Firefox is excellent. It's fast and very customizable. The tabbed browsing feature is one of it's main strengths as far as I am concerned. But it isn't without its problems. There is a known bug with some pages that use extensive Javascript that causes Firefox to hit 100% CPU. Unfortunately the problem seems to be a little hit and miss and so far nobody on the Firefox forums has cracked it. The current recommendation is to disable Javascript but that's a little lame as there are plenty of sites that need it. Fortunately, I have only found 1 of my regular sites that causes the 100% cpu problem so I disable Javascript whenever I visit it. This is a little better than having my machine overheat and shut itself down becuase the processor is going full tilt. Apart from that annoyance I love it.
Quite coincidentally, this browser issue came up yesterday for me and I did a research on it. Here is a comparison of browsers: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html If you have Windows, Opera is the best choice if speed is an issue for you, not to mention security and other features.... Firefox is only fast on Linux, the Windows version is inferior to even IE....
Opera *may* bench faster, but in usage Firefox might be faster if Adblock and Flashblock are used extensively.
... Power users should consider SecureIE. It's $30, but I think it's worth it. What makes it worth it to me is four additional buttons on the toolbar: 1. Popups Blocked/Unblocked 2. Flash Blocked/Unblocked 3. ActiveX Blocked/Unblocked 4. Google search I usually leave Popups blocked 100% of the time. I leave Flash and ActiveX blocked 97% of the time. This allows me to leave my security settings on Medium, which means all pages display correctly, but yet without the headaches of schizoid ads that move and dance and drive you crazy. I also think many viruses and spyware get into your system through ActiveX, so it's really nice to turn this bitch off with the click of a button. For the one site in 30 that requires Flash or ActiveX in order to work properly, I simply click the buttons on. I don't use the tabbed browsing feature, but it's available. The one thing I miss is the Links Toolbar. Except for that, it's pretty identical to Internet Explorer. Math_Wiz
No reason why you can't use both. You don't have to ask Bill Gates' permission With only using Explorer, I often accidently blew away a page I wanted to leave open if another page was automatically opened by my trading program for research. I now assign certain categories of pages to Firefox tabs (a nice feature), but use Explorer for main browing and sites that require it.
"Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC than people who go online with Mozilla's Firefox browser, academic researchers from Microsoft's backyard said in a recently published paper." http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20060210/tc_cmp/179102616
Pretty much everyone I know uses firefox. I, on the other hand, have downloaded and re-downloaded firefox on a few computers and everytime I have firefox running for more than like an hour, all the tabs and windows close. It's annoying as hell. My friends say, "yeah sometimes that happens." That doesn't happen with IE. I haven't tried Opera. Like Arbitrageur said...IE 7 coming out with Windows Vista looks like it's going to "catch up" to firefox and opera by improving a lot of things including tabbed browsing.
Come on. Lets get real. The actual article says: "We can't say IE is any less safe," explained Levy, "because we choose to use an unpatched version [of each browser.] We were trying to understand the number of [spyware] threats, so if we used unpatched browsers then we would see more threats." I dont know about you but all my browsers, mail clients, firewalls, spyware detectors etc are patched UP TO DATE. If you don't then all you get is an experiment in catching infections - which is what the researchers were actually doing. FWIW my own preference is still Avant browser for speed and functionality and Mozilla Thuderbird for email with good spam filtering and encryption (outlook express is 2nd but doesnt have the spam capability built in).
I reckon there are vast numbers of unpatched instances of IE running in the real world, with administrator privileges no less. in particular lots of them on Windows 98. Of course one should keep up to date with patches but many people dont and it affects the entire internet. The blame for the poor state of the internet with regards to security can clearly laid with Microsoft and the slovenly attitude it exhibited to security for many years. It positively facilitated a spyware 'industry'. It may be trying to get its act together now but a lot of the damage has been done and a lot of the old junk is still out there in the real world.