What does your browser reveal about you?
I often tend to judge people based on the type of browser they use. Believe it or not, the choice of your favorite browser reveals a lot about your personality.
IE 5.0:
You only use your computer for IM, email and Myspace. You stubbornly refuse to upgrade that ancient Win 98 box that you are using because you don’t need some fancy computer and in your opinion the one you have works just fine. You also probably don’t use antivirus or antispyware either. You just let your son/nephew/friend clean it out every month or so.
IE 6.0:
You probably don’t know what a “browser” is and you think Internet is IE. You have no clue about technology, and you are generally afraid of computers. You also use your machine only for IM, chat, email and myspace. Your friends keep telling you about that “Fried Fox” thingy but you don’t really understand this stuff and never really had time to look into it.
IE 7.0:
You consider yourself to be on the cutting edge of technology. You think that Microsoft is the greatest company on the earth, and that this evil “Lenoux” operating system is made by terrorists. You have a poster of Steve Ballmer on your wall, and you want to be like Bill Gates when you grow up. When you think about Vista you get goosebumps and shiver with excitement.
Firefox 1.x:
You are most likely a little bit geeky and proud of it. You are a strong supporter of the Open Source movement, and you think that RMS is “the man”. You really don’t care if FF is faster, or safer than IE - you would use it even if it performed 10 times worse. You are just happy that you have a free, open source browser with a huge community that is supporting it. At any given time you have installed at least 7 extensions that you couldn’t live without.
Firefox 2.0 Beta:
You are a developer by day and open source developer by night. Either that, or a huge Firefox fan. You are all over Bugzilla reporting all the issues you encounter with the browser. You have probably summited at least one patch to an open source project at some point in your life. You love to tinker with your applications, and you don’t mind running beta software on your machine. After all, it is fun to discover new bugs, and to work little kinks out of the new cutting edge programs.
Mozilla:
You have been with Mozilla since the begging. You think that Firefox is really over-hyped and you prefer the old school Netscape like environment much better. You don’t think the Moz Suite is bloated - you actually like having a mail client, irc client, and a web editor embedded in the browser. You don’t understand why people would pick a browser with less features. In all other aspects you are much like a Firefox user - you love Open Source, you are fond of your extensions and etc… Actually, no - you would rather say that Firefox users are much like you in their tastes. After all, you were using an awesome gecko powered browser while they were still struggling with their IE or whatever.
Opera:
You really don’t care for they Firefox hype. What you want is the best browser there is - and for you that’s Opera. You actually used to pay them when the browser was ad supported. If a Firefox fanboi starts talking smack about your browser you quickly shoot him down by proposing the ACID2 test. You know what you want (a fast, standards compliant browser) and you know where to get it. Browser wars do not interest you at all, although you kinda hope that Firefox wins so that fewer web developers make IE only pages.
Netscape 8.x:
You are a senior citizen, who just recently got a new computer. You don’t really understand anything about the internets, but you distinctly remember that you must have Netscape to run them. You can’t understand all that talk about Internet Explorator and Firesomething, and you have no clue what Oprah has to do with the internets. All you know is that you need to click on that big N to get to the “onlines”. You think that Senator Steven’s speech about net neutrality made a lot of sense. You also sent out an internet one day, and the other person haven’t received it for days.
Netscape 7 and below:
See IE 5.0.
AOL Explorer:
Ever since you installed new AIM client this thing became your default browser. You really hate it, but you just can’t figure out how to change it back. You don’t even know how to explain what you want to your computer savvy friends. Whenever you try to get help and you say something like “can you change the new internet, back to the old internet?” they just stare at you and pretend they don’t understand. They probably don’t know as much about computers as they say they do, or something.
AOL Suite:
You most likely either still use AOL as your dialup ISP. Either that, or you somehow figured that you still need AOL even after getting broadband connection. Someone told you you can actually use the internets without starting AOL but you haven’t figured out how is that possible. It seems really difficult though, and you suspect it might be illegal.
Safari:
Congratulations! You are a Mac user with all perks and benefits that title offers you. You love OSX, and you would never use Windows. It just seems ugly and kludge stricken to you. You like the simplicity, and clarity that Mac offers you, and Safari is a browser that just works for you. You never really bothered to look for another one, because you are fully satisfied with what you have and you wouldn’t change it for the world.
Konqueror:
You are a linux user, and a geek at heart. You think that KDE is the best desktop environment out there, and you despise Gnome. You love the fact that your browser is also file manager, a ftp/scp client, smb share client, a PDF viewer and many other things. You like to show off KDE’s network transparency to your friends by scp’ing to your web server, editing HTML file, saving it, and then refreshing the modified page without ever leaving the browser. Most of the applications you use on a daily basis have names starting with a k (Kmail, Kontact, Kdevelop, Koffice etc..)
Lynx:
You are a liar. You really want me to believe that you use a text browser for everything? Especially one that does not support javascript, frames, css and has trouble displaying tables? Seriously, I can totally believe that you use vi all the time, and that your primary email client is Mutt or Pine. But there is no way that I’m prepared to buy that you use lynx for everything. And if you would, then you’d be the most hardcore geek I have ever seen in my life. Hats off to you!
—
If you disagree with any of the above, please let me know in the comments. If you are offended, then stop using that shit you use and get a real browser. 
Also feel free to add short descriptions for the browsers that I missed.
Disclaimer: I have no clue who made that awesome firefox image. Someone had it as an avatar on a message board. I’m perfectly willing to give the author credit if I can find him.
Update Sun, August 20 2006, 04:00 AM
Thank you for all the comments. Just to set things straight - I am not saying Lynx is a bad browser. I use it quite often in fact for various things. I’m just saying that I doubt a lot of people would use it as their main browser of choice. But if you are, hats off to you! You are much more hardcore than I am.
Update Sun, August 20 2006, 10:09 PM
Now, here are some missing browsers by popular demand:
Flock:
They might as well call you Mr. Web 2.0. You are all over flickr, del.icio.us, youtube and dozens of other websites, and your browser reflects it. You think that Firefox is OK, but it does not include all the blogging, photo sharing, tagging and bookmark sharing tools right there at your fingertips. You wish you could get a chip implanted in your brain so that you would stay connected to the web and be able to moblog 24/7. When the small minded people tell you that Flock is just a fork of Firefox you dismiss them saying they are not seeing the big picture.
Epiphany:
You are a Gnome user and proud of it. You consider KDE a torture device from hell. You are fond of explaining people that KDE must be configured for hours before it can be usable. The people who claim that KDE is totally usable right out of the box are definitely dirty liers. You prefer things simple and intuitive - that’s why you picked Gnome, and that’s why you use Epiphany. You tried using Mozzila and Firefox but you found them bloated, counterintuitive and ugly. Your desktop is neat an organized, just like your desk is.
Maxthon and Avant:
You are a little bit confused. You like IE and you wouldn’t change it for another browser. You don’t want to worry about sites that won’t render properly, or ActiveX controls that won’t work on an alternative browser. But deep down inside you are envious of your friends who get to have tabbed browsing, and other cool features. You do recognize that IE is a little behind the times though, and you want something more modern, without giving up your ability to render certain websites. Maxhton/Avant lets you have the best of both worlds - the warm and comfy feel of IE rendering engine, and all the cool features that are standard in other browsers. You will likely switch to IE7 when it is out of beta.
Sea Monkey:
You simply like application suites. You can’t help it, but the thought of using separate applications for web browsing an email just seems obscene to you. You used to use Mozilla but when Sea Monkey was released, you quickly jumped ship and you have never looked back. You think Sea Monkey is the coolest name for a browser ever!
w3m:
You have been a sysadmin for most of your life. You rarely see the sunlight because you spend most of your day in the bowels of the NOC surrounded by big servers. You can’t sleep without the background noise of a humming computer fan. You take a warm jacket to work even in the summertime because the AC in the server room is cranked up so high you could get a cold just thinking about it. Young geeks look up to you, and try to imitate you - but you could never figure out why.
K-Meleon:
You are way to impatient to wait for your browser to load. Even IE starts up to slow for you. That’s why your browser has a preloader, and it is cranked up so high that it only takes nanoseconds for the window to pop up on the screen. You live life in the fast lane, and you do not have time to wait for the slow moving applications. You can remember spending hours doing windows registry tweaks to bring up those response rates, loading times, and decrease timeouts on everything.
Dillo:
You are a minimalist at heart. You like your applications small and fast. You can be obsessive about memory footprints of the programs you run on a daily basis. You most likely run IceWM or Windowmaker on your machine and you sneer at the bloated desktop environments such as KDE or Gnome. You are known as the the local Linux/BSD guru.
–
Sigh… I tried to write something about Camino, Shiira and Omniweb but I have nothing. I never used them. Please feel free to do your own description of those in the comment and I will include it in the post.
Translations:
This post was translated to Chinese - here. I can’t read Chinese so I can’t tell you much more about it, but I think it’s awesome that someone took time to do this.
Portugese translation can be found here. Thanks!
Update Mon, Aug 21 2006, 3:20 PM
For those of you who are interested, here are my istes the browser usage statistics for the last few days.
Related Posts:
Please digg me if you like this post.
August 19th, 2006 at 8:36 pm (562) [Quote]
Great blog! I’ve added a link to your blog on Blog of the Day under the category of . To view the feature of your blog, please visit http://blogoftheday.org/page/111982
ps. I would disclaim the last entry about Lynx because it is necessary for accessibility for some users. Otherwise you’re bang on!
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 8:38 pm (563) [Quote]
Damn! Category for Blog of the Day is Computers. I had it in there, then had to retype because I missed the security code…
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 8:56 pm (564) [Quote]
Thanks!
You might be onto something with Lynx. How do people use it for accessibility though? I always figured that people would use either stand alone screen readers or some sort of add-on on top of IE or something.
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 9:19 pm (565) [Quote]
Shiira. But I don’t know how many of us there are out there.
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 9:44 pm (566) [Quote]
Never used Shiira but I guess the best way to describe it is a Mac browser using the KHTML engine and the Coca interface released under BSD license.
What does that tell me about you? Open Source loving Mac user who is not afraid to use bleeding edge software
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 11:15 pm (567) [Quote]
From the Lynx entry on Wikipedia:
Because of its text-to-speech-friendly interface, Lynx was once popular with visually-impaired users, but better screen readers have reduced the appeal of this application.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_(web_browser)
It seems we’re both right.
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 11:37 pm (568) [Quote]
For example, when I set up a web server at a new location I routinely use lynx on remote machines to see if the site is accessible from the outside.
I would imagine that visually impaired people would use something tad more sophisticated that would not lock them out of most of Web 2.0 which is very AJAX heavy.
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 11:43 pm (569) [Quote]
Though I am a obsessive compulive Safari user, I do use Firefox 2.0 Beta+. Unfortunately, not everyone (WinBlows users) believes in the power of the Mac, and my best option for certain sites is Firefox. When i do use a machine w/ WinBlows, I *must* use Firefox or else I shed tears. No one wants to see a pretty girl cry. Snot is not pretty and neither is IE.
Posted usingAugust 19th, 2006 at 11:54 pm (570) [Quote]
I use Firefox on whichever platform I am (Windows and Linux - I don’t own a Mac at the moment). Even though I’m a die hard KDE fan I just don’t like Konqueror as a web browser (it makes for a fine file manager though).
Whenever I’m forced to use IE I keep middle clicking links to open them in a new tab - muscle memory is hard to override sometimes.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 2:46 am (571) [Quote]
What about Flock?
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 2:51 am (572) [Quote]
Ah, middle-clicking on IE. Makes me flinch and swear whenever that happens.
What about Firefox 3.0 (’Minefield’) users and the new Web 2.0 kids on the block, e.g. Flock?
Posted using Unbranded Firefox 2.0b2 onAugust 20th, 2006 at 2:52 am (573) [Quote]
That was good man,,,really good.I use Opera mainly,but switch to Firefox for sites that don’t support Opera.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:00 am (574) [Quote]
What about k-meleon? It’s beter if you pronounce it: K + mel + E + on. No one likes saying ‘lizards’.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:00 am (575) [Quote]
I’m confused about the whole thing. I doubt anyone who runs Win98 is under the age of twenty. If they are, they are surely beaten back into the basement when they so much as comment about the food served at suppertime much less when they voice their opinion as to what browser their grandparents use.
I’m sure many browser upgrades/changes are made out of peer pressure. I am sure this blog is meant to do similar things.
I also believe that whatever the choice browser you use is, the spell-check option or extension was not utilized.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:05 am (576) [Quote]
heh, im a diehard opera and safari, and both pretty accuratly describe me. shiira isnt bad, but needs more options, and i use firefox on occasion.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:06 am (577) [Quote]
obviously, if yr using flock yr just too L337 for this list…
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:10 am (578) [Quote]
dude check your spelling I know some of it was intention but some of it seems like a spelling error.
s/kings/kinks
s/add/ad
also what about links2 I believe it does/can support javascript. I could find out if I wanted too.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:13 am (579) [Quote]
Firefox of course… I was a user of Netscape since around 2.0….
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:14 am (580) [Quote]
Rightly Said… I am an opera die hard fan. the personality you have said rightly suits me…
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:14 am (581) [Quote]
Well done, great article.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:14 am (582) [Quote]
I don’t think the IE6 description is entirely accurate, nor do I agree with the Firefox 1.x description. I use Firefox because it has great features (tabbed browsing, extensions, support, etc) and because it performs quite well but I would drop it like a bad habit if it performed 10 times worse. As for IE6, I used it for a long time simply because I didn’t care which browser I used. IE6 is so integrated into WinXP and I have to use it at work all the time. Plus, when I’m developing web pages, it’s the browser that will most likely be viewing them so it’s important to know what they’ll see. The security is definately an annoying issue but if you keep yourself aware of the issues, it’s a fairly manageable thing. None-the-less, I’m still much happier knowing I don’t have most of those issues now. I dunno, maybe I just break the mold (I’m definately more than “a little bit geeky”).
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:16 am (583) [Quote]
Please use proper English.
spelingk is imporant.
uyor charactierizationz are dumbb with a capital B.
you seem to enjoy belittlingk people
what a waste ov bandwidt
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:18 am (584) [Quote]
Please, I was using Lynx before the majority of users even knew what the Internet is. I don’t use Lynx now, but I mean give it some respect. Lynx (browser) + Pine (email) is all that you needed and it was amazingly fast and responsive.
I have 4 browsers on my computer right now, IE 6, FireFox 1.75 (or whatever the latest version is for it) and FireFox 2.0 beta, and Opera 9. I have them all mostly for web design development, but I have to say I used Opera in the mid 90s because they released a free version during the early days of the company, and IE and Netscape were charging money for the browser and I was running Win 3.1 at the time - Opera was pretty good although it didn’t support a lot of things, including Javascript.
But after having tried out all the popular browsers, I’m really happy with Opera’s speed and execution. It’s unbelievably fast, and it makes Firefox look like some primitive tool.
Firefox was good before all the hype about it started, but to be honest it no longer is secure or faster. Firefox eats up memory at a much faster rate then IE and Opera (combined). Also Firefox is vulnerable to html title attacks, I know of one exploit that can completely crash Firefox, and because firefox uses javascript to execute menu options, this exploit can be embedded into a page so that FireFox saves it in the history and each time the page is loaded - and the history is checked, the browser will crash.
To give everyone just a taste of what I’m talking about, try this:
put several characters (about million or so, use javascript to do this) in between two title tags ({million characters}) and then save it as an html page and load it in firefox. It will crash the browser, if you do a google search on the javascript functions used to execute options (look in chrome.css) you will see how to execute certain option menus - depending on users firefox setup and version.
Overall firefox is great for new users, but Opera is still my browser of choice.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:18 am (585) [Quote]
Wow. You sure make a lot of stupid and wrong assumptions. I prefer open-minded developers rather than types who think everyone who’s not like them is some idiotic noob.
But go ahead, be stupid.
And if you guess what I think you will about my platform and browser of choice, you’ll be wrong…
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:18 am (586) [Quote]
“You think that Senator Steven’s speech about net neutrality made allot of sense. You also sent out an internet one day, and the other person haven’t received it for days.”
I’m never going to get tired of these jokes! Great post!
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:20 am (587) [Quote]
[…] http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/[…]your-personality/ […]
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:21 am (588) [Quote]
I’d probably switch to Opera, but I’m way to accustomed to my FF extensions. Couldn’t live without them.
BTW - “a lot” is two words.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:21 am (589) [Quote]
you forgot Flock users!
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:23 am (590) [Quote]
Your missing one very important one:
IE7+ (IE7 on Vista Beta):
Posted usingYou have beta everything, and do you know why? Because beta means better. You can’t remember installing anything in the past 5 that you didn’t have to click though a disclaimer for. You have the entire windows registry stored in your head and can come very close to re-writing the kernel with it. At one point, you actually disassembled the windows kernel and printed it out, and proceeded to read all of it line by line.
August 20th, 2006 at 3:23 am (591) [Quote]
So funny, the opera user profile indeed does describe me fully. One missing characteristic: i simply ignore all sites that don’t work in Opera, except for Googles great apps: i pretend to be mozilla: feels like cheating.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:25 am (592) [Quote]
Omniweb
You arent running MacOSX, you’re running NeXTSTEP 6! You hacked up your dock plist so you can stand it up on the right and pin it to the top where it belongs. You long for the old days of scrollbars on the left. You contantly rant about how Mac users need a history lesson. People who think Mac users are arrogant about what’s right, and whats wrong about GUI design obviously haven’t met you.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:25 am (593) [Quote]
Shirra! Ha. But seriously, where’s Camino?
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:26 am (594) [Quote]
How about Camino?
Users who loves the gecko rendering system but as a Mac user, becomes spoiled with pretty GUI, and Firefox’s XUL interface doesn’t cut it. Sure, they miss having extensions, but overall speed makes even Windows users zealous of this open-source project. Camino will do nicely until Firefox in Cocoa is stable for use.
Luke - Shiira uses webkit, not KHTML.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:29 am (595) [Quote]
I use Epiphany and sometimes links. I wonder what you would say about them
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:30 am (596) [Quote]
It’s all about extensions >
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:35 am (597) [Quote]
Nothing wrong with IE7… it’s still in BETA and will be more refined once it is finished. And I can almost guarantee EVERYONE using IE7 knows what Firefox is. Mainly because if you go to enough effort to download a BETA browser, then you obviously are geeky enough to know what Firefox is. Infact, you probably jus switched from Firefox to IE7 because admittedly, Firefox is better, but die-hard IE fans will still jump at Microsoft’s Firefox alternative the second they get (like me
).
Personally I use all three (IE7, Opera and FF). Firefox about 80% of the time, the rest 10% each. I think all browsers these days are great.. to be honest, they all do relatively the same thing just as well as each other.
Interesting read
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:37 am (598) [Quote]
@Luke
I do the same thing. When it doesn’t work, I think the mouse is broken so I right click for “Open Link in New Tab” only to remember that I am using a browser that hasn’t been updated in 4 years.
Epiphany, the GNOME Web browser
http://www.gnome.org/projects/epiphany/
Epiphany is the web browser for the GNOME desktop. Its goal is to be simple and easy to use. Epiphany ties together many GNOME components in order to let you focus on the Web content, instead of the browser application. As part of the GNOME project, Epiphany is Free Software.
GNOME > KDE
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:38 am (599) [Quote]
You forgot about Flock… even though i don’t use it.. i know a few people who love it to bits…
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:39 am (600) [Quote]
This post is stupid.
Oh my god, let’s all laugh at stupid cliches pepetrated by someone who can’t write anything original.
I use Safari.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:41 am (601) [Quote]
You forgot SeaMonkey, the Mozilla Suite replacement. They’re up to 1.0.4. Good Internet suite. Tight. What does it say about the user? Not a lot. You can choose which modules to install. Maybe you like choices? Maybe you want two different open source Mozilla browsers/email progs on one machine, one for each of the two people regularly using it.
Also, Avant. It says you’re a developer wanting to use IE for testing, but you like tabs and security etc.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:41 am (602) [Quote]
Maxthon?? I know there are a fair few people using it.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:42 am (603) [Quote]
What about Flock? The only browser I use and I’m not even a super geek. It just looks better and has better features without having to worry about extensions.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:50 am (604) [Quote]
Just a small typo:
should be (I suppose):
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:53 am (605) [Quote]
A good article, unfortunately it leaves out the single best web browser on the planet (and sadly one of the least well known): OmniWeb!!!
See for yourself, www.omnigroup.com. Mac OS X only. This browser is fast (uses the Safari engine), and more important it is incredibly smart. The preferences alone - like “block images matching known ad sizes” - will make you wonder why other browsers are so archaic and clumsy. It does *everything* better, from thumbnail tabs to bookmark and history management to password keychains. And it’s as native Mac as you can get, so it looks nice on top of it all.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:53 am (606) [Quote]
allot isn’t a word!!!!!11, Fried Fox and Lenoux FTW
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:54 am (607) [Quote]
why try and form identity around the type of browser you use?
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 3:59 am (608) [Quote]
Haha, interesting article, had a few chuckles with my developer over this one…..And most seem to be pretty on target….FIREFOX all the way…..
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:01 am (609) [Quote]
what about flock?
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:03 am (610) [Quote]
What about avant browser, i use avant and i like it.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:08 am (611) [Quote]
You should get a counter on this page that shows how many visits from each browser. Btw, you’re digged.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:09 am (612) [Quote]
I’ve been using Shiira as well. I was just keeping myself tight-lipped until 2.0+ was official and no longer Beta release. It’s a work of art so far.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:12 am (613) [Quote]
Spell check and proofreading are your friends.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:13 am (614) [Quote]
Opera and Konqueror. I use opera mainly on my winblows box and and my linux lapper. I’ve been using computers since i was 5….for for 15 years….and I’ve hated IE for all 15. I hate IE even more now that Micro$cam is trying to force it’s own standards. Embrace opera! It’s the more user friendly and quickest browser I’ve ever used.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:17 am (615) [Quote]
totally agree on the ie6. its not ever “load the browser” rather, “go to internet” or “start internet now?” kinda crap.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:18 am (616) [Quote]
Then there are those of us who can’t decide on JUST one browser. Gotta love Opera for it’s speed, Firefox for it’s extensions & security, Crazybrowser for it’s ease of use, and IE for it’s compatibility (especially with Microsoft-related sites). Not to mention, each browser can be set with different security settings trying to balance privacy against autofill & password storage.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:20 am (617) [Quote]
I second Shiira. What about Camino?
This could probably work for e-mail as well. Yay for the Gmail stereotype.
Posted usingAugust 20th, 2006 at 4:21 am (618)