I’m constantly in search of the best browser out there. Which one to use? Tough call. Here are the candidates:

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 (beta)
The popular Firefox - This is the only browser that really got Microsoft worried about Internet Explorer market share. It really is a nice browser - It has a simple user interface (UI), copes with W3 standards quite well, is full of nice features and is very extendible. It also works and looks pretty good on various operating systems. Version 3.0 brings a few visual improvements which make it even more so. But Firefox’s main problem is it’s speed, or better yet, lack of it. As more and more features were added, Firefox has become slower and slower, when it comes to initial opening time, page loading and UI responsiveness. Installing a few add ons makes these even worse. Also, javascript is slow in Firefox. Or should I say was? Firefox 3 has brought speed improvements all-round. It’s noticeably faster when it comes to Javascript and pages seem to load faster. But still, compared to some other browsers it feels somewhat laggy and unresponsive. The betas are stable enough for daily usage but do crash every now and then. Feature-wise, considering all the add ons, I can’t think of anything you could ever miss.

Camino 1.5
This is a lightweight Firefox for mac users. It feels like a mac application should, which Firefox doesn’t in places. It seems faster and more native. But the slow rendering engine is still there - the “old” Gecko 1.8, used in Firefox 2, so it still lags down with complex pages and scripts. Some features of Camino are well hidden and require some work before settings them up the way you want. Spell checker is horrible when you speak more than one language.

Opera 9.5 - “kestrel” (beta)
Opera has always been known for its fast, feature-full browser. The new 9.5 is no exception. This thing really flies. Even if you have an older machine, Opera has no problem with that. But it somehow has a mind of its own with some of the features. It does things differently from everyone else - for example the url field, back, forward, reload buttons and search live inside a tab rather than above all the tabs, like everywhere else. This does seem obvious, since they do actually change with tabs, but it does take a while to get used to. Then text magnification isn’t there, only full page zoom. There are just so many little things that make Opera different from everything else. But the worst is its interface. It looks as if quickly thrown together without much care being put into it. It’s ugly on Windows and on a Mac. Read what Jon Hicks has to say about Opera’s looks.

Safari 3.0
Safari is very much like every other Apple product - Very easy to use, good looking, but somehow short of features and ways of customizing it. For instance, typing a few words into url bar won’t open the first google hit for that term, but will just return a “Failed to open page” error. And tricking it to use two or more personal certificates can be very, very tricky. All in all, mac version is quite nicely done, but the windows version is horrible. It uses its own UI, its own font rendering, its own quicktime (sigh), … And I thought Opera wasn’t looking native.

Konqeuror
I’ve never thoroughly tested this one, since it only works for KDE users (Which basically means you need to use Linux or BSD), but as far as I have, it seemed very fast, responsive and I’ve never had any problems with website rendering.

Internet Explorer 7
As much as I hate Internet Explorer (Don’t all web developers?), I have to say that version 7 is quite a step forward. It comes with the features you’d expect from a browser and works quite well with W3 standards. It works faster, but still shows some lag when it comes to javascript and DOM. Its main problem is, that it was not released when IE6 was getting old. By the time the new version was out, many users have switched to a different browser, so they just didn’t care about the IE6 to IE7 upgrade. From all the browsers listed I’ve used IE7 the least, so I can’t tell you much more about it.

Conclusion?
The best browser is…? None of the above. I love Firefox for it’s features and extensions. Many extensions break with the 3.0 beta, but Firebug is still here. What bothers me is that it’s more of a cow than a fox - too lazy and slow. Opera tries to solve that, but forgets what usability is. So safari fills the gap for me. It’s fast and works natively with everything else. I do still use Firefox for some complex things, like website debugging and sites that require certificates. But for these Firefox 2 works better than Firefox 3 beta. I guess we’ll have to wait for the final 3.0 release version. On Windows, I prefer Opera over Firefox, though.

The future? I think Mozilla has a few problems too many with their layout engine, so I do hope they fix these first, before doing anything else. Some believe fixing this may mean rewriting it completely, though. Apple isn’t likely to add too many features to Safari in fear of making it too complicated for the simple user, while Konqeuror is never breaking away from KDE. Guys at Opera have their own philosophy so I don’t think they’ll be changing their interface any time soon and Microsoft just isn’t a company that would care that much about their browser.

But I’m happy that so many browsers are competing so tightly. After all, competition is always good for the end user.