The browsers in my life

In the post I'm going to cover which browsers I'm currently using and why.  I do try and check out a variety of browsers so I can I see what features are out there and how our users may be viewing our sites.

Chrome

I like the process separation.  This is especially nice when you have a lot of tabs open like when you're surfing eBay.  The clean UI and speed of this browser are also very nice.  I really like the "new tab" feature that picks up on your frequented sites.  On the downside are no extensions/add-on's.

Safari

I really liked this browser when it came out.  Again the speed and clean UI were very appealing.  On the downside, no extensions and really super annoying Apple updater that wants to give you iTunes and QuickTime and Open Office!  Hey, I'm a fan of open source, but you can't just install stuff on peoples machines!

Internet Explorer

Using IE7 and IE8 beta 2.  Need to make sure our sites work with the browser most of our visitors use.  On the plus side I can wedge in the Google toolbar.  IE8 seems to be nicer.  It's a recent install for me, so I can't really say a lot about it.

Mobile Internet Explorer

I do check our PDA page with the IE browser on my Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone.  I also check the couple of pages that link off of that.

Flock

This is an interesting browser in that it tries to integrate social networking, email and blogging into the browser.  The end result is a funky, distracting, somewhat awkward and cluttered interface.   On the plus side you can use Firefox extensions with it.  This browser just didn't "work" for me.  The UI seemed confusing, forced and cluttered.

Firefox

Firefox is my browser of choice for most of my surfing needs.  Why?  Extensions and the user UI customizations that are possible.  I'm using the Google toolbar add-in.  I've installed the "better" gMail and Reader extensions.  I've found add-on's that change the appearance to something I like a bit better and the tabs look more like Chrome.  There are also add-in's and options that make life easier for a web developer.

I would really like to see the individual process and "new tab" feature of Chrome brought into Firefox.