1st up the one that has survived the longest of any browsers out there. the classic Internet Explorer. the latest version is the IE 9. it has competed with many browsers at its infancy stage including the giant of its day Netscape. it once triumphed almost a decade ago.
to be honest... IE sucks. the add-on support is buggy and the addition of add-ons and extensions slows it down considerably. it doesnt render multimedia components well bsc of its closed source coding. the most outrageous thing is it has the MOST security loopholes among all other browsers. regular patching is required to cover up but Microsoft has yet to solve the problem once and for all. IE 9 was expected to be rid of these problems but it proved otherwise.
despite all the notable disadvantage, IE still remains the most used web browsers around the world. this is bsc Microsoft bundled IE along with its OS. making it the default browser on Microsoft Windows. although Microsoft has received numerous lawsuits regarding this issue, nothing has changed.
next up is the browser that put IE to shame. Mozilla Firefox. the latest version is Firefox 5.
Firefox is dubbed the safest web browser out there. with the least amount of security loopholes and robust defence against buffer overflow attacks, the only way to compromise it is human factor. the add-ons are aplenty thanks to support from Mozilla. multimedia rendering is moderate but it makes it up with superb multi-tabing browsing performance. it has the ability to clear out all history, cache and cookies on exit while only 1 other browser can do this.
Firefox is currently the 2nd most widely used browser in the world and the number of users are growing.
3rd on the list is the direct contender to Firefox. the Google Chrome. the latest version is Chrome 14 BETA.
Chrome is undoubtly the fastest browser around. it has the fastest launch time and it surfs Google websites the fastest. websites such as Blogger.com and Youtube.com benefit from this browser. it is a simple and user friendly browser that does not need much tinkering to get it to perform at maximum performance. one of the few let downs of this browser is the presence of a hidden process when this browser is installed. in Microsoft Windows, after the Chrome has been installed, Google Toolbar is also installed even if you unchecked the option to install it at the installation page. this process is responsible for monitoring your surfing behavior and burdens the PC for those who have older PCs. also, the private surfing feature of Chrome is not sufficiently safe due to cookies and trackers being left in the PC after browsing sessions. a 3rd party cleaner is required to completely wipe it out.
also, Chrome uses more memory than of Firefox. multi-tab performance decreases as the number of tabs increase.
another browser on the rise to stardom is the Opera browser. the latest version is the Opera 11.50.
this is a highly performance based browser. the web browsing performance is boosted using the Opera Turbo feature. when a low bandwidth situation is detected. Opera will transfer the data to a proxy server to be compressed into smaller sized data archives and sent back to the browser. this speeds up internet browsing even in poor bandwidth situations. multimedia rendering performance is off the charts and the https support is great. the only drawback is the buggy surfing experience. some sites will display elements out of place with Opera.
k... tats bout it.. done with all these testing adi... i cant test Safari as it is meant for OSx, more commonly known as Snow Leopard.
cheers!
