Internet Explorer 8 or Chrome or Firefox

[Sandy22]

I need to updated as I think I'm on IE7 - which is the best to use? Is it Google Chrome?

Any help would be appreciated

I have always used firefox and find it really user friendly and quick ..not sure about google chrome have never used it

my internet really has gone very odd since installing IE8, i would avoid if i were you.

Safari :P

Thanks for the responses - haven't heard of safari - will take a look.

Noooooo - don't - it's totally cr@p! LOL!

I would place them in the following order:

Firefox, Chrome, IE8, Safari

Unfortunately I do still on occasion need to use IE for websites that have been written badly and therefore only display/behave correctly on Internet Explorer, but I will use Firefox >95% of the time.

Depends on a number of things - each of these browsers have good and bad points. I regularly use Firefox, Opera, Nescape (forerunner to Firefox) and now and then, Chrome, or MS IE (v6 on some machines, v7 on another, but it is absolutely my last choice and Safari doesn't get a look in, except on my really old iMac, banished upstairs for now).

Firefox - has lots of add-ons which can block ads and so on, and I use it primarily for checking websites (add-ons showing owner of domain, IP address where it is hosted, etc)

Opera - has some nice features such as bookmarks and notes which can be synchronised between multiple machines, (so notes added on a PC in the office can be seen at home and vice versa) and other 'odd' aspects like the order of displaying tabs is copied when you close them, rather than just showing the next left, or right.

Chrome - can pull a tab from one window to another (I have an extra screen plugged into this laptop, so have lots of windows/tabs open.

I use Firefox most, especially if I am comparing lots of items (you can save all the tabs used within a window in one go, and re-open them later, showing all the pages you had before). It's also handy for storing usernames and passwords (I have a couple of hundred) and I take screen dumps now and then, showing website / username / password and running to 10-15 screens, for my peace of mind)

As lazydog says, when a badly written website needs to be viewed, MS IE seems to "cope" while others are more strict. I remember seeing a website developed by someone local to me, where the navigation links would only display if one was using MS IE, no good for anyone with Firefox, as the HTML code was rubbish.

I use Netscape as well, because v7 and earlier have a built-in WYSIWYG webpage composer. I first bought a copy of Netscape Gold v3 in 1997 or 1998, so you might class me as a bit 'stuck in the past'. {I was sent a copy of Netscape v1.1 on floppy by a US ISP when I opened an account back in 1994/5 with them.)

Dont use IE ... too many security loop holes to make me use it lol!!

I use firefox and like it

Another vote for Firefox. I can only remember one website which didn't work in Firefox.

i hate internet explorer with a passion!!!

i use either firefox or chrome

Thanks all - I will go with Firefox

On a PC my favourite browser is Opera, it's very fast and nice to use.

On the Mac it's Safari all the way, unfortunately the PC version was rubbish.

As for IE, well yes avoid.

It's not that it "copes" better with badly written web sites but that older versions of IE were just rubbish and ignored the standards, or what's worse made their own standards up.

So web sites had to be badly written so that they would work on IE. You'd write one "standard" version of the site that would work on just about everything other than IE and then have to write a "special" version just for IE.

Grump.

And yes IE is a security nightmare. Even pretty recent versions were still seemingly using backdoors in Windows that they shouldn't have been, backdoors that hackers could exploit to get into your system.

I loved Firefox but the latest version started taking AGES to load so switched to Chrome about 5 weeks ago. It's very bare & simple but I'm used to it now and love it.

It's not that it "copes" better ...

I wasn't intending to explain the standards issues - hence putting "copes" in quotes.

I could have pointed out that sometimes Firefox or Netscape could "choke" (*) on a website with badly written HTML, because I've seen instances where one or other "goes into a sulk" and appears to lock up, or (in less severe cases) just displays nothing. Unfortunately some might consider that FF had a 'bug' rather than being stricter in checking for properly written code with matched tags, etc.

• Of course, like "copes", "choke" isn't an especially scientific description, but something others might accept, in context.

I like Chrome, but it has two big disadvantages for me - it doesn't support the Google toolbar which I use all the time, and it doesn't save the zoom settings for individual websites. I use Firefox mostly, but it's been having issues recently in not closing properly, so I may end up switching to Chrome anyway.

I downloaded Chrome in the end - thanks for all the posts.

Firefox on my Desktop & Chrome on my less powerful laptop.
If people used FF with the NoScript addon theyd probably have less problems with all that dubious AV Scareware thats been doing the rounds this last year or two, as well as a lot of the other junk they get caught out with.

I use FF but lately have found it's taking 250meg of memory, which is a bit pants. Could be the sites though....

Yes, I found that FF sometimes 'keeps growing' and things can then s-l-o-w down too much. If FF goes much over 300 Mb, I tend to force it to close with the Task Manager and start it up again later (since existing tabs/windows are stored pretty much up to the point of forcing it to crash).

@Bruceb
There are some pretty common fixes out there you could try for a memory hogging FF but id suggest having a wee look at Chrome. With its own collection of extensions it`s now actually better than FF in many ways imo.
I think just like a lot of I.E users many of us have just become too attached to FF and are loathe to let it go.

Change can be a good thing.

I downloaded Chrome yesterday. The are 3 users on the laptop but it only seems to be on my page and not the 2 others users - does anyone know who I fix it that it appears on the other 2 users pages?

Pages?

I'm guessing you're running Windows? Do you mean it appears as an Icon on the desktop for you but not for anyone else?

Hi Badger I have set up 3 users, on my desktop page the chrome icon is there but on the other 2 desktops it isn't they just have the explorer icon. I thought when I downloaded chrome it would have appeared on all our desktop pages.

Yeah, Chrome is odd like that. It actually sticks the executable in C:\Documents and Settings\whateveryourusernameis\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\

It should work fine (if you don't mind all sharing the same preferences) if you just log in as the other users and right click and choose "send to desktop"... Not sure how it'll work if you have password protected your user profiles and files? Give it a go though - can't break anything!