Weekend Open Forum: Your browser of choice

Julio Franco

Posts: 9,099   +2,049
Staff member

Without looking at any stats, I'm confident to say web browsers are in the top three most used applications by PC users. In fact, the relevance of the web browser is soon to surpass its original intent with Google developing an operating system revolving around Chrome. But without delving too deep into what the future may hold, today the browser is where many of us spend a majority of our time, be it for production, consumption or recreational purposes.

We've come a long way since the early days of Firefox, which reopened the door for the browser's evolution. Today the picture is more complete than ever, with five major browsers competing for our attention. There are the usual suspects: IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome, as well as a handful of alternatives worth trying.

With that level of competition, you can expect development to continue accelerating. A rampant new version of Chrome is released every few weeks, and Mozilla is planning something similar, but for now we have a new major revision of Firefox in beta. Opera has remained small on the desktop, but has made impressive strides in the mobile market and on embedded devices, while Apple has turned itself into a leader by driving WebKit and bringing it to the iPhone. IE still holds the largest market share and Microsoft is working hard on Internet Explorer 9, but this may be their last opportunity to redeem themselves with early adopters, having the last two builds widely regarded as laggards.

Without further ado, we want to hear about your preferred browser or combination of browsers.
Discuss and vote in our poll.

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Been using Firefox & add-ons happily since 2004 and couldn't live without them =). I'll occasionally use Chrome/IE but FF is pretty much my main browser on all my PC's.
 
chrome, for me love the simple look and the speed!
US IE for some websites that require silverlight (mainly MS websites).
I use Firefox to download videos from YouTube, thats pretty much it.

I'm curious to see what MS will do with IE9!
 
Firefox has been my standard for a while. But after a couple of recent comparison reviews on a couple of tech websites where Opera was the speed winner, I've tried that. It is no doubt faster than hell. But in the bells and whistles department, it's definitely lacking.

SO...Firefox is my main, Opera is my experiment. :)
 
God, a year ago I was using IE 8 or Firefox 3, but, after the first day I installed Chrome, I dished those two! I just love the clean look, without excessive useless taskbars, and the ability to search from the url bar, just can't live without it!!
 
I use Chrome for 90% of my browsing needs. Occasionally I'll use Pale Moon/IE to test random things or to view the occasional page that I am having trouble viewing in Chrome.
 
Opera is far superior to firefox or ie... and safari for real that shouldn't even be a choice compared to the other ones. So my vote is opera because who needs all that other junk, that Firefox is so famous for, if you really know how to use a computer.
 
I use Opera, just because it's so sleek and does everything I want. It is on-par with Chrome in sleekness (window frame size, transparency, buttons etc), but with Chrome you have no Speed Dial, and no temp folder.
 
I used Firefox (4)/IE. I hope IE 9 is good as I would kinda like to just use IE as my main browser due to the fact that nearly every website works in IE, something that can't be said for the rest.
 
I nearly converted to Chrome but I believe Firefox 4 has won me back. I still use both regularly though, because some sites don't work properly in FF4 yet.
 
Internet Explorer is a simple program that comes with Windows that allows you to download web browsers like Firefox and Opera.
 
FF is my browser of choice currently, because of the amount of customization it allows for. However, on my 5 year old laptop, chrome is the much faster browser, loading quicker itself, and loading pages faster as well.
 
Using Opera for 7 years now it's the leader everyone else copies and play catch up
 
Been using Opera for several years now. Wasn't 100% satisfied with the 10.x releases though so I've been giving a try to Chrome esp. in Linux while sticking to Opera in Windows most of the time.
 
I've used Opera for as long as I can remember
Especially when I was on dialup which I was until 2005 it was a tremendous difference compared to the others, not only in speed but usability IMO

I also use the other browsers, Chrome is nice but lacks a good built in session manager, I use it on a Swedish site regularly tho which is super heavy on scripting, check it out, search for some computer hardware, really a cool site: www.prisjakt.se

Firefox I use when there is something that Opera wont display properly, that is quite rare tho

Internet Explorer I guess is the last resort, for Windows Update on XP & Server 2k3 and older plus the odd site which does not work properly in any of the above (for example older exchange webmail servers etc)
 
opera 10.60 is untouchable in speed and options though I am looking forward to Firefox 4.
 
Home:
Chrome = 95%
IE = 5% (Only used when I have issues in a website which is about once every 6 months or when I need to do something remotely for work)

Work:
IE = 95%
Chrome = 5% (I only use Chrome for www.Pandora.com due the the Windows pass-through authentication when accessing internal sites such as SharePoint. I just prefer not to get prompted for credentials...)
 
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