so far.

If the reason that the IE 7 beta is loading pages correctly is because it's not built to W3C standards, then I refuse to use it except when I absolutely have to.

Now, if IE 7 is adhering to the standards and it works while Firefox & Opera don't, then that's different. Maybe IE 7 is W3C compliant but still handles all of the crappy IE 6 tricks that web designers had to include before.

Like I said, I refuse to use IE for the sole reason that I hate laziness. I wasn't all that blown away by the IE 7 demo either. I'll hold off final judgment on 7 until the final release.

Opera all the way for me. I use my browser for a lot of confidential stuff - business and personal - and I absolutely don't trust Microsoft, no matter how good IE gets. Firefox is good, but I prefer Opera's interface, and I do like the integrated mail/IRC features.

As for pages that don't work, seems to be it's about ten percent of pages, more or less - but the ones that don't work only make up about two percent of the pages I tend to want to visit. If something doesn't work, I try it in Firefox, and if it still doesn't work I always do a little debate on whether or not I feel like exposing my computer to the gaping vulnerability/backdoor that I've traditionally seen it as. Sometimes I don't even bother...

I switched to Firefox last year due to the security issues with IE (I noticed that about 50% of Microshaft patches were due to IE and its security problems) and love Firefox. It's great and I haven't yet had a problem with anything. My web pages load up quicker and the built-in pop-up blocker is relatively smart and blocks the majority of unwanted stuff. Plus, I haven't had any issues in terms of d'loading ad programs or stuff since, which is a big prob I had with IE.