The Hanover Collaboration

Before I start talking about myself, let’s lay down the interesting material. I’ve been testing and profiling my web application (Digiyou) and to do that, I use a number of different browsers. I’ve tested Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Safari 3 and 4, and Google Chrome. I tested what ran in Windows and Mac.

On Mac, Safari 4 is definitely my favorite when it isn’t pinwheeling. It’s fast, it’s url bar is pretty smart. It learns favorites. It looks good and stuff looks good in it… But it pinwheels sometimes. That could be because I have

>defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

On PC you can also run Safari 4 and it’s nice, but not the obvious winner. The hardware was different so I can’t say whether Safari runs worse on PC. Definitely a possibility though. Chrome just as fast and has a smarter url bar. Pages in Chrome and Safari 4 look completely identical as far as I can tell; I assume they use the same renderer. The hipsters in this crowd surely appreciate it’s “avant garde” menu approach. If I were on PC, I’d split that hair based on third-party plug-in support, which I assume goes to Chrome (keep in mind that the “third party” is often google itself”).

What about venerable Firefox? It’s slow. But it’s got excellent third-party tools. It also has the indispensible “search when I start typing” feature. The first thing I do on a new page is usually search for something. Better still, if the first thing you hit is a link, you can press enter to navigate there. If I got to the page originally from quicksilver—google “I’m feeling lucky”, I haven’t even taken my hands off the keyboard yet.

Now I’m running two browsers on my Mac: Safari 4, for default browsing; and Firefox, for working. We’ll see if this setup sticks. Incidentally, Mozilla based browsers have a fairly well used set of extended styles (like rounded corners), which is nice, but not worth much because developers spend all their time working with…

IE6 is a joke. People who use it must think that the internet is really ugly. Slow, no tabs.

IE7 is a pain in the ass because Microsoft decided they could render things however they want. Since everybody uses it, most things look “like they’re supposed to” in IE7, not withstanding that the are actually “wrong.” It’s slower than everything except IE6, has no useful features (unless you count tabs) and no third-party support.

Some of you might be surprised to hear how unsavvy I am when it comes to certain technologies—-that I was “still using Firefox.” Worse still, I wouldn’t have changed unless I had to go through the work I just did.

Ordinarily, I switch tools if and only if I think there is some kind of deficiency in my current ones. If I don’t recognize such a deficiency, I’m perfectly content using any old thing. Not having tabs in the browser was a deficiency. Being a half second slower is not the kind of thing that ordinarily would get me to switch brands. To the extreme that I didn’t switch to Mac OSX for years because I had Cygwin, a (pain in the ass) unix emulator.

For instance, I consider having to use the mouse when I’d rather type is a problem. As a result, I’m always trying new keybinding tools as I have discussed before. Having to type with my right hand, when I’d rather keep it on the mouse is a problem. Even moving the mouse very far is a problem. That’s why I buy tricked out mice, and configure gestures and radial menus.

On the other hand, the only reason I know that instant messengers exists is because I used it before I got a cell phone. It would have been hard to convince me that I needed a way of contacting people that was immediate, but not interrupt driven. And now everybody is texting when my phone has an email client. That is bizarre.

Back in the old days, only being able to go forward and back while web browsing was a deficiency. So I opened dozens of windows. I heard that Firefox had tabs and I switched immediately. But then there are all kinds of things like Tweetser and FaceSpace that you hipsters get excited about that seem to solve problems that I don’t have.