by Carter Prillaman

Are you still accessing the internet using the browser that came with your computer? If that browser is Internet Explorer, then you are not getting the best view of the web. In a recent performance test of internet browsers on the website Stumbleupon, Internet Explorer was rated last of five browsers.

Coming in first was the relative newcomer, Google Chrome. I have been testing Chrome for a while now and can testify that it is really fast and easy to use. The only drawback I have found is that certain download sites are not accessible with Chrome, so I have had to fall back on my second choice, Mozilla’s Firefox, to handle those tasks.

Firefox is a very user friendly browser and has the reputation of the most browser compliant, in other words, websites look and work the way they are supposed to with Firefox. This is the browser I usually recommend to most people.

Safari has been the browser of choice for Mac computers for years, but has been losing ground recently to both Firefox and Chrome. I haven’t tested Safari on my PC, but it is very dependable on my Mac.

What about Internet Explorer? There is a reason that it came in last. Computer users have long found it to be non-standards compliant; many people find even the newest version has trouble rendering graphics and animation properly. It had by far the slowest page loading time and used more of the computer’s processing power than any of the other browsers. Why would you keep it when the other options are so much better?

A new browser is easy to install on your computer, and I am sure you will be pleased with the results. All of the following browsers are available for Mac and PC.

To view the performance test page on Stumbleupon, click here.

Here are the download pages for the winning browsers. Simply download them to your desktop, open the file and follow the directions.

Chrome

Firefox

Safari