Browsers...

[Whoey]

Over the years I've really been a one browser kinda guy. Many moons ago I was a dedicated Netscape Navigator user, I did bounce a few times to IE, and for quite a while now Firefox (since maybe v2.0) and more recently I've had Chrome as a secondary testing browser only.

I think I finally hit the point where Firefox just isn't keeping up enough anymore. I noticed some pages I visit are slow to load, and sometimes to the point I end up cancelling requests and going to a different site or opening the link again to see if it will load.

I maybe at the point where I switch from Firefox to Chrome (or Cromium as it's called in Ubuntu) on a full time basis. It seems to have finally matured and has many of the (developer) features that I use in Firefox, and then some.

So my question to you is, what's your browser of choice these days, and if it's Chrome, how do you find it?

[enki_ck]

Chrome as you might have noticed durring bug testing.

Came from netscape too, went to firefox but ot started to get too slow and buggy about a year ago.

As for mobile browsing, UC Browser all the way.

[Etherealicer]

Personally, my heart is with FireFox, but as you said its not always up there (do I need to mention version 9 that didn't support position: relative, or when suddenly HTML comment tags were ignored and anything in between was executed ).

Because I develop websites I always have to switch between IE, FF and Chrome. Chrome is probably the most reliable browser, but in the latest versions it simply eats up all your ram if you have multiple tabs open. And that's why I use Opera at home , its basically Chrome but a couple of versions back, from before the RAM problems ...

[Gareth]

Jumped on the Firefox bandwagon a good few years ago and still use it on my laptop.  On my Windows8.1 tablet though, would you believe that IE seems to work better and faster?

[Corwyn]

I loved Opera so much. It was fast and seamless.
However more and more sites wouldn't show up properly in Opera and they did the silly integration of torrents which messed it up.

I went to Firefox, with lots of extensions and skins to make it work like Opera, but it was a pain to configure and use, some websites would break and just had allaround a lot of issues.

When I found Chrome it was love at first sight, all the useability of Opera, the speed of FireFox and the rendering from Internet Explorer.
Also Google integration is added which is a huge bonus... You have the same settings on every pc, tablet and phone.. soo nice.

[Whoey]

I loved Opera so much. It was fast and seamless.
However more and more sites wouldn't show up properly in Opera and they did the silly integration of torrents which messed it up.

I went to Firefox, with lots of extensions and skins to make it work like Opera, but it was a pain to configure and use, some websites would break and just had allaround a lot of issues.

When I found Chrome it was love at first sight, all the useability of Opera, the speed of FireFox and the rendering from Internet Explorer.
Also Google integration is added which is a huge bonus... You have the same settings on every pc, tablet and phone.. soo nice.

Those are a lot of the same reasons I think I'm going to move permanently. Also as a developer features that I need are out of the box, vs being an addon (firebug) in Firefox.

I just completely wiped my old install of Chromium last night and threw in a fresh copy, imported my data from Firefox, and added one addon (adblock plus). For the most part I'm happy how it's working.

[Megan]

For testing I require multiple browsers.
Firefox has always been my favourite but I'm also noticing that it is bloated and pages are taking too long to load.
I'm using Chrome more and more these days.

If Firefox could go back to being as It used to be- I'd use it religiously in a heartbeat.

[dks]

After many years with IE I switched to Chrome in all my computers (the oldest from 2007  I think..) and various tablets as IE was just getting slower and slower.

Unfortunately, Chrome has also been getting slower in the past couple of years, as, I assume, they are trying to put more and more functions/spyware into it, which is what slowed down IE and made me switch in the first place......

[Steinar]

As many others here, I have used Firefox since before it was called Firefox. Lately, though, there have been stability issues, annoying bugs, well-meaning changes I personally hated... I can live with UI changes, no problem, but when trying to delete some data leads to the program going to its happy place and eating all CPU on a core, or the browser crashes every singly time I remove my pad from its dock... As it is now, I expect to move to Vivaldi the minute it production ready. I avoid using Chrome, since Google as a browser developer has huge conflicts of interests with its business model. The other night I ended up using Konqueror quite a while, just disgusted with the direction Firefox seems to have chosen.

[Dragon Lord]

Chrome is the best browser for me.  I used to use Firefox, but now I love te integration of chrome with google servies (youtube, drive. etc)

I use multiple computers and is almost transparent to me where I am I can use my bookmarks and history in all of them.  of course ABP is a must add on

[jzmtl]

Opera, but it's just a reskinned chrome now.

[Cupboard]

I use Firefox most of the time, and have done since before version 1.
I do use Chrome too, but it's very much a secondary browser for me.

Both have odd issues occasionally, particularly on my laptop (as opposed to my work laptop or my desktop). Flash in Firefox won't update automatically and I can't use the web-based installer so every time I want to update it I have to download the offline installer and do it manually. Same with Chrome. Everything else seems to update happily.

[av8r1]

Funny you should ask, I've recently switched two computers from Firefox to Chrome/Chromium for unrelated reasons.

Firefox doesn't support Flash player under Linux anymore, so it was Chromium or bust for my newer Mint machine.  I miss the ability to save sessions, but otherwise it seems to work just fine.  That same computer dual boots with Windows 8.1, which I use as seldom as possible.  I use IE there out of sheer laziness.  The only reason I've kept 8.1 around is just in case I need Windows-only software; I do almost everything in Mint.

On my older Win Vista machine, Firefox just kept getting slower.  Plugin Container would eat up all my memory.  Chrome seems to go a little quicker for the most part.

[kosmo]

I use both Chrome and Chromium on Linux.  Early on I had more success with Chromium "Beta" but with a recent upgrade, I was having issues.  Now I am back to using Chrome "stable" primarily.  I use two browsers, one for using with my google account, the other for everything else.  I'm not crazy about google gathering a lot of browsing info.  I also have my browsers automatically set to start up in "incognito" mode.  More for stability reasons than privacy.  I find the browsers start to bog down after some time and it automatically clears out the cache on closing the browser.

[Singh]

 I like Firefox but it's turned into a memory hog that frequently locks up and runs S L O W. Chrome is much better in that regard but it's clunky to use. IE is just IE... what else can you say? Way back in the day (2003) I used Opera and I never had complaints about that. Maybe I should try Opera again.

[Reinier]

Unfortunately, Chrome has also been getting slower in the past couple of years, as, I assume, they are trying to put more and more functions/spyware into it, which is what slowed down IE and made me switch in the first place......

In fact it's the other way around. Well, as far as the NPAPI compatibility is concerned. NPAPI support will be removed a couple of weeks from now which could speed up Chrome a bit (goodbye Silverlight  ).

I myself have been a Firefox user since one of the earliest versions of Phoenix (2002? 2003?). Still hate Internet Explorer. Unfortunately for work I have to use IE on a daily basis

[Corwyn]

No more Internet Explorer http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/17/8230631/microsoft-is-killing-off-the-internet-explorer-brand

[getahl]

I started out with Netscape in the nineties,  switched to IE for a bit,  find Firefox sometime around 2005, and switched to Chrome about 3 years ago.  Tried Opera,  but never stuck with it.  Each switch was predicated by a slow down in performance, at least a perceived one. Chrome had been treating me alright thus far

[NutSAK]

I've been on Firefox for years, and don't plan on changing any time soon.  Chrome performs well, but it doesn't have the options that I need, and it needs better cookie/cache management.  About the only thing I ever use Chrome for is casting to my Chromecast.