Which Browser should I use ?
Posted on December 14th, 2007 in Browser tips |
Well, If you are reading this article, at least you are little bit curious about which web browser to use when surfing the Internet. Let’s just respect the curiosity.
What is a browser by the way?
Let’s not go into a boring technical defition what that thing is. Browser or Web-browser is simply the tool you use to access the World Wide Web.
Most of us in fact are not even concerned about different browsers because the maximum pc users are using Microsoft Windows and it gives a browser by default which is Internet Explorer. This is a good one though and that’s why people would less likely to search for an alternative. The good news is that “It’s moderately a good browser”. By the way, I’m not a Windows promoter :(.
Coming to our main question: there are actually a number of browser applications on the Internet (Absolutely Free) which as good as IE or better. Here are some which are most commonly used. Here they go :
|
Browser |
Producer |
|
Internet Explorer |
Microsoft |
|
Firefox |
Mozilla |
|
Opera |
Opera |
|
Safari |
Apple |
Internet Explorer: The latest version of Internet Explorer which is IE 7 is very good and much better than older ones. It browses faster and formats the web page in expected fashion. If you are using an older version which is IE6 or lesser, I would recommend to upgrade it to version 7.
Good things about IE:
Consumes less memory, efficient formatting.
Bad things about IE : You enter into a vulnerable world using the IE because virus programmers have used IE as a weapon to spread their viruses. As it allows ActiveX objects to run in your PC, there’s much security threat using this browser. I’ve removed the IE icon from my desktop :).
Firefox : It’s my favorite pic. It has the most things I need to surf and find specific information. It has a wide range of Extensions which can be downloaded from their site. Moreover it’s pretty smart. The mouse gesture add-on makes it easier to go forward and back.
Good things about Firefox : Extensible, plug-ins make the browser as you want it. A variety of options. Available for almost every operating systems.
Bad things about Firefox : Eats us huge memory. If your RAM is 1 GB, it will consume more than 200MB at times which might make the overall performance slow.
Opera : The light browser and said to be the fastest browser on Earth. It’s good for it’s simplicity. Options are very open and you can easily delete cookies, private data and lot more.
Good things about Opera: One word , “SPEED”. Besides, it consumes less memory than others. Easy to manage. Newest version has “speed dial” feature which is awesome. By Default there is mouse gestures.
Bad things about Opera : It shows the page elements incorrectly. It hasn’t come up with all the recommended standards. Sometimes dimensions of page elements show up much in a different way than it should be.
Safari : Apple’s browser, which is a “good-boy” like browser. Recently it was released as a windows version as well. Renders the fonts smoothly.
Good things about Safari : Less browser crashes. In fact pretty stable. Good Interface and theme applicable.
Safari Download link : http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
Bad things about Safari : Overrides some of the fonts or CSS features of web page and shows as it’s own standard.
Here’s a browser statistics from w3cschools of usage in 2007
| 2007 | IE7 | IE6 | IE5 | Firefox | Safari | Opera |
| October | 21.0% | 34.5% | 1.5% | 36.0% | 1.7% | 1.6% |
| September | 20.8% | 34.9% | 1.5% | 35.4% | 1.6% | 1.5% |
| August | 20.5% | 35.7% | 1.5% | 34.9% | 1.5% | 1.7% |
| July | 20.1% | 36.9% | 1.5% | 34.5% | 1.5% | 1.9% |
| June | 19.7% | 37.3% | 1.5% | 34.0% | 1.5% | 1.8% |
| May | 19.2% | 38.1% | 1.6% | 33.7% | 1.5% | 1.7% |
| April | 19.1% | 38.4% | 1.7% | 32.9% | 1.5% | 1.6% |
| March | 18.0% | 38.7% | 2.0% | 31.8% | 1.6% | 1.6% |
| February | 16.4% | 39.8% | 2.5% | 31.2% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
| January | 13.3% | 42.3% | 3.0% | 31.0% | 1.7% | 1.5% |
Now Firefox is getting overwhelmingly popular because it’s extensible features. You can make it do what ever you want in fact. I would recommend download a copy of Firefox if you don’t have already.
Here’s where you get to download firefox