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I thought I'd start a topic for people preferred browsers and why...
What features do you prefer that other browsers may not offer...

I personally use Mozilla... A friend introduced me to it about a year ago...
My favourite features...
Tabbed System
Download Manager
Popup Blocker

I also like that it handles code pretty well... in most of my experiences if it works in Mozilla it works in most... Although I haven't experimented that much...

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I have very recently started using Mozilla Firebird and am now in browser heaven... The tabbed system makes browsing very user friendly along with the pop-up blocker. It also seems kinder to various layout schemes of peoples websites...

It's a smaller download than Mozilla (whcih also comes with a mail/news client) so if you don't need the extra stuff it's perfect!!!

I'd recommend it to anyone still using IE!!! - or any other browswer for that matter...

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firebird has the same tabbed browsing, popup blocker, and download manager as mozilla. i haven't used mozilla in years, so it might have this too, but firebird has a pretty rich extension system that lets you add the features you want and not bother to download the ones that you don't. my choice of browser goes like this:

1: firebird
2: anything that isn't firebird or ie
3: ie

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unhappy with the amount of parasite software i was accumulating on my system, i chose to try a few alternative browsers too.

Mozilla (or netscape as i prefer to call it) wasn't all it cracked up to be; popup blocking, sure. but i was looking for a browser that would actually load every page reliably and in short; it wouldn't.

Now I'm on to Opera, its been a love/hate relationship so far, with alot of ini file tweaking I'm fairly happy with it now.

If anyone has any more suggestions on reliable browsers, put them here

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firebird has loaded every page just fine for me, and with opera i had cookie problems.

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What problems did you have with firebird (or Mozilla)??? I'm pretty much a mozilla virgin but everything's running fine and dandy at the moment!!!

And Opera's not a free browser as far as I know... or have I missed something? For me free is like the icing on the cherry on the ice-cream...

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I used Monzilla for an hour a while back, but went back to IE because I have used IE most of my life, so it is pretty strange. I hate how it looks a bit... ermm... distorted. I mean it shows up much diferently than it does in IE and I do not like it. Plus, my mouse's wheel does not like it either because you cannot click with it and "zoom" up or down with it and I use it alot too. So, (I know this maybe anouying, but) I blocked my websites from Monzilla users entering because it just does not look the same in Monzilla, plus some of my Java scripts do not work for Netscape browsers and I hate it that they can veiw the links on a page because it makes it easier for people to find little "eggies" if you know what I mean. You know, secret things that are not realy secret, but just not easily noticable.

[edit]
So, my pick: IE

I like to use two diferent browsers on occasion for being able to log into one website with two accounts.
[/edit]

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ZackStorm... Mozilla is actually one of the best browsers to check your website with... if you get it to work on Mozilla then there are likely no errors in the coding... no outdated coding things and all that. If your javascripts aren't working properly in it, then it's probably your coding not being up to scratch...

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firebird's 0.7 release is including the autoscroll feature you mentioned. i'm using 0.6.1 with the autoscroll extension and it works great! also blocking mozilla from viewing your site somehow is just going to get you less visitors, unless you blocked it as "monzilla" in which case it probably won't do anything. as far as looking different, most sites look the same in firebird and ie, except for sites that use ie-specific shortcuts or ones that use features that ie doesn't have, so they'll be missing things in ie.

and to whoever was wondering about opera being free, they give you two options:
1. free download, with an ad banner in the toolbar which takes up a much larger portion of the browser window than i would like.
2. pay for it, and remove the ads. you can also remove the ads with a crack, but that's not nice.

i keep opera on my computer for occaisional testing (and if i ever feel like visiting the msn site*) and since i rarely use it i just block the servers that it gets its ads from and don't worry too much about the wasted space.

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I must confess, ive never used firebird, but since ive been swapping about alot lately, my current opera companion is there to stay untill i get bored of it.

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i'm using ie (claasic!)...we tried opera (?) a while back and i hated it...the pages i saved looked like gibberish to me.....

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ic38, I have scripts on CD that work exclusively for IE. As in it excludes Netscape browsers. Besides that, I just plain do not like the way webpages look with Firebird. Period.

[edit]
Also, misterhaan, that was a long time ago I blocked them. That was on one of my old websites where I was blocking everything I did not like: AOL, MAC, Netscape(sp?), complaining 600×600's, etc. Forgive me for not letting you know that was a long time ago hence I am not doing that now. I was sick of people dissing my oppinions, so anyone who did not like what I did, they were not let in.
[/edit]

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For me the idea is to create a website that will look the same no matter what browser you use...
Hence, as ic38 pointed out, if it works in Firebird/Mozilla it'll likely work in any browser... IE and others can be too forgiving.

It's a peronal choice I guess if you want to exclude certain visitors because they don't have the browser you want them to have but generally, with not too much work you can get you site to look the same whatever... Another reason why it's a good idea to try validating your site here as it also gives you help as to why it may not be cross-compatible!!!

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it doesn't exactly tell you what's not cross-compatible, it tells you what is invalid according to the spec. the spec isn't necessarily specific enough for all browsers to interpret it the same way though, so you will get some differences, and some browsers (especially ie) have incomplete implementations of many features. ie also has better support for invalid code--i remember way back when i used netscape and had my site in a table layout that if i forgot </table> netscape wouldn't display anything but ie handled it just fine. (the same thing would display fine on the current version of netscape though.) basically if you don't code valid html, you can't expect it to display how you want, because there's nothing saying what a browser should do with html that makes no sense.

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There are many sites around that can help you to be aware of what is and is not possible in different browsers... Best thing is to get familiar with those...

Secondly... If you are a neat coder you can be sure that you don't miss out thing such as </table>
Using Indents you can be fairly certain when something is missing...

Not to mention good coding habits can help you sort out any other possible errors, and make it much easier to understand code.

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i now write my code and markup so that anytime i open something i immediately close it and then go back up and insert whatever i want between the opening and closing tags. that and indentation helps a LOT when it comes to coding right the first time

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goodness! we can actually do taht?

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As i understand it, firebird is mozilla (or netscape) but just the browser to save space. How is that better than the full version (assuming you dont want to use a vulnerable mail client like outlook E)?

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it's similar ciderbob... but not just a smaller version of it...

they have redone how it handles some code and so on...

I recently changed from Mozilla to Firebird and prefer it... there are just subtle differences...

Only annoying thing is the horizontal rules grrr (check bug forum)

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firebird is based off the browser component of the mozilla suite, but it actually has a lot of its own code. for example, you apparently can't rearrange the toolbars in mozilla, but you can in firebird. i'd give more examples, but i've only ever used firebird . . .