Better late than ever.... but with FF4 and IE9 being released very recently what is your default web browser at the moment, and why?

Firefox, despite the lag.

Chrome. After Firefox started to get really laggy, I switched to chrome and really like it. Clean interface, fast, simple and with lots of nice features (inbuilt synch being a big plus). Only downside is the lack of an adblocker that deals with in video ads, but I don't mind too much.

a) I think Mozilla Weave (now Mozilla Sync) got baked into native Firefox so it has that too now.
b) I'm sure there are adblockers for chrome that stop video ads.

I'd use Chrome if it told me when it wanted to update rather than updating in the background automatically...

I use chrome and enjoy it :]. Never had any problems with any browser though if I'm being honest. Just got in the habit of using chrome so hey ho (not one of those stupid fan boys who argue X is best because I use X!!!!). Safari has been fine for me when I've used it, as has firefox. Simply used to always using chrome though so loolololO0-oppo;ollolol

a) Haven't used it for a while, so wouldn't know. I know weave wasn't very good when I used it, but I guess that's because it was an early version.
b) From what I've seen there aren't, something to do with chrome not allowing plugins to intercept the data stream.

Hey Met, my connection at home is 0.1 - 0.3 and I still use Chrome. Why are the auto updates a problem for you? I'm not picking on you, I'm just interested in knowing why... but there is a workaround anyway.



I use Chrome because it supports pretty much everything from a developer point of vie, and because it is insanely fast especially with JavaScript.

OH, that's another point, Chrome's inbuilt PDF reader is awesome. I don't actually have Adobe Reader installed anymore.

IE9, seems pretty fast and clean. Not had one problem with it at all since I installed it a while back besides the fact my Uni's email portal haven't updated their system so that IE9 can read emails in their system (which it can't so is a major downside to me as a main browser).
F4, see IE9, no problems with it to me personally, maybe slightly slower than IE9 but it's still clean and fast and can get into my Uni's portal just fine.
Chrome, slightly faster that IE9 with the benefit of an inbuilt PDF reader on top of able to get into the email portal.

So yes, all of them are perfectly fine, but Chrome seems to be best for now

Your uni shouldn't have to update their portal, that's what web standards are for, so either:
a) The web portal is standards compliant and IE9 isn't OR
b) The web portal is using something that IE9 doesn't have and FF and Chrome do, for some reason. I can't imagine it's using HTML5 stuff, though OR
c) Something broke at your end.

This is a good weekly poll

d) It's using over-reaching IE-isms that don't work any more

I didn't want it to start updating mid-game or anything like that. That link though is just what I've been after. I'm downloading Chrome now. The article also had a link to this so I'm all set. I'll let people know how I find Chrome. Thanks.


EDIT: I'd have preferred it if it would have let me choose an install location rather than just putting it in my AppData folder. Ah well, I'll give Chrome a fair trial and use it for the rest of the week (possibly longer) and see how it goes.

EDIT2: I've found AdBlock Plus Beta for Chrome, but Noscript sadly seems to be unavailable. I found an alternative, NotScripts, but when I go to install it it says it can access "Your data on all websites" and "Your tabs and browsing activity". This worries me somewhat, I don't know if Noscript could already do that, and that this is nothing to worry about, or not. Has anyone here had any experience with this extension? Apparently I also need to create some sort of 20 character password for it as well.

Also, is there a 'Recently Closed Tabs' thing like in Firefox? I've found the "Reopen Closed Tab" function but I was hoping for a list rather than cycling through them all. Not a major concern but it would be useful if there was one.

On the new tab page, here we go:

Ah, I hadn't noticed that, thanks very much.

Any plugin that interacts with the page contents will need that access, I think, Met.

Si, I didn't give that option as he said it worked in FF and Chrome, which I assume don't contain all the funky IE stuff either.

Chrome. It's nice and easy and is pretty fast. Not that I've ever noticed big differences in browser performance anyway Only thing I don't like is having to close it when I play proper games, cause it can whore ram a bit if you've got lots of tabs open.

See this point of yours Dave has always confused me, I've never had a problem with Chrome and RAM and playing games, I tend to listen to stuff on YT when playing most games, and we have the same CPU/RAM

Thankfully RAM is nice and cheap

Chrome has always been a bit of a memory hog due to it's tab isolation feature (which is awesome), but as Aaron says, RAM is cheap, and it still doesn't use that much memory. Mine's currently using 300MB with a few tabs open, which is more than most other browsers, but still not hugely significant. Most games are CPU or GPU limited anyway.

Chrome seems to be hogging nowhere near as much memory as Firefox.



Both have been open for over 12 hours.

That's a massive amount from FF, it should be using much less.

Also, on chrome, go to about:memory and it will tell you the actual usage - it runs multiple processes as a security (sandboxing) measure.

That's where I got the figures from...

Fair enough. Also worth noting it's only a fair comparison if they have the same tabs open, and even then the plugins still differ.