Which Web Browser Should I Use?

Uh oh. I can already feel the scrutinizing eyes upon me! People nowadays are so attached to their web browser of choice that some will argue their point more heatedly about this topic than their political views. For some, their choice of web browser IS a political view, but I'm getting ahead of myself. First of all, what is a web browser?

If you read my article about "What is the Internet?" you may alread be familiar with the term "web browser" as I briefly mentioned them in the PTD (Practical Tip of the Day). In short, a web browser is the program in your computer (or any other electronic device that lets you surf the web) that communicates with the Internet.

Some of the most popular web browsers used right now are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari. These four programs are all made by different companies and all do the same thing only slightly differently. When asked which web browser is "the best" I usually draw similarities between web browsers and cars. If you have four sedans lined up, and had a dozen people test them all, it would be unlikely that all twelve would pick the same car as "the best." Personal preference comes into play just as much with web browsers as it does cars.

For some, they want the fastest. Others, the safest. Still others prefer ease of use or maybe they just want to stick with what they've always used. I'm not going to go into which web browser wins in these individual catagories because A) Web browsers are upgraded so frequently that my information would become out of date very quickly and B) Some of these catagories are very difficult to quantify so it's difficult to rate. What I might consider a difficult browser to understand might be simple to someone else or vice versa for example.

Fortunately, if you do want to "shop around" for web browsers there are a plethora of people who do do reviews and rate them. A simple google search for "web browser reviews" should give you plenty of resources. The other nice thing is that most web browsers are available for download for free so you can try them out without paying anything. What do you have to loose? Read around, try them out, and you'll be sure to find one that works perfect for you!

Practical Tip of the Day:
Most web browsers have two areas to type things in towards the top of the window. One is called the "URL field" (don't worry about what URL stands for right now), and the other is the "search field". If you know exactly what webpage you want to go to, you will type in it's name into the (generally longer) URL field. This is where you'd type an address typically starting with "www". If you don't know exactly where you want to go, or you need to find the answer to a question, you'd type it into the search field. Think of this as the yellow/white pages of the Internet. It'll show you all the webpages it finds that match what you typed into the search field.