Which browser to use?

Okay, I have been trying to decide this for myself but I have finally decided to bring you guys in to help me. Which web browser should I use. I have messed around with the 3 big ones and have my thoughts on all of them. The choices are IE8, Safari, and FireFox

IE8
PROS- I have been using internet explorer since I started using the internet, years ago, around first or second grade. I run a Windows PC so IE is automatically with it.

CONS- Security issues. Not the fastest browser. Cluttered with a lot of tool bars.

Safari
PROS- Fast. Not a lot of tool bars cluttering the top of the browser. Favorites bar. Fast. Top sites page.

CONS- Had to download a lot of plug-ins to get it to run similar to my IE in terms of content it can display. Some websites show up a tad distorted (Guitars101 Forums show up way off to the side.)

FireFox
PROS- Ability to add themes to the browser. Great Add-ons (Save web pages for later viewing. Change colors of tabs. plus a billion more i haven't discovered yet.)

CONS- There are more bars at the top then safari, though not enough to really tick me off.

Okay, there are my thoughts so which one do you guys think I should go with as my main browser? I appreciate the help.

 

WRONG, IE8 has no toolbars! its those programs that u r installing and forgetting to uncheck the bundled toolbar that are giving u all those toolbars.

I run IE8, the only toolbar is the small built in one on the top right which is very handy acctually and can be hidden if wanted

 

IE8 is back to being one of the best and fastest browers IMO (and I usually love to hate anything MS) except for one thing -- the idiots over at MS decided to scrap the address bar inline autocomplete feature, which IMO is a huge mistake that is a step back in terms of speed and convenience.

Other than that glaring omission, IE8 is very customizeable and I have switched off nearly all the toolbars and other crapola I never use resulting a very light, speedy and uncluttered browser.

Chrome and Safari are way behind the curve IMO. I installed them, played around with them, and gave up on them. Firefox is now the only other browser installed on my machine, but IE has caught up with and overtaken it in terms of overall speed IMO.

Now I use IE8 for basic browsing and Firefox for those times I need one of the useful add-ons (web design, proxy, FTP etc). The ability to use add-ons are the strongest feature of FF as far as I'm concerned, although the majority of the add-ons (like iphone apps) are somewhat useless.

 

Opera 10. Better than any of the ones you listed
www.opera.com

 

Hate to sound mean but you really need to do more research before criticizing.

1. Security issues, that's mostly the ActiveX thing. If you are retarded and install everything you're asked from every site, then that IS an issue, but it's an issue of lacking common sense. Think about what you are installing and whether the site seems legit before clicking Install.
2. Toolbars: As previously mentioned, those are preloaded. If you ever had a clean install of Windows (which you evidently haven't, or you wouldn't be saying this), IE 8 comes with just the Faves and menu bar, along with tab and address. I normally turn off the faves and menu, so only address and tabs are open.
3. Safari: Faves bar can be enabled in any browser, wow can't believe I'm reading this.
4. Firefox: Toolbars can be hidden with addons. Currently I am using FF and I only have a titlebar and address bar. No menu bar and no tabs, unless I open multiple tabs.

A lot of your complaints can be addressed with add-ons. If you are comparing the out of the box performance then that's different, but you evidently are not because you keep mentioning add ons.

Firefox can be configured to show "top sites" Google Chrome and Safari style, so another useless point for you.

Surprised Chrome isn't here, nor Opera. Chrome definitely kicks all the above's butt when it comes to launch speed, and the ability to drag and drop tabs is awesome and something FF didn't copy quite right.

 

If you are asking for my Firefox is the best browser in my humble opinion. As far as toolbars you right click on an empty space then you have customization options there is a screen shot below of how I customized mine, and if you press F11 you can go full screen.

Also opera is very good browser my, it is my second favorite browser.

 

Chrome for basic surfing, Firefox for it's extensions.

 

Recently dumped FF for Chrome.

 

Try Maxthon. Using it for few years now. Tried everything else and I always come back to Maxthon.

 

Opera for me.
I also found it more secure.

 

I haven't tried Opera for a while -- last time I did it had big issues with W3C compliance and made a lot of sites look screwy.

 

Firefox and IE8 for some sites

 

Right now Opera is the most compliant browser, and it's been so for a couple years. What does "a while" mean to you?

 

If by security, perhaps this can help you:

 

The Pie Chart suppose to be old I guess.
LOL.
However, Opera is very safe indeed. I think it is due to it is less populated, so, those hackers/virus creator lazy to invent viruses or stuffs for Opera Browser.

Now, I am using Google Chrome v4. It start-up faster than FF and IE.
However, Safari seems to have fastest start-up.

Firefox is generally very low resources compared to the other browsers. However, the current Firefox is very messy(Lame UI). Need to tweak a lot and add-on stuffs to make it better. I think Firefox 3.7 must improve the start-up time even more and changed the UI as promised, if not, FF's doomed.

IE. IE. IE. Don't like it.
Maxthon, heard it before. Not so famous. XD

 

Well, I have only used opera on my phones, never on the laptop.

I am a loyal Safari 4 user. It loads slightly slower than IE8, but it surfs the web A LOT faster.

I dont like Firefox, never had. Tried it many times, and never grew on my...too populated, the UI was severely "bloatwared" by add-ons and plug-ins, and whatnot.

IE8 is SLOOOOOW when loading pages..sorry, but I dont like it.

Google Chrome was too buggy for my taste. Tried the first one, the developer's version, the latest one, none of them. I dont know, didnt make the "click" for me.

That chart is a Q1-Q2 2009, I think that is quite up-to-date in general. It was part of a report fron Cenzic (PDF) ( http://www.cenzic.com/downloads/Cenzic_AppSecTrends_Q1-Q2-2009.pdf)

 

Hi there, this is Kate with the IE Outreach Team. IE8 is safe to download and has many security advancements. Have you seen the recent study conducted by Cenzic that shows how few vulnerabilities IE8 has compared to other browsers?
You can check it out here: http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3847461/Firefox+Tops+Vulnerability+List.htm
Or read more about browser security here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/features/safer.aspx

 

Hello Kate @ IE8 Team

Thanks for the information. I will dig this a little more and come back to you.

 

I recently tried the top 4, FF, IE, chrome, and opera. I ended up dropping Chrome, it just was not an upgrade in any department. IE I only keep for certain MSN sites that require it. FF despite some annoyances is fast and stable, it is my number one. Opera I love but it takes some getting used to. I like turbo and the the easy way you can adjust screen size simply by going to a number on the lower right. Voice and mouse gestures for control are a bit much. It has proven unstable at times.

I am interested in RAM usage. I found this recent report which makes chrome look like a hog and FF the most efficient.
http://www.favbrowser.com/browser-m...-safari-4-opera-10-beta-google-chrome-30-dev/

 

I tried Chrome when it first came out. Was snappy for like a week or so, then got slow loading webpages. The lack of add-ons were disappointing as well. Went back to Firefox. Recently I tried Chrome again due to having some firefox stability issues. Again, same thing happened-speedy at first then slow as molasses...the wheel would spin "backwards" after I hit enter as if it was "thinking" about opening a page, before actually going through with opening it. Also I've had trouble getting it to actually respond to my right click-copy command-60% of the time i'd right click and try to click copy and nothing would happen, I'd then return to another window to paste what I copied, and either got nothing or pasted the wrong thing...pretty darn frustrating. After a week or two of dealing with this I said "enough" and returned to Firefox 3.5. I've been happy ever since.

Safari experienced the same "plummeting" page load speed problems as Chrome. The only "fast" browsers that have ever lived up to the hype for me are Firefox, Netscape and Opera. IE8...well you have to wait for it to finish "connecting" (to what..nothing????) before it'll even open a new tab....that's how slow it is. No thanks.

 

I should add that security is not a major concern of mine. I have the latest security software that works fine and seems to be way ahead of the bad guys. IE 7 was a deranged killer for me, chased me to FF and made me uninstall and stick to IE6..

 

and the pro makes the con irrelevant. i use personal menu, and then remove all but one bar, to have it as small in height as possible.

 

firefox and chrome are the best browsers.

take your pick: speed(chrome) or utility(firefox)?


ps, don't even call yourself a knowledgable firefox user until you've packed on, stripped down, refined, and replaced a set of several dozen addons. extensions can do some damn amazing things.

 

FF with ABP + NoScript + WOT + great security suite rocks. Not to mention all the extensions.
What's gonna happen if one uses his judgment?

 

Right now, Firefox 3.6 beta 2.
stable and fast.

 

Personally, I use Opera and then IE8 if a site does not load properly because it does not adhere to web standards.

I find Opera to have the perfect blend of features I need in a browser (mouse gestures, newsfeed reader, Opera Link bookmark/settings synchronizer, very fast tabbed browsing, Speed Dial, spell check - which incidentally, is much better than Chrome's, etc etc), without needing to tack on tons of addons that end up slowing down a browser's performance (ie: Firefox).

I actually kind of like IE8 as well, aside from opening new blank tabs slowly (I do not understand why a blank page takes time to connect to), it is very snappy and works very well. And, all websites work with it, although that's more websites' fault than the browser's.

I use Chrome exclusively for Gmail, since it loads it the fastest and with no border.

 

Beta 3 is out.

 

I'd say a combo of Firefox and IE8. IE is the standard and you can guarantee all the sites will look correct in them.

Firefox is my mainstay though due to it's plethora of Addins.

Edit: IE really doesn't have a ton of toolbars. It takes up just as little space as Firefox. Of course, Chrome has them all beat down.

Jay.

Jay Jay Bo Bay
Banana Nana Fo Fay
Be Bi Bo Bay
Jay!!!!!!

 

Chrome gets slow with time. For speed Safari 4.0 has been very good to me, even on my old single cored laptop, I can have over 50 tabs and it works pretty well. And maintains its speed.

FF is too crowded. Never liked it, you have to do too much modding out of the box. You install it, configure it for hours and put things, remove others, and tons of things to do, just a pain. just installed safari is faster, and less of a pain.

Seriously, what is it with that song?

 

why does chrome get slow with time? any particular reason?

 

Software-wise. I have no idea. It only slows down.

I have a very old laptop. And it runs Safari perfectly, and never slows down, but the google Chrome was very sluggish and a pain overall. I dont like it and too buggy for me, the scrolling didnt work properly, the dictionary didnt help either.

 

Your laptop is probably one of the exceptions where chrome doesn't run well on.

 

I ran FF up until recently (past few months) when I switched to Chrome. My primary reason for switching to Chrome? I have a WXGA display and the extra space is nice. My biggest complaint (and why I didn't switch sooner) is the lack of add-ons compared to FF. I miss Ad-block Plus! I believe I may be switching back to FF when 3.7 comes out.

 

you know> i wouldnt be surprised if that was the case, but safari runs nice and fast...no idea honestly

 

I have been using Chrome since it's release, and haven't come across any of the problems mentioned.

I like it because it's thin at the top, with very minimal width, I can drag and drop tabs, it's really fast start up (one touch of my Internet media button, and it opens in literally a flash), and it's just a good browser overall.

Only downside I have come across is that if you try to view some websites that require you to enter information (like looking for a job), the browser sometimes isn't compatible, which can be annoying.

Other than that, I really like the browser overall.

(And I used to be a die-hard Firefox fan).

 

Draggin and dropping is already in Firefox.

Even better, install Tab Mix Plus + Session Manager. You get so many more Tab management features. You can turn off the scrolling arrows and just use the mouse wheel. Or close all tabs to the right/left. Close all other tabs.

And my favorite? Force links to open in new tabs by default. I hate having to reload pages.

Session Manager's best feature is you can restore only the selected tabs instead of the whole session. Handy when you've got like 30 tabs and don't want to reload all of them.

Firefox baby.