Back in 1993, a program called Mosaic (later renamed as the more well-known Netscape in 1994) launched on the scene and changed the world forever with the world’s first practical web browser. The world has never been the same since, but along the way there has been a lot of innovation and competition that vastly improved the web browsing experience.
We stumbled across this guide
to the different web browsers currently out there in 2018 and it made us think about doing our own take on the subject and giving a slightly different perspective on the different browsers (although ultimately many of the points are going to be similar).
Firefox:
With its current version, Firefox leaps back into the fray with a vengeance. For a while in the recent past, the project was looking pretty sickly due to shifting personnel, but they seem to have come out with a solid re-working.
We would rank this as currently our main browser for casual browsing, and also feel that this browser is the strongest one out of the gate.
Chrome:
Chrome has the advantage of being attached to everything Google and Android, including Gmail, Google Docs, Alexa, AdSense, and Youtube. It’s cloud management and sync tools are unrivalled in the industry, and this is definitely a positive.
Chrome really excels in the area of plugins, truly leaving competition in the dust in this area. Indeed, Chrome is practically a necessity these days for any truly savvy internet business person because of how incredibly powerful some of these plugins can be in the right situation.
Opera:
Opera is in many ways similar to Chrome because it is built on the same engine, but that’s where the similarities end. Opera is much less customizable than Chrome, but comes pre-loaded with a lot of unique and useful features.
The downside of Opera is that we sometimes feel it is showing its age in terms of speed. The other two browsers mentioned above are definitely better performers, hands down.
Edge:
This browser is definitely not the slow insecure beast Internet Explorer was, and offers some advantage for integration on Windows-based computers. However, we feel that they may have pared down too much, and there just isn’t that much plug-in content available yet for Edge to make up for it. And of course, it’s not available at all for Mac.
If you are using a Windows-based device, and just need speed and simplicity, this browser may be fine for you. For more sophisticated tools, you’re probably going to have to turn back to Chrome at some point.
Safari:
Frankly, this one is at the bottom of the list. Most Mac users know to not use it. It really doesn’t stack up in any way to its immediate competitors.
