I am not a web master, not even an ordinary web developer. But as an IT professional I really have deep interest in browser market. As of any writing these lines are not final words but just what I think about these products.
Chrome is relatively new in market as compared to the two others but you can’t ignore it because of one single reason and that is “it is from Google”. My personal experience with it is simply exciting. I am impressed the same way as I was when I first used Gmail. The most amazing thing about it is how light it is in use. Whether it is starting up, closing, tab switching and whatever; it is extremely light in use. I am saying this because I have Firefox on the same hardware as I have this and in certain matters like startup it is much better than Firefox. The interface is really beautiful and easy to use with minimum amount of menus and buttons which give you the maximum area of your screen for the actual website. Even the status bar only appears when it is needed, once the website is completely open it becomes transparent.
Firefox has been my personal choice for the past two years and if I am not wrong it holds the maximum market share as well. The biggest advantage that Firefox had over the others is the large members of Mozilla community backing it up and the biggest add ones collection which can change your browsing experience into much more than just surfing. Experts say that Firefox 3.5 has not come up to the expectations but still I think it has got better than ever. The speed and memory consumption has definitely improved.
When I first started using computer I was really of the point of view that internet means Internet Explorer. To use internet you must have IE. And this continued for a long time until one day I saw Opera. But I think the credit here is not for IE rather it goes to Windows. Windows is leading OS in desktop market and most people use IE just because they are used to it not because of some personal liking or disliking. I never liked IE until its most recent version 8. With light tab switching, In-private browsing, paragraph bookmarks, compatibility view, and being not as heavy as IE 7; IE 8 does carry a lot of weight. It is also the first version of IE that is built according to W3C standards. So a website designed for W3C HTML will run perfectly in IE 8; no separate development required.
So what’s my take? I have profound love for Firefox but ever since I have installed Chrome (a few days back) I have not used Firefox. Have I found a new love when it comes to internet browsing? It’s a question that I can’t answer right now. Only time will tell that whether I am switching to Chrome or staying with Firefox or may be both.
