Informal poll: what should my next computer’s browser be?

IE?… no. Firefox? …No. Chrome? …Starting to bloat. No real opinion yet on Safari or Opera or …Silk?  I think that’s the one that’s Amazon-specific.

Thoughts?

24 thoughts on “Informal poll: what should my next computer’s browser be?”

  1. Would like to know as well. Been using Chrome since the Firefox fiasco, but don’t really care for it. So I need one with an extension(s) that blocks ads/banners/stuff I want to block.

    1. Chrome has adblock plus available, and if you use it on your phone, you can synchronize your bookmarks. I like it because I have Foxish Live RSS on one system and it synchronizes my RSS bookmarks like Firefox does – but on all my Chrome devices. The only caveat is that I have to keep that browser running all the time.

      1. Right, I use Adblock but Chrome isn’t all that fast (faster than FF though) and Google is evil. So I want to change, but need the new on to have those options too.

    2. Adblock plus and Flashblock on Chrome takes care of most of that stuff. You can tune it by site. Flashblock is really good because it’s stops all those autorun videos (e.g. Facebook).

  2. I’ve used Opera for the most part of my general browsing for a few years and will continue. For a few months in 2014 it refused to render Amazon in desktop mode…it was Amazon’s doing…Amazon seemed to think Opera was a mobile device (UserAgent string interpretation I guessed). In any case, a recent upgrade fixed that nicely. I use Chrome to do Google-ly login things…and Firefox in Private mode to buy stuff from sites I don’t trust as much as others. Safari is fine on an Apple laptop I borrow, but the experience was somehow lacking last time I tried it on a Win7 machine.

    In the past, I used it’s OperaLink feature to sync up browser links among a couple computers (when I had a couple running I wanted to sync). And it’s SpeedDial is just-right for my needs. Overall, I like it best for general browsing…but it could be I’ve been using it long enough I’m locked in.

  3. Chrome is still the best of what works on most sites. Safari works pretty well, but historically it’s had the most security holes (many of which Apple refuses to even acknowledge).

  4. I don’t understand why you need to make a choice now. Browsers are free and disk space is cheap, so if you install one and you don’t like it, you can just download a different one. (I should probably mention that I use Xmarks to keep my bookmarks sync’d between my various browsers on different boxes and I keep track of passwords via Lastpass, which are the two biggest things that might otherwise keep me locked into one browser.)

    That being said, on my Windows box, I use Firefox for general use, Chrome for Google apps, and Internet Exploder for certain apps (such as my work’s Citrix portal) that seem to behave better in IE. On my Mac box, I use Safari for general use and Chrome for Google apps.

    1. I don’t understand why you need to make a choice now.
      .
      Because he knows us and has fun posting things like this for our amusement.

      2. That, and the fact that I think that it does me no harm to change things up a little from time to time. But mostly because clearly my readers like to talk about browsers. 🙂

    2. I should add that I switched from Firefox to Chrome for a while after Brandon Eich was defenestrated, but the problem is that I suspect that Google is more in bed with the DNC than the Mozilla Foundation is and can do more damage with the metadata it picks up.

  5. I’m using Bluemoon. It’s a version of Firefox with a lot of the rubbish removed. Runs quicker and less buggy so far.

  6. It doesn’t matter.
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    No, really. Makes no difference.
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    They all do some things well … but enough web sites are poorly coded they only render right on one browser.. and the browsers themselves all have serious quirks.
    .
    So.. do what I do ..: install Chrome and Firefox and .. when you find a quirky web site, try another…. and when you get tired of Firefox’s annoying tendencies shift to Chrome for a week.
    .
    Mew

  7. After Firefox and Chrome both got so slow on my computer it was no longer practical to use them for video or long-term browsing, I switched to Maxthon Cloud Browser. Free to get, easy to install, fastest browser I’ve ever had.

  8. Every OS sucks.
    And the song remains the same.
    .
    I use Chrome. There are good and bad things about it. (Most of the bad is the UI, and Google siphoning up your metadata.)
    I used to be a Mozilla proponent, but you know why that stopped.
    Explorer is, IMO, the worst of the lot.
    I’ve heard good things about Opera, but its limitations are pretty significant.

  9. The answer is, there’s no really obviously great choice (at least in my experience).

    .

    * Firefox: as noted, some odious political issues. From a user experience standpoint, maybe the best one. This is what I generally use.

    .

    * Chrome: Yeah, I’m another non-fan of the UI. A UI that feels deisgned for mobile on the desktop is not a good thing. I also try to stay out of Google’s little walled garden as much as I can (but Just bought a Nexus 7, so don’t ask how that’s working out).

    .

    * Opera: I used this for a long time as my primary browser. Last time I checked this had changed into an Opera themed version of Chrome, and all the stuff I liked about it went away, so haven’t used it since ~V12.

    .

    * Safari: I tried this out too, but apparently Apple isn’t doing updates anymore for non-Mac OSs. which is a deal breaker for me.

    .

    * IE: I actually have no idea how bad (or good) this is anymore. Even if it’s good though, not available when you wander off the Microsoft reservation, which is another issue for me.

    1. If you, like me, find Firefox and Chrome’s organization fundamentally untrustworthy,
      get Pale Moon instead of Firefox and Iron instead of Chrome. If the organizations doing the forks are as bad, it isn’t as easily clear.

  10. Really, IE11, Firefox, Safari (OSX/iOS only) and Chrome work fine for just about everything (except for the odd old/poorly updated site that tries to treat IE11 like IE8).

      1. I tried Flock when it was a thing. They discontinued support/upgrades for it, so I dumped it.

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