Any thoughts on a good browser? Firefox is becoming more and more like using dial up, while Opera's view isn't sufficiently configurable and half the screen appears to be taken up by the toolbars if you want the most useful ones visible -- the actual web page ends up scrunched up in the corner. IE isn't a good bet because of its poor security and lack of tabbed browsing and so on. Any thoughts? Patrick Dodds
Opera may be the fastest browser, but no, I don't like it either. However, if you do a search for [speed up Firefox], you will find this is a widespread problem. The best place to start is probably the Firefox Tweak Guide, and especially the secton on Performance Settings. I hope this solves the problem, and keeps you in the Firefox camp.
However, although I recommend Firefox, it still has limitations. Not all sites (or applications) show the full functionality they offer via IE. Also, if you haven't used it for a bit, I find it takes forever to "wake up" from the Task Bar -- it might as well have crashed. I seem to download a new version of Firefox every month or two and it's getting worse rather than better. Tips welcome!
As for IE, while I reckon it's still less secure than Firefox, I haven't actually had any problems with IE running on XP SP2 with all the latest patches and the Avast scanner running. (I'm also running the Google Toolbar for pop-up blocking and have most ActiveX/scripting options set to Disable or Prompt.)
Of course, it doesn't do tabbed browsing, but there are various IE-based browsers that do, including MSN Explorer and AvantBrowser 10.1. This also has pop-up and ad blockers and claims to be "the fastest web browser on Earth". It might be worth a try.
[Update] Another popular IE-based tabbed browse is Maxthon. I've just noticed it's claiming almost 40 million downloads. It's managed that without any advertising, and without the massive press coverage that has done so much to promote Firefox. I'm going to try it now....
