Browser Blowout 2010

PC World - Of all the software on your PC, the Web browser may be the most important tool you use each day--but you may not give it much thought. The difference between a merely good browser and a great one, however, can be vast. The best browsers are those that stay out of your way: When you're in the right browser, you feel as though you're alone with your favorite site. The browser loads pages quickly, without crashing, and it can deftly handle any Web page you visit without prompting you to do anything extra.

But there's more to a browser than just that. To satisfy power users, it must support a multitude of add-ons and extensions. It must be customizable. And to protect you online, it should do a good job of catching and blocking potential security threats--such as phishing or cross-site scripting attacks--and be resistant to malware.

We put the top five browsers--Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera--through an exhaustive set of lab-based tests and subjective examinations to see exactly how they stack up in terms of interface, security, extras, and speed.

BROWSER Theme support Add-on support Bookmark/data syncsupport Extra security features Plug-in crash protection Web page crash protection RSS reader Internet Explorer 8 No Accelerators, toolbars, Web Slices None URL domain highlighting No Yes Yes Firefox 3.6 Yes Extensions, toolbars None Plug-in update checker Yes 1 No Yes Chrome 5 Yes Extensions Google Bookmarks syncing Sandboxing, URL domain highlighting Yes Yes No Safari 5 No Extensions MobileMe Bookmarks syncing None Yes No Yes Opera 10.53 Yes Widgets Opera Link None No No Yes FOOTNOTE: 1 Crash protection introduced with Firefox 3.6.4.

For a summary of the browsers' features, see the chart here. For more on what we found, read on.

User Interface

Browser interfaces all follow the same basic formula. Within those constraints, though, browsers exhibit some notable differences.

First off, you can tell quite a bit about a company's approach to product development just by its browser interfaces. Apple's Safari has a fair amount of fit and finish, for example. Google's Chrome is spartan and unadorned, and Mozilla's Firefox interface is usable but feels dated compared with newer competitors.

Slim is in. Most browsers now sport more-streamlined looks, with fewer, narrower toolbars--and in many cases on Windows, no menu bar to speak of. This sort of layout typically works well, since it usually includes a couple of drop-down menus in the toolbar that give you easy access to the browser's features.

Firefox, Chrome, and Opera all let you apply different skins to the toolbars. Generally I find it pretty simple to locate and change skins in each of these browsers. Google, for instance, has an online repository that lets you browse and apply themes for Chrome. Mozilla has a similar site for Firefox. One nifty part of Firefox's skins feature--called Personas--is that you can "try on" any of the skins simply by mousing over the thumbnails on the Personas site. In Opera, meanwhile, you browse themes from within a control pane in the app itself; that works okay, but the pane isn't quite as easy to browse as the Chrome and Firefox skins galleries are.