Why Firefox is my primary choice for a web browser

firefoxWhile there are many browsers available such as Chrome, Opera, and obviously Firefox and Internet Explorer; to me, few are really worth using. I’ve used every popular browser and despite them all having their strong points, Firefox has been my primary choice but I’ll elaborate my reasons for this. Based on the W3CSchool’s Usage Statistics I’m not alone in feeling this way.

Internet Explorer 9 is one I use as a fallback browser for when I need to quickly look something up. The fact that there’s also the EasyPrivacy Tracking Protection List is a huge plus. It’s also great to check any changes I’m making to Lunarsoft to see how they’d look to most visitors. Compatibility mode is a nice plus for the browser too. Pages render fast, very fast in fact which gives users a good feel of speed on pageloads.

Chrome was a nice browser overall but the big issues from the EULA back when Chrome was first released and stirred such a controversy is part of the reason I just don’t feel comfortable using it. While it’s true that Google did eventually remove that segment from their EULA after there was quite the public outcry, the idea that anyone entering information – be it for a blog post to a forum post – through the Chrome browser would allow Google to use it and claim it as their own without any dues to the original author is a major turnoff. Especially when you’re an editor for a website or blog. But as I said, Google did remove this from the Chrome EULA; but not before some people question how trustworthy the Chrome browser is due to the past EULA issue.

I will admit that it’s been years since I’ve tried Opera. I gave it a chance for close to a month but just never could really get into enjoying it. I didn’t feel as though I could customize it to my liking and most of the things I loved to use in Firefox were unheard of in Opera. I spent plenty of time looking for the key features I loved about Firefox that would hopefully be in Opera or be easy to add to Opera. The few I did find had few options and of those options it was far too much to do to really make it worthwhile.

Yet, after using all of these browsers I continue to use Firefox. Not just because it has addons – or extensions – but because it fits my needs. I filter out advertisements using AdBlock Plus except for my favorite websites. But don’t worry, you don’t need AdBlock Plus on Lunarsoft because there are no advertisements – and you can thank all of our donators and those who continue to donate for that – and I hope to keep it that way. I also use Firebug to help fix and optimize this site and the forums. It’s a very handle extension for those who do work on webpages often. DownThemAll! is a great extension for downloading files from anywhere on the Internet and to me is another must have extension. In addition, I use TabMixPlus to save my web browsing sessions in case the browser crashes because I run the nightly Firefox builds. I’m currently posting this from Firefox 6.0a1 x64 in fact. Since I’ve been using the Firefox 6.0 nightly build, I have yet to experience a single crash.

Customizations seem to be what everyone agrees on. Making little changes to the web browser to suit your own personal liking. To me, that will be Firefox first and foremost. It will definitely be interesting to see how Firefox will do in the browser races of the future.