Browser War Refresh: Your Preference

[buwish]

With a recent refresh of sorts by the major players in the "browser wars," I was curious to get an idea of what Tom's members are using to satisfy their Internet needs. Simply put, what is your favorite browser? Feel free to comment on why you like your preferred browser, of course. The goal of the poll is to simply get an idea of what the more technologically astute of us prefer.

The choices are obvious: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Chrome, or some other unknown browser like Pale Moon.

For more on the browsers, have a look at Adam Overa's excellent comparison of the above-mentioned browsers (excluding the just released FF4) at this link: http/www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-4-internet-explorer-9-chrome-10,2909.html

*Edit: The link has been changed to incorporate the revised review with FF4.

 

[buwish]

Such is obvious by the little message under my avatar, I'm a fan of Opera, even though I must admit I have been using IE9 a bit to test it out and because it is a decent browser, at least in my opinion.

Opera may not have the add ons like Firefox and such, but with a little script ads can be blocked and I like the built in spell check. Plus, I find it pretty speedy. Most of all though, I really like the native customizable "bookmark boxes" that appear when you open a blank tab.

 

[Gman450]

I use Opera too, I used to browse a lot with FireFox, but it seemed to me Opera was quite faster than Firefox. I tried and used Chrome and Chromium, but they weren't as good as Opera ( in my opinion ).

 

[polyolefin]

I'm a big Chrome fan -- Google really knows what they're doing here.

Automatic background updating. Sandboxed Flash. Integrated task manager. Omnibar "TAB" key shortcut for searching sites. Developer tools are included (CTRL+SHIFT+I). Settings are synced so you can access them from any PC. Every tab is its own process, so a crash in one tab doesn't affect the others.

 

[Gman450]

I like Chrome too, it has better browsing speeds than Opera does, but the downloading ( for me ) is slow. I have 128 Kbps connection and I get like 44 to 50 Kbps while downloading in Opera but I only get about 20-30 Kbps in Chrome.

 

[overclockingrocks]

Chrome user here. I've tried em all. I was a FF die hard since before it was even known as firefox. in the pre 1.0 days it was known as firebird and worked flawlessly. I've noticed that as time went on it got more and more bloated until the speed advantage over IE which it was replacing on my machines. I tried chrome first back in 09 and it was a bit of an adjustment as there weren't any extensions that I was used to on FF but now that things have matured Chrome is excellent. Now if it would get the illimitix video plugin (eliminates the time limit for watching megavideo if don't pay them) it would be perfect

 

[tecmo34]

FF 4.0 FTW IMO...

Though, I do like IE9 as I've been playing around with it

 

[Reynod]

IE 8 seems ok on XP.

Going to Win 7 SP1 on the weekend.

 

[saint19]

Chrome has been work very good for me, the problem is that Adobe plugins fails a lot.

 

[buwish]

i am a FF user.

FF4 is excellent on the windows (xp and 7)

but on ubuntu, i find it to be less developed and less polished.

I concur. FF4 seems a bit "raw" or "scratchy" on ubuntu at this point. Hopefully with a few updates it will be up to par with the Windows version.

 

[dogman_1234]

FireFox 4.01, my good man.

 

[someguynamedmatt]

Firefox is just too customizable not to use. Running it with AdblockPlus, NoScript, and the BlackFox V1 (Blue) theme, it's the most amazing, low maintenance browser that I've ever used. Agreed, it isn't quite so polished on Ubuntu, but is anything?
...yes, actually, but that's not the point. Seriously, just go look up that theme for thirty seconds and tell me that it doesn't beat the crap out of all the other browsers once you get it set up the way you like it.

 

[buwish]

Indeed. FF is probably the most customizable browser out there in terms of add ons, no doubt about that. Their library in comparison to say Opera's extensions is rather impressive.

However, I am rather fond of some of the extensions that Opera offers. Since the release of version 11, they have really stepped up the add on game. Specifically, I like the ad block extension, which works well, as well as some of their more quirky extensions. For example, I use a run timer ext. that simply keeps track of how long your browsing session is and also keeps track of your total time. Finally, I some of the skins are pretty nifty as well. The one I currently use is an aero based "glass" theme that is basically see through, especially on the bookmark selection screen.

For those out there who are curious, head here to give a few extensions a try:

https/addons.opera.com/addons/extensions/

 

[Silmarunya]

Opera mainly, although I often use FF and ocassionally use Chrome for a while.

Opera is great. Many of the ideas in term of UI design and browser usage are Opera concepts - Firefox 4.0 looks a lot like Opera.

The integrated e-mail client is fantastic and the integrated torrent client saves time and resources by not having to open a torrent application. It also has built in ad blocking and other features that require extensions in other browsers.

The ability to customize the UI is probably its strongest point. It supports skins and offers more features out of the box than FF does with extensions. For example, I love having tabs on the left rather than on top - it makes sense, since my monitor is widescreen and a lot of horizontal space isn't used by websites anyway.

Speed is great - on par with Chrome subjectively and quite close in objective benchmarks (11.10 was a nice improvement in that respect and 11.50 promises to bring hardware acceleration for even better performance).

My only gripe is that a few sites still stubbornly refuse to work properly with Opera. CNET is utterly messed up and the comment section here at Tom's doesn't work either with Opera (the 'Submit' button fails to work). For those sites, I use FF 4.0, the next best thing.

Oh, and given a lot of people complain about Opera's high memory usage, I'd like to give my 2 cents on that: Opera takes lots of memory when it's freely available, but readily gives it back when other apps need it (usually games). Also, it has the most eye candy available. Turning some of it down goes a long way. On my older laptop, where memory is at a premium, it never takes more than it needs, putting its memory use in line with Firefox and Chrome.

 

[buwish]

The submit button doesn't work for you? I've never had an issue with it using Opera. I agree about CNET though, as it has never worked for me either.

 

[calguyhunk]

Don't really hate IE9, but FF has become a way of life for me over time and it's frustrating to find IE9 load times consistently superior to FF4.

Really hope they sort this out sooner than later (ver 5.0 maybe) especially in the face of stiff competition from Opera in the years to come.

With Open Office and Linux failing to further the cause of Open Source software, what else do we have to hold on to?

 

[Gman450]

Back to being a Firefox user. Opera has some loading issues for me. It first loads in the basic HTML style and then goes back to the normal form. Too bad I can't vote again.

 

[calguyhunk]

I like Chrome too, it has better browsing speeds than Opera does, but the downloading ( for me ) is slow. I have 128 Kbps connection and I get like 44 to 50 Kbps while downloading in Opera but I only get about 20-30 Kbps in Chrome.

You can always use a download manager for that.

BTW, I have a 2 Mbps connection and I thought downloading @ 256 Kbps was way too slow

EDIT: Forgot to mention in my earlier post, scrolling in IE9, Opera, Chrome is so much smoother than in FF even with smooth scrolling enabled.

Why should you have to install an add-on to scroll without inducing a headache? I'm not a code jock, but surely, the guys at Mozilla ought to do better.

 

[Gman450]

256 kbps seems really nice especially when downloading. The scrolling part is also correct. I have both the browsers, Opera and FF. And indeed, the scrolling is better in Opera than FF.