ssh tunneling is meant to be a secure means of proxy communication ... the only difference between an ssh tunnel and an http proxy is that the ssh client emulates a SOCK4/5 server on the localhost while an http proxy is usually accessed remotely. In all fairness that doesn't seem very different.
During an SSH tunnel, an HTTP proxy isn't used ever, I have no idea where you got that idea from.
Thats not the point I was trying to make. Both SOCKS and HTTP proxies are supported by most applications, they both do the same task in very much a similar way. The only difference is they use different protocol, and in the case of an ssh tunnel, the SOCKS server is on localhost instead of remote.
So you can pick either:
a) ssh -CD 2200 user@server (or use PuTTY or whatever to do this)
Configure the browser to use SOCKS server localhost:2200
b) Configure the browser to use an HTTP proxy server