[castor]

Using FF here. Opera uses KDE under linux, so its a no go for me.
Epiphany seemed nice too (gone a long way the last few years) and lighter than FF, but it still has  some rendering issues that kept me from switching.

[Rian]

I mostly use Firefox these days, but sometimes it chokes on my school’s websites and I have to use Safari. It’s great otherwise, though.

[colecampbell666]

Firefox 3 here. FF3>Opera>FF2. I like the plugins/open-source-ness of FF.

[Colonol Dekker]

Ahhh Shiz-nit. I clicked Opera by accident.. I use Firefox, but my heart belongs to IE, i dunno why. It just does

It's actually part of the MS EULA for Windows. Bill Gates also has rights to your spleen, kidneys, a 50% stake in your colon and droit de seigneur with all your male issue.

I really should read the EULA more often before clicking next like a lemming......

[IceFire]

I mostly use Firefox these days, but sometimes it chokes on my school’s websites and I have to use Safari. It’s great otherwise, though.

It chokes on a school website?  Safari is indeed quite fast but I have never encountered a website where there was a significant difference in performance.

[jr2]

On behalf of the admins, I think we all know what sandwich will choose

What I really hate about Firefox though is the fact that you can't resume downloads if your internet craps out (like my "new" router does every ****ing hour).

FlashGot plugin + FlashGet Download accelerator FTW.  Oh, you could also install the DownThemAll plugin if you want, that's a download accelerator that integrates into Firefox, IIRC... I have them both, and FlashGot will ask if I want to use FlashGet, or I can choose DownThemAll, or just "Save To Disk" (use FF's normal download mode).

[ShadowGorrath]

With Opera you can always resume broken downloads. Unless the server doesn't allow that.

[Fury]

Browsers and webdesigners, it is an equation that collapses on itself.

IE is by far the most compatible browser. Firefox close second. After that compatibility is thrown out of window. Firefox can thank its second place for its popularity, the rest don't have that luxury, not even Safari.

IE6 was the no-frills basic browser with good compatibility but poor security. I guess IE7 improved on that while still attaining the top place in compatibility. I guess we'll see how things turn out when IE8 comes out. After all it is supposed to be highly standards compliant and uses new rendering engine. Perhaps compatibility of other browsers will also improve with this.

I loved Firefox because it was a fast, lightweight no-frills browser, just like IE but without the security issues. As years passed it got bulkier. While it is still my #1 browser, it just doesn't seem like the good old Firefox anymore. Thank god Firefox extensions are optional, as I don't use any of them.

Opera somehow never appealed to me, the interface always felt clunky and rendering slow. Well, it is still a good browser but seems to only appeal to the minority. Safari has pretty same problems as Opera. Slightly slower rendering and odd interface kinks. The rest even less used browsers I won't even go into.

Webdesigners, you either love or hate them. They are the ones who make the websites you visit, but they are also the ones who make their sites to work only on IE, Windows Media Player, etc, etc. So much for cross-platform compatibility.

There should be fourth option in the poll; Asparagus. I would have voted that.

[colecampbell666]

With Opera you can always resume broken downloads. Unless the server doesn't allow that.

FF3 can do that. And I much prefer FreeDownloadManager to the other options.

[DeepSpace9er]

I use IE7 with the IE7 Pro plugin. It adds gestures, faster same-page word search, download manager, spell checker, this super drag and drop feature that allows you to click a url, drag and drop it and it opens into a new tab, and about a dozen other cool things.

[Admiral_Stones]

Safari 3 is actually mind-blazingly fast (on a mac, that is).

[jr2]

I loved Firefox because it was a fast, lightweight no-frills browser, just like IE but without the security issues. As years passed it got bulkier. While it is still my #1 browser, it just doesn't seem like the good old Firefox anymore. Thank god Firefox extensions are optional, as I don't use any of them.

...So, in other words, you're going to love FF3?

[DeepSpace9er]

Safari 3 is actually mind-blazingly fast (on a mac, that is)

Your computer specs, internet connection, and whats running in the background have more to do with browser loading speed than OS.

My preference would be: IE7 w/Pro, Firefox, Opera, Safari. Safari doesnt seem to load the pages the same.. something always seems off, and it chokes the most with graphic and flash intensive pages.

[haloboy100]

This super drag and drop feature that allows you to click a url, drag and drop it and it opens into a new tab,

That's nothing compared to the middle-click ability in firefox that allows you to simply click the link using the mouse wheel and open the URL in a new tab.

[colecampbell666]

You can do that in Opera... Or IE7...

[DeepSpace9er]

Yeah.. but pushing the mouse wheel in as a button seems much more unnatural a motion than left clicking and flicking your wrist to the side.

[haloboy100]

It just seems like a button press to me...

[CP5670]

I like Firefox mainly because of the excellent Adblock extension. Many sites are nearly unusable these days without it. The way it remembers and restores the tabs you had open in the event of a crash is also pretty handy. I've encountered a few sites on which rendering, especially while scrolling, is very slow, but they are rare.

However, Firefox does sometimes irritate me, especially a particular bug that makes it intermittently delete all your settings and bookmarks. I've been getting this for years now on multiple systems and I have to keep a backup of its entire user file cache to fix it. The same thing even happened to me on Thunderbird recently and I wasted a good hour restoring everything to how it used to be.

[IceFire]

CP, whats the bug exactly?  Figured out what causes it?  I've never heard of that nor ever had it happen to me on 7-8 computers that I regularly maintain and have Firefox/Thunderbird on.

[CP5670]

When I close down the program, there is a (very small) chance that upon starting it again, everything related to my profile is gone and has reverted to the defaults. This includes bookmarks, browser settings and even the last used size of the Firefox window. It's highly random and I can't think of any reason why it might be happening. It happens around once every two or three months. The problem seems to be that it thinks you've switched to a different Windows user when you actually haven't, which makes it reset everything.

I have seen complaints about it on other forums, although not recently. It was once on their bug database and they supposedly fixed it with version 2.0, but I've still gotten it several times since then. The only reliable workaround is to periodically backup everything in Firefox's profile directory (in Documents and Settings) and dump that back over the broken files when the bug occurs.

I got the same thing in Thunderbird a while ago. I had no profile backup of that program (since it had never happened before), so I had to set up all my email accounts over again, and it took some effort to get it to detect all my existing emails again.