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What is the best web browser?

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6885P5H

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Hello. I was wondering what you guys' opinion on this was. I remember back when the internet was good I used Internet Explorer. But it became buggier and buggier with the increasingly ugly websites and some eventually blocked you from accessing their ugly websites with it, which was very nice and smart (sarcasm).
So I started using Google Chrome, which took insane amounts of memory but worked with all websites and didn't take all of your computer's processing power like Mozilla Firefox did. But Chrome also got buggier with each new update. First Java broke with it, and more recently Adobe Flash Player broke. And what's incredible is that I think to this day they still haven't fixed those two gigantic problems. They're probably too busy with making sure their software is as ugly and dysfunctional as possible.
So I started using Mozilla Firefox. It looks like they fixed the CPU-usage problem to a point that the browser can now be used, but now it takes as much memory as Chrome. But worse than that, Java and Adobe Flash Player also broke with it. I think Java is completely broken, but I managed to make Flash Player work on some websites, though it is very buggy. A "lego" icon keeps appearing as if there was a problem, and sometimes I have to refresh pages to make it work. Like the brain-dead fools at Google, it seems like those huge issues aren't very high on Mozilla's "programmers" team stuff-to-fix list. There's more. I am now finding many websites that do not work properly if you don't remove the "S" from HTTP in the URL. I think it's Google's search engine fault though, but a web browser that automatically removes this HTTPS cancer from the URL would be very nice. Maybe it can be done with Firefox, but it is so darn horrible nowadays that I'd rather not use it at all.

So what would you say is the best web browser to use today?
 
They're all terrible in different ways, except when they're all terrible in the same ways. But I'm a fan of Pale Moon - it's a Firefox fork that murders Mozilla's terrible UI revamps and keeps it on the relative sanity of the pre-Australis interface and generally tightens things up a bit.
 
K-Meleon was my go-to for years. I don't think it's actually been updated since the days when HTML5 was new, but it was a noticeably lighter-weight alternative to Firefox back in the day.
 
commodorejohn said:
They're all terrible in different ways, except when they're all terrible in the same ways.
Click to expand...

Thats certainly true. I was a netscape navigator then firefox supporter... but Firefox today is progressively garbage. Huge resource hog that crashes on most of my computers. People always rave about Chrome but I cannot stand the UI. Im a creature of habit and a webbrowser should be simple and seamless... It worked throughout the 90's into the 2000's with little to no problems, they are all awful now.
 
I use Pale Moon with the Moonscape addon and Netscape icon pack.
Its a rather nice browser, but I wish it had better addon support and and was more upto date.
 
Ever since Opera died and the last good version of Firefox (3.6) ceased being viable, I've used the latest compatible "stable" version of SeaMonkey on all my systems. It's a win-win scenario: You get the rendering capabilities of Mozilla Firefox while paring away Mozilla's last 15 years of UI devolution. I suppose Pale Moon might have some of the same advantages, but given the attitudes of their developers, I'm not tempted to support them.

I'll always be resentful of how Microsoft ruined the security and performance of Windows by shoehorning IE4 into the shell and help system in the quest of cutting off Netscape's air supply...but though grudges die hard, Internet Explorer doesn't make my blood boil like it used to.
Nowadays, the browser that I loathe more than any other is Chrome.

Chrome completely craps on 30 years of interface conventions by re-inventing its own UI. It updates itself automatically without consent, which is malicious by design. It kicked off the ruinous "rapid release" philosophy that Mozilla and Microsoft co-opted in a race to the bottom, and was the second major software product (after MS Office) to burn bridges with Windows 2000 users. Google has also taken a page out of Microsoft's ActiveX/MSHTML playbook by playing "embrace, extend, extinguish" with established standards like RSS, HTTP, and plugins, and "optimizing" their own web services to work worse with non-Chrome browsers. About the only saving grace of Chrome is that it's not a "mandatory component" of computer systems yet, but then again I don't use an Android phone.
 
Man-o-man, this thread is truly enlightening. Almost every conceivable creature out there for getting on the net. Me, i'm in the minority, as usual. I just turn on my box, open up Chrome and go where ever I want on the internet. I don't worry about updates - caveat: as long as my system doesn't crash or it gets a blue screen (never has). It always seems pretty quick when looking something up. What's not to like, after as all it was free. Just like W10, huh? It's always fun to play with this and that, just to see how it works, but for me, I'll take Chrome for now. BTW, the question of updates has never caused me to cancel out on any of my browsing activities. And while I'm at it, I wouldn't give a rat's patoot about browsing on my old boxes. Those old one's are for gaming and running Lotus 1-2-3.
 
Agent Orange said:
And while I'm at it, I wouldn't give a rat's patoot about browsing on my old boxes. Those old one's are for gaming and running Lotus 1-2-3.
Click to expand...

Hence my statement on the thread about Windows updates concerning letting one's crusty old relics access the modern Internet--not a good idea.

It's really enlightening to look at one's modem logs to see the sheer number of IP-sniffers out there. I get sniff attempts from parts unknown about every six seconds on the average.
 
TenFourFox, clearly. But the author is a jerk and should be ostracized.

However, despite its warts (and there are serious ones), I still think Firefox and Mozilla have the best commitment to free Internet principles and certainly more so than the Google-Chromium complex. So on my Talos II, I use Firefox.
 
I've had to use Chrome for work purposes because a bunch of service/MSP-adjacent-utility developers just don't even bother testing with anything else these days, and while the wonky UI is probably the thing that irks me the most on a day-to-day basis, I have to say that I'm most surprised by how badly it drops the ball on basic things like event handling. Damn near half the time I try to employ a common keyboard shortcut the thing just stares dumbly at me like a particularly indolent cow, and I have to press it another time or two to get it to actually recognize.
 
I can't remember the exact name of the google updater, because I don't use Chrome on this computer, but let's assume it's called googleupdate.exe

It's easy to stop Chrome updates. Look for googleupdate.exe in your task manager, right-click to find out where it is. This opens an explorer window. Now, back to task manager, kill off googleupdate.exe, then back to the explorer window. Delete or rename googleupdate.exe . After that, look in the services app and disable any google anything. No more updates.

Due to Firefox being such a poorly-written program, with its memory leaks, its inability to download large files from mega, and other issues, I would have liked to try out Chrome. But, I'm put off by stories of how Google uses it to track your every move.
 
Robbbert said:
. . . But, I'm put off by stories of how Google uses it to track your every move.
Click to expand...
Let's assume for now that Google knows your every move. How long do you think it's going to take for your number to get called at Google HQ and for that Google guy, you know, the one in the jack boots, to disseminated across the WWW all of your recent activities? Kind of makes one wonder what those spooks at Langley do after hours to stay completely anonymous.
 
Robbbert said:
But, I'm put off by stories of how Google uses it to track your every move.
Click to expand...
This statement piques my interest into what kind of online activities you're engaging in that make you so paranoid.

Personally, I'm sure a detailed list of everything I do online would bore the crap of everybody who came into contact with it.

Anyone want me to post my complete browser history? :)
 
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