The guy who fixes my computers says he uses Opera. I have never heard of this or used it, does anybody know whether or not it's any good?

I have used Mozilla, and it was a kool web browser to have and I really liked it, but once again, all the websites weren't compatible with it. I haven't heard of Firefox. I just know that Mozilla was free, that was why I downloaded it. Plus it was recommended by those screensaver guys in techtv.

Mozilla is the "Full" version of firefox + Thunderbird. However, if you prefer to use only the stand alone browser, you can download Mozilla Firefox. The stand alone mail client is called Mozilla Thunderbird. They are normally referred as "firefox" and "Thunderbird" respectively.

Opera is another browser alternative like Firefox, but it has 2 major version, as far as I know of. They are the adware version (comes with banner ads on top) or the paid version.

Some people prefers to use Opera while others prefer Firefox. I prefers Firefox because it is completely free without the banner ads, not to mention the number of good extensions* for download.

*extensions are like special modules that can be downloaded and installed onto Firefox/Thunderbird for added functionalities. Some extensons will enable you to have a more effective cookies control while some will give you chat client, ad blocking capability and etc.

[ 08-11-2004, 08:38 PM: Message edited by: Paladin2000 ]

I tried one called IRider once, and wasn't too terribly impressed, but thought it had potential...

On a side note, I have Mozilla on an external hard drive right now, but have never gotten around to using it...worth it???

EDIT: Trying Mozilla right now...apparently my version is kind of old...I'd say six or seven months...and they say I need a newer one, which is a major pain, I say...but, I do like the tabbed browsing...

I must say, though, it seems quite a bit slower at loading Ironworks than IE or AOL ever were....hmmm...

[ 08-11-2004, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: Ilander ]

I was actually quite happy with IE's interface, until I got sick of the fact that if you have more than a few windows open it was using up to 150MB of memory just by ITSELF... [img]graemlins/wow.gif[/img] I decided to flick it then as it was just a major memory hog. With Firefox I can have up to 10 tabs open and only use up to 60MB. [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img]

I tried Firefox 0.92 and ran into two issues that put me back to IE, albeit probably temporarily. First, when I try to right-click and save something, it doesn't let me choose where to save it. I want that "save as" dialog.

Second, I seemed to run into a memory leak of some kind. After browsing for a while, I didn't have enough memory to open a video... or a document... or even a file. :(

Now that 0.93 has been released, I may try it again.

Hmmm, I havn't ever had that problem, but I do have a fair bit of RAM, the latest version should fix that though if thats the problem.

Well, I've decide that I like Mozilla, despite it's slow load times...I think it'll be my borwser of choice...it's easier to tab-navigate than having a bunch of windows open...

I use both Firefox and Thunderbird at home. I think most people would prefer it over IE once they got used to it. I can't say I've had any noticable problems with noncompatible websites, but I tend to stick to a few favorite sites.

That machine's got 512MB of memory (Win98), so it's maxed. I'm also not *positive* that Firefox was responsible for the memory leak, but it only happened after I installed it and ran for a while. I feel another experiment coming on...

I think it's only a matter of time until I switch to Firefox for good. Unfortunately, I do have one place I can't go to with it -- my company's intranet, which is where they keep things like my pay stubs now... [img]smile.gif[/img]

Now, if there's a way to have Firefox tell a site that it's really IE5 or better... then we have a clear-cut winner :D

*edit* not that I searched extensively for such a way, but I did look. And I didn't find :(

[ 08-12-2004, 02:50 PM: Message edited by: Bungleau ]

Ermmm... okay. Right there, under Tools, Options, Downloads... first question: Ask me where to save stuff, or always save it in this place. It's now set for my preferences [img]smile.gif[/img]

Searching for the masquerading browser stuff isn't going anywhere yet, but I now suspect it's there.