Following Mr Creosote's advice, I've rewrote the satan boy's site to work with all browsers. for that I've spent the last week installing a lot of browsers and doing many tests.
Here's what I found out ( I'm only talking about the windows versions of the browsers )

Netscape 6 sucks bad. Even that simple mouse trail script takes 100% of the processor. I have a Pentium 2 400 Mhz, which is not a exactly a slow machine.
It also can't do without taking 25 megs of memory.

Mozilla runs well, fast. The script still takes up too much processor time, but at least not 100 %. Unfortunatelly, because it shares the Netscape engine, it still eats around 20 mbs of memory.

Internet Explorer 6 runs perfect. The script take at maximum 10% of the processor, memroy usage is around 10 mbs.

Opera 6 had performances similar with IE. Too bad about the messed DHTML support.

Opera 7 is crap. I don't know what the hell they've done to it, but it runs as bad as Netscape. Still doesn't need as much memory.

All the tests were done on the pictures page.

So , whatever you might say, and knowing that I myself don't microsoft very much, I still have to say it:
For windows, Internet Explorer is the best browser around. All the others are ranging from a little crappy to big crappy . So just face it and use IE ...

Certainly doesn't work with all browsers

It's the other way round: Netscape is built on Mozilla, just with some additional bloat.

Unfair comparison on performance, because IE is part of the OS and thus the actual rendering by the 'browser' appears to take up only very little CPU time and memory, because most of it resides in the kernel of the OS. Not the same with the other browsers.
As for the other points, it's a proven fact IE is the buggiest and most insecure of the common IBM-PC browsers. If you want to continue giving scripts root access to your hard drive, go ahead and use it...

First of all , which browser doesn't work ?
there is also a noscript version, if you'd only just read your messenger...

Second, I can also see how much kernel time is used , and the results reflect it.
IE is not part of the OS. It just uses dll that are part of the OS. The other's could've done it too.

I have read your private message, don't worry. I was just referring to the fact that your scripting won't always work - and there certainly are browsers which are 'interpreted' incorrectly by your script (ones which have partial support for JavaScript).

Now that's really laughable! Have you ever tried entering an URL starting with http:// in the "Windows Explorer"? You should...

Yes, Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer use the same activex to browse the net. That's not part of the OS. In fact, the shell is not part of the OS. The kernel is.

You are aware that Microsoft even won a case on the highest court of the USA stating Internet Explorer is part of the OS?

For the record: those pink clouds chasing my cursor (or whatever they are supposed to be) tend to crash Opera 7.20 beta 2. It works fine in Opera 7.11, though.

Some facts about Internet Exploiter:

- It's one of the most insecure/buggy bunches of code that have been released, and in spite of that it has not seen any development since several years (I think since version 4.x). All Gecko-based browsers are open source, that means you have a huge team of programmers behind them and possible security issues will be fixed in a short time.

- It's not even closely compatible to technical defaults, such as html standards.

- It does not have any feature that a modern browser should have.

- The interface/menu structure has been created by idiots.

- It most likely contains spyware elements.

- It's ugly as hell.

Conclusion: Everyone should use Internet Explorer.

I'm not here to defend IE, but I've listed some actual measurements.
Now, if you tell that it'a ugly as hell and probably contains spyware,that's not objective.
If it has spyware can be verified using a packet spy, but in fact, it doesn't.

NetDanzr, the pink clouds are supposed to be some yellow circles (pentagrams). I don't understand why it doesn't work. In my Opera 7.11 it works fine and doesn't crash. Do not use beta's. anyway ,Opera 7 sucks. Trow it

Edited by Dexterus at 19:22 on July, 23rd 2003

Which are - as I pointed out - not comparable. If you're still not convinced, why don't you try deleting Internet Explorer from your system? You'll see it's not possible.

Actually, that's pretty much objective, because there is no decent integratrated 'skinning' system for that browser - in contrast to every other I've tried during the last few years. One of the many examples of the lack of features Tapuak mentioned.

Such programs can't do magic. All they're doing is look for traffic on certain ports. If a program uses another protocol than the ones it's looking for or if it disguises its traffic cleverly, it'll slip through. That is valid for every program with 'closed source' of course.

I gave up on this one: http://asta.tu-harburg.de/propaganda/uninews/uninews.htm. In case anyone can tell me why Internet Explorer refuses to display the upper right corner correctly, I'd definitely be interested. The page has been written following the HTML 4.01 Transitional standard as published in September 1999 by the W3C. Microsoft apparantely didn't manage to implement this standard since then.

Oh and another thing: when I open one of the images, there's no way to close them

You can delete IE from system. What you can't delete in fact are the DLLs that are also used by windows explorer and many other programs.
If you know what DLLs to delete, ofcourse ( that also can be found)
You can try changing to an alternative shell and then delete.

I'm sure that a decent packet spy , or firewall can see all the ports. I have such a program.

Ok, made some modifications. Hope I fixed the pentagrams problem

NetDanzr: you suck, just press on the oppened image and it will close

It works fine , including opera

Again, that is something Microsoft themselves deny. And I absolutely believe them there, because basically the whole 'Windows desktop' is one big website these days.

That is like saying there is complete security in a network like the Internet. Everybody knows there isn`t. Given time, every security can be breached, and if you are 'at the source' (like Microsoft is), it's actually pretty easy.

Yes, the same DLLs used by the same Windows Explorer. I do not use active desktop or folder web content anyway. They suck.



For that, firewalls were invented.

Mr Creosote: I think I fixed the IE shadow problem. Try this version...

Dexterus: Since you've more or less admitted this 'thing' is part of the OS, we can drop it now.

Tapuak: Can't really try it, but I'm going to trust you

Yes, it's working, at least with Firebird 0.6, Opera 7 and IE 5.5. Now I'm waiting for the new issue.

I apologize to NetDanzr for telling him he sucks He doesn't, Opera sucks for unproperly displaying the hand cursor.

Tapuak: Could you test it again now? I didn't do all the changes you made, but only removed two line breaks in the source code - that made it work with Netscape 4.8 which is usually very much the same as Internet Explorer in its interpretation.