IE, Firefox, Chrome, or Opera

[Mahdi]

I used to use IE, then Firefox, then moved to Chrome (mostly because Firefow had some virus thing that was redirecting me whenever I sued it).

Now, I'm wondering what all do you use? Which is the better browser?

[Dragoon Knight]

[colour=#005FFF]I was an Internet Explorer man until Firefox 1.6 came around. From then on, I was pretty much hooked and I've been using it ever since. The combination of customisation, add-ons and speed was perfect, and miles ahead of Internet Explorer.

Of course, Firefox had quite the reputation as a bit of a RAM hog to begin with. Rightly so - it would often take about 10-15 seconds for the browser to load up. It would be fast as hell after that, but it was enough for me to re-check Internet Explorer and the newly released Google Chrome.

Internet Explorer remained... poor, to put it lightly. Chrome was most definitely faster, but the layout annoyed me. It's cartoony and the tabs are in the wrong place. They also don't behave the way I want them to. There were barely any extensions back then, but even now, it's nothing compared to what Firefox can offer. Sure, Chrome is a little faster, but the way the user is treated (with a distinct lack of ability to tinker around with the nitty gritty) makes me more than happy to sacrifice the small speed increase. Plus, when I first tried Chrome, it failed to load the Google homepage. Every other website: fine. Google.co.uk: no. :P

And before anyone points it out, I know that Firefox 4 has the same tab layout by default as Chrome does, but it's alterable with a few clicks. :)

Having said all of this, I'm looking very carefully at Internet Explorer 9. The layout has been changed quite a bit, but there appears to be nothing overtly wrong with it. It's not as crayola-bright and blocky as Chrome, and it has pretty nifty hardware acceleration included. I've not got the beta, simply because downloading it routes you through an ad site, which both of my ad-blocking programs restrict access to. I'll wait for the official update via Windows before passing proper judgement.

Long story short: IE is pants at the moment, but could be good soon; Chrome is speedy but too simple and a bit of an eyesore; Firefox (for me) is the best combination of functionality and speed.

Opera can just sod off. :P[/colour]

[Andrew]

Nice double vote poll.

I just started chromium v9 on ubuntu via daily ppa. It is better than firefox 3.6.x

I'm not going to be switching browsers until after firefox 4 comes out.

Chrome uses multiple cores I believe (due to lots and lots of threads/processes for everything.) I forget if firefox v4 is going with multiple threads/processes per tab. If not then they will lose a lot of market share as geeks switch to.chromium and switch non technical users to chrome as well, just like they did with firefox over past 8 years.

It looks much more slick than firefox v3.6. At first I hated the look, but they've done some good work on it over the past year.

I have 16 bookmarks on bookmark toolbar. I just told chromium to open them all at once (they have not been opened yet so it has to download everything), and I don't have adblocker installed yet (so lots of ads using cpu and bandwidth. It loaded them all without even a stutter or slight freeze, I was switchign between tabs an no problem or user interface slowdowns. Firefox v3.6 does this with only a couple tabs open. I'm on SSD so has nothing to do with disk access (probably bad video card and dual core 1.8ghz mostly).

So if firefox 4 doesn't come as fast as chromium, I can see myself switching to chromium. Now it is not fair to compare chromium v9 nightly vs firefox v3.6. So I am hoping firefox v4 bridges the speed gap between them.

Been using firefox since 2003. I've got lots of people using it.

Although some people are hardcore IE, and I think they are crazy. I didn't realize there were ads on yotube until someone tried explaining about ads overlayed in videos and I had no idea what they were talking about.

Hmm, Chromium needs a search box at top right like firefox. I have mine set to wikipedia. Also a 'home' button could be useful (EDIT: preferences->show home button on toolbar). On a 22" screen, I don't need the entire width of screen available to show the web address at top. Add a couple optional things at top on same line, it is easy to fit in. I can see how this is useful for small laptop/netbook screens.

EDIT:

Added adblock for chromium. loaded 16 tabs, and there was a bit of a slowdown, but both cores were at 100%. I think having the dozen or so processes open up in a couple seconds can cause a bit of a slowdown.

Hmm, seems that having 16 tabs open uses a lot of RAM as well. Currently 1.3 gb, usually I never go over 1gb. Although that is good that chromium wants to use lots of ram especially on HDD machines, since ram is a lot faster.

Closed chromium and now only using 700mb. So 600mb of ram for 16 tabs of my favourite websites. Wow.

Opened my 16 tabs in Firefox and using 814mb of ram total (114mb for firefox). Firefox CPU usage when opening: 1 core at 60-70% other one at 30-40%. Unlike chromium uysing 100% (or close) of both cores.

Just the a couple firefox processes:firefox-bin, npviewer-bin, run-mozilla.sh

I can only imagine how fast chromium would run on a quad or 6 core CPU with all those processes on every core.

Oh, I am on 64 bit ubuntu. According to chromium ppa they use real 64bit build. Whereas I think firefox is still 32 bit.

FAQ:

* The amd64 package is no longer using ia32-libs. It contains *native* 64bit debs.

EDIT: firefox with ~16 tabs now using almost 400mb of ram.

I'm not too concerned with RAM, as you might as well be using ram, instead of it all being free.

Since the only extension I am currently using in Firefox is adblock, the switch to chrome would be quite simple.

[Lawliet]

Internet explorer??? Really? How on Earth can you use that crap? The worst browser ever is the most used one... In linux we don't have that crap.

Firefox has some great extensions like download helper, but it's too slow compared to other browsers. I only use it to play Quakelive.

My favourite is Chrome. Why isn't Opera in the poll? It's one of the best browsers. Although i still prefer Chrome.

[Andrew]

Internet explorer??? Really? How on Earth can you use that crap?

I always cringe when I see someone using IE.

Firefox has some great extensions like download helper, but it's too slow compared to other browsers. I only use it to play Quakelive.

My favourite is Chrome. Why isn't Opera in the poll? It's one of the best browsers. Although i still prefer Chrome.

Yah, I'm waiting for firefox 4 before deciding to switch. I assume it should be out by end of year.

I added Opera to the poll.

[gryphon]

 First at all the IE comments. It's absurd that after all those year no other browser has come close to security (or enterprise configuration) features that have been standard to IE in version 6. (to get this straight, a pop-up blocker and add-blockers are hardly integrated browser security features)

Now to the point. On Windows I use IE9. It just happens that Mac is not the only platform Adobe can't create good content for as the IE64-bit version of flash seems to be completely missing from the minds of Adobe resulting in the fact that websites work just as well as my iPhone as it does at a desktop. It's just luck that most important sites have made the switch to HTML5 by now. I tend fall back to FireFox from time to time.

On Mac's I exclusively use Opera (please do elaborate on why it can just-sod-off). I have personal reasons not to use a Google related browser (ever, or however good it is) and I tend to stick with products I like. In my case that started with Opera 5 and I never really had a good reason to change. 

[athanasios]

IE used to have only one usage: To download Firefox on a fresh installation of Windows. Now you don't need it even for that. Firefox forever, or till another better browser reaches the same number of plugins.

[Lord J]

I primarily use Safari on my mac. When I'm oncampus or on my wife's PC, I usually use firefox, though I've downloaded Chrome; I just never got into using it.

I know, I know, no one uses Safari.

IE: the update sounds interesting. It might be something to look at when it is released.

Firefox on SSD: I used firefox on my tiny (8-gig) netbook. It was hell, and I refuse to use it ever again on something with limited resources. If I can ever get my netbook running again, I plan to use something less resource consuming, like Chrome.

EDIT: Thinking about trying ubuntu for the netbook.

[Andrew]

EDIT: Thinking about trying ubuntu for the netbook.

If you're wanting netbook for web browsing 99% of time, and ubuntu, I would try Lubuntu, and install chromium daily ppa (it comes with normal chromium, but daily should be more up to date). It's fast. Set chromium to start when computer starts.

Dual core atom netbooks are the norm now (saw physical store selling a bunch). Chromium/chrome would be able to use both cores at once. Make sure you can put in 2.5" ssd in future and a small fast web browsing machine.

[Gruntlord6]

 First at all the IE comments. It's absurd that after all those year no other browser has come close to security (or enterprise configuration) features that have been standard to IE in version 6. (to get this straight, a pop-up blocker and add-blockers are hardly integrated browser security features)

Now to the point. On Windows I use IE9. It just happens that Mac is not the only platform Adobe can't create good content for as the IE64-bit version of flash seems to be completely missing from the minds of Adobe resulting in the fact that websites work just as well as my iPhone as it does at a desktop. It's just luck that most important sites have made the switch to HTML5 by now. I tend fall back to FireFox from time to time.

On Mac's I exclusively use Opera (please do elaborate on why it can just-sod-off). I have personal reasons not to use a Google related browser (ever, or however good it is) and I tend to stick with products I like. In my case that started with Opera 5 and I never really had a good reason to change. 

Have yet to try ie9, but previous iterations were terrible on security, I do not see what your trying to get at.

[gryphon]

Have yet to try ie9, but previous iterations were terrible on security, I do not see what your trying to get at.

Please do elaborate. Are we comparing bug-fixes, security vulnerabilities, number of exploits for the browser series, support for encryption ...?

My point. A lot of websites have exploits specifically targeted at IE. In my opinion that's just bad luck and not an argument that IE has a lack of security features. Mind that both Firefox and IE hold out no longer then a few minutes when directly targeted for exploits.

Things I find lacking in FireFox, that believe me or not are features I use every day, are related to client authentication. Client certificates and authenticating with them is hardly supported in other browsers or software then IE. It's a thing almost every government or bank I have worked with require in their setups.(simply explained, if you don't have a certain Windows user account or smart card you can't even connect to the server / website. Let alone try to view the content.) Those options simply are missing in a lot of software.

And I know, who of us at home care about that. And granted I use Opera and not IE at home. (after 6 years of being tied to IE for the above mentioned reason) Then what defines the most secure browser. The number of security features it houses to combat mall-ware, the number of security and patch-updates per month, or the number of exploits written for a specific browser.

I use a dedicated computer for, let's call it untrusted sites. That machines is cleaned, hard-disk dumped and reinstalled every 3 months. Sometimes I use FireFox on it and sometimes IE. You'd be surprised how many stuff I don't find on it after those months. :-)

Maybe the most important option is missing in this poll. It's not about the best browser or the one u use the most. It's about the best feature in a browser. Browsers wars almost always end up in explaining how bad something else is. That in itself does not make another product better.