How to Find a Better Browser

If you surf the Internet on a daily basis, chances are you have one particular browser that you use all the time, perhaps to the exclusion of all other browsers. And this is fine, as long as your browser is doing just what you want it to. If it starts taking forever for your pages to load, however, or some of your sites are no longer accessible, the fault may not be in your computer but in the browser you use. The good news is, it's a lot easier (and cheaper, as it's free) to replace your browser than it is to replace your whole system. Read on to learn how to find a better browser.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Consider using good old Internet Explorer if it actually works for you. Although the upgrade from Internet Explorer 6 to Internet Explorer 7 caused problems on certain XP machines (especially those with service pack one) , Internet Explorer 7 works very smoothly with Vista. Many of the new security features eliminate the concerns earlier users had about how hackable and virus-prone this browser was in the past.
2. Check out Firefox if you haven't already done so. Firefox is extremely popular as it was much safer than the old Internet Explorer 6 and it's also very "tweakable" with user-enabled add-ons offering functionality ranging from automatic web mail notification to checking your eBay auctions for you. It runs on Macs as well as PCs and even runs on Linux machines.
3. Try Safari if minimalism is your style. While this browser used to be Apple-only, it is now available for both XP and Vista. It isn't as customizable as Firefox or Explorer, but it popular with people who are used to working with it on a Mac platform and want something familiar when they work on a PC.
4. Investigate Opera if you're looking for a alternative to the big name browsers. It is customizable, with on-screen widgets, "speed dial" (favorite bookmarks can be assigned a digit) and chat and web mail integration, and it is usually very fast and has a reputation for being secure--as it isn't used by nearly as many people as are Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari, it is less of a target for hackers and virus creators. There is a downside to it's lower profile, though--there are still quite a few websites that are not Opera-compatible.
5. Download Flock if you're looking for a browser with social networking built right in. Flock is built on a Firefox platform, so you can customize it with many of Firefox's add-ins, but it tends to load and open pages much more quickly than does Firefox.

Tips & Warnings

• Opera mobile is an excellent browser for both Symbian and Windows Mobile smart phones.
• While Firefox works well with XP systems, it can run very slowly and refuse to load certain pages on Vista. There are a number of tweaks you can perform to correct the glitches, but sooner or later either Firefox or Vista will update (in Vista's case, sometimes several times a week) and the next thing you know they'll refuse to play nicely with one another again. If you love using Firefox on your XP machine, Flock makes a good substitute for Vista.
• Flock seems to have a bug which won't always let it import bookmarks from Firefox--if you want to do this you can save your Firefox bookmarks to a HTML file and import that, or you can export them to IE, then import the IE bookmarks into Flock.

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