I love Firefox and I would never exchange it for any browser. I've tried Opera, Internet Explorer, and the hip Safari in the past and gave them a good try but regardless of their re-invention to follow Firefox's lead, Firefox is far ahead of the game. I have been testing
Firefox 3 right when its beta 2 came out up until the current RC1 release. I've blogged about my testing of
Firefox 3 beta 2 in the past and I have been impressed. While the browser is still a little buggy, I refused to use Firefox 2 anymore due to Firefox 3's speediness and several functionality changes, not to mention its solid interface. The only bug that I have discovered so far is it crashes when rendering multimedia web applications, but other than that, no problem. While it is still in beta release, I can excuse the incompatibilities with majority of the available add-ons, but this should not be an issue once the final release comes out.
What I love about Firefox 3 RC1 at the moment based on my personal usage:
- Blazing fast when opening pages
- Minimal memory usage. I currently have 5 tabs open and it's just utilizing 116MB of memory including active add-ons open.
- Remembering passwords opens up after your successful log-in.
- Solid graphical user interface (GUI)
- Smart bookmarks remember your top visited sites.
- Better security against phishing sites
- Anti-virus integration. After a successful download, Firefox will immediately use the virus scanner to scan the files for virus.
At this point, I'm curious to know what other features can Mozilla possibly add when they release the 4th version of this browser. In my mind, it's almost as if, Firefox is the ultimate web browser.
Statistically, it has not yet surpassed Internet Explorer as far as a personal choice when it comes to browser usage.
The possible reason why people are still stuck in using IE is because:
- Can't really distinguish the difference between IE and Firefox
- Have not heard of Firefox
- Do not have a web browser preference and does not care much about the Internet (passive surfing).
- By default have IE installed when they purchase their PC.
The great thing about Firefox is it's also available for Windows, Mac and Linux. I just can't see myself using another (and ever since Firefox 1 came out) browser--not unless Firefox screw themselves up on which I doubt it. If you don't have it, at least give
Firefox 2 a try.