Which web browser is best?

Filed under Proactive Writer.

browser_warThe release of the latest version of the FireFox browser stimulated some debate on twitter. Following a tweet from @jolantru here’s a quick summary of the key players in the browser wars.

Internet Explorer

This is Microsoft’s baby and is the most popular, and most hated, of the browsers. The latest release (8) is the slickest version so far but IE still faces two big problems. The first is that it is cumbersome and slow (relative to the other browsers). The second is in regards to the way it displays web pages. Without getting all technical IE reads web code in a slightly different manner from all other browsers and this can result in pages being rendered differently. This is a huge problem for web designers.

FireFox

This browser is now well established and is the browser of choice for those in the know. It has two great benefits that push it ahead of IE. Firstly is that it is fast (the latest version 3.5 is really fast). The second is that it displays web pages in a more reliable fashion. The third is that it has a huge open source following. There are literally thousands of add-ons that give the browser all sorts of additional features. These range from turning FireFox into a blogging platform to allowing you to examine and change web code as you view a live page.

Chrome

This is Google’s offering and is the new boy on the block. It is less than a year old and is still a bit buggy. This said the browser is very quick indeed. It is also stripped down to allow easy use. Chrome may not be a very serious contender to either FireFox or IE this year but it promises big things.

Comments anyone?

Need more actionable advice? Get your free weekly list of killer resources, straight to your inbox every Friday:

  • Ross

    You missed out Safari which is based on WebKit (the same rendering engine that Google took up with Chrome).

    It (WebKit) is derived from the KHTML library from Linux, and has a bit of a reputation for being clean and well-developed as well as fast. It is making inroads into the mobile space (iPhone,Android,Nokia) and is also used as the rendering engine for Adobe AIR and Chrome. I’m slightly biased as it is my favourite browser but it tends to be (in my experience) faster than the other browsers, excluding maybe Chrome, and is really pushing the boundaries in terms of new features and implementing future standards.

    As a result of Google Chrome using Webkit any features that appear in Chrome seem to find their way into Safari and vice versa, but as Chrome is currently only available in finished form on one platform I don’t think its take-up is likely to be very fast.

    Having said that, I personally use Chrome on Windows, and Safari on the Mac although I always keep the windows version of Safari up to date.

  • http://www.gylphi.co.uk @anthonylevings

    Opera desktop browser is an underestimated piece of software. Innovations such as speed dial have long been present and just found their way into Safari (aka Top Sites) and Chrome.

    The software is all about standards, and is so strict sometimes that it can refuse to display a page at all. However, the payback is the ability to make all sorts of adjustments to the way in which webpages are viewed – with or without images and/or tables, accessible colours, etc.

    Opera has sidebar search – not as great as the Firefox add-ons search bar but better than Safari and IE in its range of choice. There are also widgets (there’s an easy to use twitter one) and these float above the browser while you search other pages – which is incredibly useful.

    While there’s no denying the greatness of Firefox for its flexibility and reliability, if you’re looking for something different then Opera is worth a try.

  • http://chrisroutledge.co.uk/journal Chris Routledge

    I’ve been using a Mac for five years now but I’ve not been inclined to use Safari much, largely because it lacks many of the extensions available for Firefox. Since Safari 4 came along though I’ve found it to be a fast (very fast), slick browser with a lovely, distraction-free interface. And key extensions, such as Xmarks (which syncs bookmarks across different machines and browsers) and Gears (for offline access) work now too. Safari still suffers a bit from being a minority browser (Google Docs currently doesn’t work for me in Safari) but it is strictly standards compliant and supports HTML5 and CSS3, so is ahead of the game in some ways. It’s not a new feature (it’s been around since Safari 3.0 I think), but I do like the ability to clip bits of web pages and turn them into Dashboard gadgets on the Mac (IE 8 does something similar with Web Slices). Anyway, I find I’m using Safari more than I used to. Subjectively it feels faster than Firefox 3.5 too.

  • http://puerhan.blogspot.com/ Puerhan

    I heard the Chrome sends records of *everything* entered into the address bar back to Google, even if you don’t actually visit the site. Might be incorrect as I heard it and haven’t checked the details. Enough to put me off though.

    Opera is the best I’ve used on windows mobile.

    I work on a MAC and Safari is nicely stripped down and simple, but i use a lot of add-ons in Firefox and much prefer the look of it too!

    Firefox also has an add-on to render a website as IE which comes in handy sometimes!

    • Gary Smailes

      Thanks for these comments on Safari, you are all very kind.

  • http://www.lizfenwick.com liz

    Thanks Gary. It helps a techno idiot like me ;-)

  • Pingback: 5 ways to write a better writer’s blog