Just out of interest........

[John 2]

There are some fairly serious warning around about a current Internet Explorer vunerability. The US, UK and Australian Governments have advised against its use for the time being. As a result I have been looking at the competition. Interestingly I find that Google chrome is not too user friendly but more importantly, text and images are not as crisp as I.E. So I tried Firefox and that is more user friendly and very much better in terms of image quality, better in fact than I.E. The useability is probably down to a lifetime of being used to I.E but on the basis of my use of it so far, I think Mozilla Firefox may have a new permanent convert. Thought I would share.

[Mike Buckley]

Based on anecdotal information I came upon a couple of years ago thanks to Dave Humphries that I discuss here occasionally, Mozilla Firefox is the way to go when displaying accurate color is important. Better than Internet Explorer and Google Chrome.

[saea501]

Why anyone would have used IE in the past 6 or 8 years is just beyond me. "The internet browser with the open door policy, everybody welcome".

Been using Firefox for many years. They've got some great add ons as well. Glad to see you finally came to the realization.

[Geoff F]

I couldn't make much sense out of anything - then I found Opera which is a somewhat basic easy to use system that does everything which I require; with no messing about etc.

[DanK]

I've used Firefox as my standard for years. The huge number of extensions is a nice plus.

[ST1]

Firefox is a colour managed browser so I find it is very good for previewing images prior to posting them online. I do wish they would get the smell checker to work (English UK) in version 28 though.

[ajohnw]

I've used Opera for a long time. It has some features that I like that seems to have disappeared from others, cloning tabs, F8 highlighting the address so just the delete key needs hitting. F5 refreshes the current page. It also has some standard short cut keys that can be enabled so may not be a good idea to hit F keys willy nilly. Bookmarking is distinctly better than many. New sub folders can be specified as the book marks are made. Tabs can be dragged from window to window etc. and there are a number of add ons available. It also has a zoom bar - useful at times on high res sceens. They also seem to respond to problem web pages not loading etc correctly when reported. Even Yahoo seem to accept it now. Opera also seems to have been colour managed for rather a long time. I haven't seen any evidence of any problems in that respect even when there have been odd comments on the web.

It also has private browsing windows if needed. Not used but given the amount of tracking that goes on now I intend to try them. Firefox now offers request no tracking option but I have no idea how well this works.

Firefox started getting popular when it offered tabbed browsing which had been available in a Linux browser since the year dot. To me it seems to have changed since google did it's thing so I suspect the engine in both are the same. In other words in some ways Firefox is now a branded Chrome. Personally due to wasted time when google logs were I have gone from a search before actually directing me to the actual page I am a little cheesed off with google. I wish there was a decent alternative.

John
-

[Mike Buckley]

Firefox is a colour managed browser so I find it is very good for previewing images prior to posting them online.

I think all widely used browsers are color-managed these days. However, some manage the color better than others.

[IzzieK]

Firefox is a colour managed browser so I find it is very good for previewing images prior to posting them online. I do wish they would get the smell checker to work (English UK) in version 28 though.

My word! Do you really mean this? -- Now I got a new word ... Thanks. I'm gonna die here....!!!!

OK..You've all convinced me to use Firefox...I am using Google Chrome for a few month now...

[Mike Buckley]

My word!

Any one wanna take bets on whether Izzie intended that pun?

[Glenn NK]

What's IE? Seriously though, if I could remove it my computer I would have years ago. FF for me.

[John 2]

I can't find out how to create a WEB site short cut in Firefox. Anyone know how?

[Inkanyezi]

I can't find out how to create a WEB site short cut in Firefox. Anyone know how?

I don't know what you mean by "short cut" - if it's a key combination, I don't know, but there are several ways to get one, but it might depend on whether your OS is user friendly or not. In Linux, the easiest way is to drag it to a panel, and I guess you can to it on Apple boxes as well. In Windows it can certainly be put on the desktop and then dragged to the fast start panel, at least in older versions, whereupon the shortcut icon can be deleted. (I stopped using Windows in 2006 when I didn't have to any longer.)

If you want the web site as a bookmark, you can click on the star at the right end of the address field and with a second click, you can choose where you want to have it, in the bookmark bar, menu or unsorted. It is perhaps the easiest method.

[John 2]

Thanks for responding Urban. I can bookmard easily enough but when I was using IE, I could create a shortcut ICON on my desktop for my most frequently visited sites (CIC, Weather etc) by right clicking and selecting the appropriate option. The option doesn't seem to exist in Firefox.

[Inkanyezi]

To create a shortcut to a particular website on the desktop, I mark the address field and drag it to the desktop. Couldn't be much simpler. Double click on the adress and drag.

[John 2]

Urban, doesn't work for me. When you say the address, do you mean the www. .....etc. address?

[Inkanyezi]

Urban, doesn't work for me. When you say the address, do you mean the www. .....etc. address?

Yes, the one in the address field. I can also copy it and paste it to the desktop with the same result, but it might be OS specific. Mostly those things work on Mac in the same way as in most flavours of Linux, but Windows might be different.

[Saorsa]

TinyURL is an add-on for firefox if what you want is a compact URL for linking, etc.

[John 2]

Must be an OS problem. I'm using Windows 7. There is in fact an add on called deskCut for Firefox that supposedly puts a shortcut onto the desktop but having installed it and tried it, no desktop icons appear either on the Desktop or in Windows Explorer. Thankfully however, shortcuts created by IE will still work so that if I need more I can still create them by reverting to IE temporarily.

[Simon Garrett]

I think all widely used browsers are color-managed these days. However, some manage the color better than others.

I don't think that's right.

IE is not properly colour managed - even IE11. It ignores monitor profiles, assuming monitor colour space to be sRGB. This inexplicably perverse behaviour means IE accurately displays colour only on monitors that have a native colour space identical with sRGB (i.e. aproximately 0% of browsers). For wide-gamut monitors it's completely useless.

Safari, and Chrome since late 2013, are colour managed, but only for images and web elements with embedded profiles. Everything else (in other words, many images and all non-image stuff on the web) is not colour managed.

Firefox defaults the same as Safari and Chrome, but will optionally also colour-manage images and graphics with no embedded profiles. It assumes unprofiled stuff to be sRGB, which is nearly always right. You need to set Firefox option gfx.color_management.mode to 1 for it to colour-manage unprofiled elements (it defaults to 2) - Google for how to do it.

For wide-gamut monitors (or monitors with a colour space significantly different from sRGB), Firefox is still the only browser with useful colour management.

(I don't know about Opera - I've not tested it.)