OK, let’s go a bit techie here, but I’ll try to explain it with “English” not “101001001″ hehehe…
It’s a bit long, but hopefully it worth your time.
Since last time Internet Explorer won the browser wars against Netscape, there have never been any competition in the browser market with Internet Explorer holding around 95% of the market share.
However, recent burst of security problems prompted many people to switch to other browsers.
To be fair to Internet Explorer, in my opinion, it’s not because IE is not secure. I think IE is more secure than any browser on the planet, but but mainly because IE was attacked more, that it leaked more than other browsers. I am quite sure if other browsers were to be attacked by the same amount of exploits as IE, they would have leaked much worse.
In any case, that’s not the point of this post. The point I am trying to send across to you is that there are other browsers out there besides IE that you should consider trying, namely Opera and Firefox.
Paul Thurrott has put up an excellent and lengthy article to compare alternative browsers to Internet Explorer, but for you who are not willing to read all those, let me summarize them in a few sentences.
Let’s forget about MyIE2, since it is based on Internet Explorer anyway, it doesn’t stop any security problems.
Consider two alternatives, Opera and Firefox. Paul prefers Firefox, I prefers Opera, your mileage may vary.
You pick Opera when you need a full-featured and complete browser and you are willing to take the time to customize Opera to your heart content, including removing features that you don’t need.
You pick Firefox when you need a simple browser and you are willing to take time to customize Firefox, again to your heart content, but this time, instead of removing features, you will need to add a lot of features in it. Below are few features add-on (they call it extensions) that I install that you may use as a starting point if you decided to go Firefox’s way.
- All-in-One Gestures – I first know such feature from Opera around two years back, and I really can’t live without it that sometimes I started to do funny action in Internet Explorer moving my mouse expecting it to go back one page, but nothing happen, haha.. Opera has this feature longggg time back.
- Gmail Notifier – Mandatory for those having Gmail account.
- Super Drag and Go – you need to open a link in a new tab? Drag the link to an empty space and it’ll open up for you 
Opera has a different mechanism to achieve the same effect.
- User Agent Switcher – sometimes some sites are really troublesome that they will only show properly if they detect it is IE. Use this to change your ID. Opera has F12 menu to do the same.
- SessionSaver – Close the browser, and when you open it, you continue where you started. Opera has this natively.
- Undoclosetab – Ooopss, I accidentally close the tab. No worry, right click and select undo close tab. Opera has this feature simply by pressing Ctrl-Z.
- Tabbrowser – If you love tabbed browsing than multiple windows browsing, this is a MUST. Again, Opera has this natively.
You see, most of the extensions for Firefox are already available built-in in Opera, you just need to know how to use them.
OK, Let me summarize, hopefully you are not lost.
For Opera, we give you all, you use what you need.
For Firefox, we give you basic, you pick and install what you like.
For Internet Explorer, we give you basic, you stay with basic.
For me? I am staying with Firefox for the moment, until Gmail can work with Opera (soon), then maybe I’ll switch back. We’ll see.
