What does your browser say about you? (2009 edition)

You are not sure why people complain about Internet Explorer so much. It is a perfectly serviceable tool for downloading Firefox on a new windows machine. You have tried different browsers but you feel they are all vastly inferior to FF. Flock does too much, Chrome does too little, Safari is to fancy and etc… Its not like these browsers have better features anyway. At least not for long. Any cool, worthwhile and innovative feature will be either added in the next Firefox release, or has already been replicated in the form of an extension.

Every time you switch browsers you are amazed at how different the web looks. Your favorite websites are covered with banners, useful AJAX based features are gone… Then you realize that other browsers don’t actually have Adblock, Greasemonkey and Stylish extensions that you rely on. You also get annoyed when you try to test your websites in other browsers since they don’t have access to the full version of Firebug.

Seeing how there is an extension for everything out there, you can’t imagine ever needing another browser.

Kill yourself.

You love Google Chrome because as everything made by the big G it is fast, sleek and stable. Now you can check your Gmail and Google Reader feeds and Google calendar in style as you edit your Google Docs in a separate tab, chat in Google Talk, get your directions from Google Maps and build applications for Google App Engine. You are not really concerned that Google probably knows more about your personal interests, hopes, dreams and desires than your own mother. After all, their motto is “don’t be evil” right?

Also, the tear-off tabs were awesome killer feature until Firefox totally copied them. Still, your browser runs every tab as a separate instance so there is really no way for one website to crash the whole browser… Until one does, that is – but that happens rarely.

There are two possibilities here:

1. You are using a locked down company computer – in which case, WTF are you doing reading this? Go back to work you lazy bum! Also, your sysadmin is either lazy or stupid. Or both.
2. You are to stupid to live and/or you enjoy ruining the internet for all of us. In addition your machine belongs to at least 17 botnets and you pick up new trojans daily. You often wonder why your internet is so slow but you are definitely not going to install some shady “Fox Fire” or “Intranet Explore 8” whatever that is. It’s probably a virus or something.

   I hope you fall into a ditch, break your ass and die all alone as punishment.

As a rule you don’t use Windows Update. You are probably running Vista in it’s original, pre-SP1 shape and form. Your computer it is infected by 5 billion viruses and trojans making it barely usable. You heard that there is a newer version of Internet Explorer out there but you don’t care. You don’t like change. Finally, you assume that your computer is so slow because someone told you that Vista sucks. I mean, yes – it does, but it doesn’t suck that much. Your computer is slow because you are running outdated browser on an un-patched OS. And I’m not going to help you with that because you are ruining internet for everybody.

You are one of the few windows users who do know how to use Windows Update. Hell, you might have even went out of your way and downloaded IE8 yourself though I doubt it. No, seriously – most people clever enough to know what a browser is know better than to use IE. But you might just be a loyal Microsoft customer who simply likes the new browser for all of it’s “innovative” features. Someone told you that IE8 is actually pretty standards compliant, but of course you don’t know what that is. You would probably be pretty proud that your browser of choice passes the ACID2 test but you don’t know what that is.

Also, I might actually consider helping you to remove all these nasty trojans from your machine since for once you are not actually ruining the internet for us.

You really don’t give a fuck that both IE8 and Firefox 3 can pass ACID 2 test nowadays. ACID 2 test is like so 3 years ago. Now it’s all about ACID 3 and non of these upstart browsers can render that one properly.

Yeah, Google Chrome sort of took over the “fastest browser” niche these days but Opera still kicks ass. It’s fast, sleek and has lot’s of unique features. Besides, all of those other browsers have their keyboard shortcuts ass-backwards.

You are a mac user… Or you are one of those sad Windows people who suffer from a Mac envy. You know who I’m talking about – folks who buy a discount Dell and then use Window Blinds or other styling tool to make their Vista look just like OSX.

Does anyone else use that browser? I don’t know. Not that it’s a bad browser. It was the first one to successfully pass ACID 3 test. Not only that, but it’s Webkit engine is used by myriad of other browsers – namely Konquerror and Google Chrome. And these other browsers tend to stick out like a sore thumb on a Mac.

You keep telling people that Flock is not just a fork of Firefox with some web 2.0 and social networking extensions grafted in, but they won’t listen. Screw them then. You know damn well that your browser is better – perfectly engineered to integrate itself with the myriad of social media and content generation platforms.

Graphics are overrated. Who needs them. You browse the web for content, not for flashy designs and lolcat pictures. You use Mutt for email, Midnight Commander to manage your files, vim as your text editor. If a website contains a captcha you download it using feh, and display it in the framebuffer. Hell, you don’t even have X installed on your primary machine – you are that awesome.

Of course X is installed on your backup laptop which you use to go on youtube and to download pr0n but no one has to know that.

You are essentially like the average Chromium user but lazy. In a good way. You are to lazy to actually deal with the Windows bullshit so you run Linux. To lazy to compile stuff or fuck with RPM’s so you run Debian. To lazy to download Chrome so you run Chromium that’s available via apt.

You firmly believe that carpet should match the drapes and that the browser should match the desktop environment. Also, for some reason you like browsers that double up as file managers – you know, like IE did back in the day. Then again Konquerror is webkit based so it has to be fairly decent. All that hard work done by Google and Apple trickles down to your browser slowly but surely.

You firmly believe that carpet should match the drapes and that the browser should match the desktop environment. Besides, Ephiphany is gecko based so it has to be fairly decent. All that hard work done by Mozilla foundation trickles down to your browser slowly but surely.

You fondly remember the days when a web browser used to have a built in calendar, email client, HTML editor and some other useful tools. Those were the good days. You don’t care for the newfangled fast loading browsers the youngsters use these days. Also, you don’t like when kids are anywhere near your lawn.

You don’t tell people about your browser of choice in person. You have learned a long time ago that they will ask you to spell the name, and that’s just not possible. You just send them a link. In casual conversations you refer to your browser as “that browser” or kazehe-something-or-other.

But hey! It’s Gecko based, lean, mean, infrequently updated and seemingly abandoned. Um… That last part is not so good, but it’s still a decent browser.