Microsoft has gone from having around a 90 percent web browser market share to 55 percent or less, depending on whose statistics you read. The problem was that Internet Explorer stagnated and made little progress for years. Firefox and Opera were alternatives that some people used, but even those progressed slowly. The browser market was lifeless until Google Chrome woke everyone up with not only the speediest browser around, but also an equally breakneck development cycle.
See also: What's the best alternative web browser to IE, Chrome and Firefox?
Chrome led the way with performance and support for the latest web standards and other browsers have been trying to catch up ever since with development teams working to produce new versions as fast as they can. Internet Explorer is up to 11, Firefox is now at version 26, Opera is up to 18, and Safari has given up. Of course, it isn’t all about speed and if you are a die-hard Internet Explorer user you should look at the features offered by other browsers because they can do things that aren’t possible in IE.
All the browsers were tested in Windows 8.1, reviewed, and several benchmarks were used to determine their performance, such as BMark, Octane 2, Peacekeeper, SunSpider and others. They highlight some significant differences between the browsers and some browsers have improved over the past year or two, while others haven’t. Who has gained and who has lost? Let’s take a look.
Best web browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer 11
Microsoft’s web browser situation is a mess. One problem is that there are still a significant number of people running Windows XP. The most recent version of Internet Explorer available for XP is IE8 and that is an awful browser that doesn’t support modern web standards and is terribly slow. If you are running XP you should not use IE8 under any circumstances. There aren’t that many Vista users, but those that still have it are limited to IE9 and that’s a dated browser that is not recommended. It is only Windows 7 and 8 users that can install and run the latest version of Internet Explorer. In contrast, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera work on any version of Windows.Internet Explorer has a compatibility view and this enables it access websites that are incompatible and don’t display correctly. It loads a web page as if it were an older version of IE. Is this an admission that IE doesn’t work properly? None of the other browsers need a compatibility mode and they work fine without it. Another problem for Internet Explorer is that it is a target for toolbars and extensions that bloat the browser and make it slow. You have to be wary of these when installing freeware software. Although the other browsers have extensions, they don’t suffer from the same problems.
It is difficult to make sense of Internet Explorer’s performance benchmarks. In many tests IE lags behind other browsers (Safari excepted), sometimes by a wide margin. Yet if you go to the IE Test Drive it blows away all competitors with its incredible performance. Take those Test Drive results with a large pinch of salt. Microsoft has written them in such a way as to let Internet Explorer run at full speed while limiting the performance of other browsers. When the code is tweaked to allow Chrome to run at full speed, it runs just as fast.
Microsoft has clearly improved Internet Explorer enormously over recent years and the difference between IE8 on XP and IE11 on Windows 7/8 is huge. It still has some catching up to do. While the test Drive demos look good, JavaScript performance isn’t so hot. Overall it was rated as fourth fastest, but it beat Firefox on some tests.
Internet Explorer’s interface is clean and simple, providing you avoid toolbars. The Favorites button opens a panel on the right, but this can be docked on the left. It also shows RSS feeds and your browsing history. It has Do Not Track and tracking protection features, which is good. It has SmartScreen which warns you about unsafe websites, and settings that are easily configured.
IE11 does well on graphical demos, but elsewhere performance is ordinary
Best web browsers: Opera 18
Opera is nearly 20 years old, yet in all that time it has struggled to build a market share percentage that couldn’t be counted on your thumbs. The company has tried everything to make the browser more appealing and at one time it was the most feature-packed browser available. The problem is that few people cared. Opera has tried filling toolbars and panels with buttons and functions, it has tried creating widgets that run in the desktop outside of the browser, and peer-to-peer networking with sharing built in. Nothing has worked. This is partly because other browsers offered more speed or more add-ons or both.With Opera 18, a lot of the clutter has been stripped out and features that were packed into previous versions and it now has a wonderfully clean and simple user interface. This has a single blue bar at the top, with an Opera button in the top left corner and a minimum of buttons either side of the address box. The design is similar to Firefox.
It seems that Opera has taken a leaf out of Chrome’s book and simply gone for speed, web standards and simplicity. Actually, it has done more than copied Chrome, it is Chrome. This version of Opera is based on the Chromium open source browser project, which is the also the basis for Google Chrome. This is the obvious explanation for the near identical performance figures in benchmarks. Opera is a tad slower than Chrome in some tests, but slightly faster in others. The difference between Opera and Chrome is so slight you won’t notice it. So what you have here is Chrome with a different interface and set of menus. This means that it is definitely worth considering and some people may prefer it.
There are hundreds of extensions for Opera and the range and quality is excellent. Features found in other browsers can usually be found in Opera. There is an interesting Off-Road mode and this compresses internet traffic to reduce the bandwidth used and to speed up browsing on slow connections. It could be useful to people with laptops perhaps using their phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot to get online. A Synchronise facility enables browsing data like bookmarks and other information to be synced across computers and devices. At the right of the address box is a heart and clicking it adds the current web page to the Stash. This is a place where pages can be stored and read later when you have more time. Speed Dial displays favourite websites making them quick and easy to access.
Opera 18 is perfect for people that want Chrome’s performance, but don’t want a Google account.
Best web browsers: Apple Safari 5
Apple appears to have thrown in the towel with Safari and has abandoned its Windows version. A few years ago when Internet Explorer and Firefox were stagnating, Apple saw an opportunity to grab the browser market and put high quality Apple software in front of Windows users, perhaps with ambitions of tempting them to switch to Macs. The company brought out Safari for Windows and it was far superior to IE and Firefox (although Firefox had the advantage of a huge library of extensions). Things didn’t quite work out as Apple wanted and Chrome was launched, which offered even greater performance benefits, and Firefox’s developers shifted into top gear and increased development and shortened release times. Safari got left behind.The latest version of Safari available for download is dated May 2012. That makes it nearly two years old and this is reflected in the performance figures in benchmark tests. In a nutshell, it came last. It wasn’t just slightly slower than rivals, it was a lot slower, often running at one quarter to one third the speed of rivals. Even Internet Explorer can beat it. It didn’t complete all the tests and a couple were skipped because they were unsupported.
Safari 5 is basically 2011 technology and in its day it was an excellent web browser, competing on equal terms with rivals. Surprisingly, it has quite a modern look to it and design-wise it looks great (as you would expect). Although a traditional menu bar at the top of the window is available, it is hidden by default. The Favorites bar with bookmarks can be hidden too and this increases the space for displaying web pages and reduces the clutter. Extensions are available and an option on the menu takes you to the online gallery. Although there are dozens available, the gallery is smaller than the hundreds available for Firefox, Chrome and Opera.
A nice feature in Safari is the Reading List and it is similar to Opera’s Stash. Web pages you don’t have time to read can be added to the Reading List and read later. It is a bit like an alternative bookmark facility, but it stores icons and descriptive titles which are more helpful. Beyond that, there isn’t much to say about Safari: it’s rather dull and unexciting.
Essentially, if you have Safari on your PC you should uninstall it and immediately switch to a more modern browser. Just about any browser is better than Safari for Windows and it has few of the great features that are in Safari for the Mac, such as syncing browsing data between computers and with iPads and iPhones. Indeed, in iCloud Control Panel 3.0 for Windows, there’s no longer support for synching Safari bookmarks. Farewell, Safari for Windows.
Apple has given up on Safari for Windows. This Top Sites wall is nice to look at, though
Best web browsers: Google Chrome 31
When Google launched Chrome in 2008 it really stirred up the web browser market. It had a minimal set of features and was really basic, but it had two things going for it. It was very fast and it was compatible with modern web standards. It is now up to version 31, but the number is irrelevant and it is hard to tell the difference between this and version 21. The majority of changes to Chrome are not obvious and they are mostly tweaks to the speed and capabilities of the engine that powers the browser.Chrome was the fastest web browser when it was launched and it still is. At least on most performance tests. No other browser comes close, apart from Opera and that uses the Chrome engine, so it’s not surprising. Not only is Chrome fast, it runs on XP and Vista, which Microsoft no longer supports. If you are still running one of Microsoft’s older operating systems, Chrome is essential, otherwise you will have endless problems with slow browsing and even websites no longer working properly because they require features not supported in IE8 and 9 on XP and Vista.
It’s hard to list recent changes in Chrome without getting technical. Some are aimed at developers and others aren’t visual. However, recent updates include notifications of new Gmail, right click an image to search for similar ones, and a reset button in advanced settings to restore factory settings. Click the site icon to the left of the URL and you can choose to allow or block automatic downloads.
If you are a Google fan, and not everyone is, Chrome has some great features and it is designed to make the most of Google services like Gmail, Calendar, its online office suite and so on. For example, it automatically syncs browsing data across computers, tablets and phones. Extensions installed on one computer automatically install on others you use, even if it’s a Mac.
Flash is built in so you don’t need it installed in Windows, and plug-ins can be click-to-play, which is great for blocking unwanted content like Flash adverts and auto-playing movies. The range of extensions is excellent and they rival Firefox. People stuck with Firefox in the past mainly because of extensions, but now most of them are in Chrome. There are web apps too and the Chrome Web Store is a great place to find games, office apps and tools. Shortcuts to the apps are added to an app launcher button on the taskbar that displays a pop-up panel. It’s a superb browser, but you have to love Google and use its services to make the most of it. If you don’t, use Opera instead.
Chrome has speed, apps and extensions, but you do need a Google account
Best web browsers: Mozilla Firefox 26
Firefox is around a decade old and before Chrome came along in 2008 it was doing quite nicely. Internet Explorer development had stalled and early versions of Firefox offered an alternative that was stable, fast, and offered features that weren’t in IE, such as an extensive range of add-ons. Development of Firefox was slow until Chrome came along with its fast update cycle and Mozilla had to increase the pace of development. Chrome kick-started Firefox’s development and updates are now more frequent.Firefox has always been slower than Chrome, but faster than Internet Explorer, sitting somewhere in the middle. Its performance has been good, but rarely the best. Of the five browsers on test here, Firefox is third, bang in the middle again. It is a solid browser that performs well, but Chrome has equalled it or overtaken it in market share, depending on whose statistics you look at. It’s main advantage in the early days was the large range of extensions, but today there are just as many for Chrome and because Chrome is faster, it is hard to recommend Firefox unless there is an essential add-on that isn’t available for Chrome.
Firefox has always been more customisable than other browsers and typing about:config into the address box provides access to a large number of settings. Knowledgeable people can tweak settings to change the way the browser works or enhance it. In the latest version plug-ins apart from Flash are click-to-play, increasing security. MP3 support has been added when running XP, and when loading JPEGs the EXIF information is used to select the orientation. There are also developer and technical changes too. Browsers don’t suddenly change these days, they slowly evolve with tiny changes with each new version.
An interesting feature of Firefox is the custom start page. It has a Google search box, but down at the bottom is a row of buttons that provide access to common features like downloads, bookmarks, add-ons and settings. Firefox Sync enables you to synchronise browsing data like bookmarks between computers and devices. It is a useful feature, but Google does this better than anyone else. Firefox requires you to pair devices by typing in codes whereas with Google you just sign in.
Firefox has a clean interface with minimal distractions and if you need menus then the Firefox button is where to find them. Select Add-ons and you get access to a very nice add-ons gallery. It says 3.5 billion have been downloaded and it’s Firefox’s best feature. Is it worth sacrificing a bit of performance for add-ons? Many people think so and that’s why Firefox has such a large market share. The browser is an average performer with above average add-ons.
The extensive range of add-ons is the number one reason people use Firefox
