The browser war continues, but one competitor is gone forever. That’s Internet Explorer. Microsoft has declared that the product, which was once the acknowledged leader in browser market share and paved the way for collective web applications, will be deprecated on June 15, 2022. Choosing your browser software is more important than ever, as it offers convenience, protection and features.
Serving more web content than any other company (according to comScore), the company also holds nearly 70% of the browser market with Chrome (based on NetMarketShare and StatCounter figures). It’s for desktop, but when added to mobile, Chrome is still king with over 60% share. Chrome has become so dominant that most other browsers now use the default Chromium rendering code, while Firefox remains an independent competitor from top to bottom.
CHROME ON TOP
Chrome may lead the way in terms of usage (except for Apple devices, of course), but it doesn’t lead in every way or in terms of features. Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Opera all have features that Google’s browser doesn’t have. I’m not saying Chrome isn’t great software, but you should know that there are worthy alternatives.
So, what’s important in today’s browsers? Speed and compatibility are still top requirements. But in today’s ever-present day of smartphones, the connection between a desktop browser and a mobile phone is becoming more and more important. In fact, some browsers can now send webpages from one device to another, and you can sync your bookmarks across all browsers.
COMPATIBILITY COUNTS
The maximum possible score is 555, and points are awarded for each supported standard. Chrome has long held the lead in this test with a score of 528. Opera and other Chromium-based browsers come close to Chrome, while Firefox and Safari follow with 491 and 471, respectively. Just a few years ago, a score of 300 was considered excellent, and Internet Explorer (still used by millions) stood at 312. Even so, some custom business web apps still need that outdated software.
PRIVACY IS PARAMOUNT
Privacy professionals like to use Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to hide their browsing activity from ISPs and other entities that intervene between you and the sites you visit. Opera is the only browser with a built-in VPN (Firefox comes at an additional cost). Firefox not only disposes of session history and cookies, but also offers a great privacy story with a private mode that lets you hide your activity from third-party tracking sites during private sessions. Firefox recently implemented DNS over HTTPS to hide web address lookups from ISPs. Edge, Firefox, and Safari also include fingerprint protection to prevent trackers from identifying you based on your hardware and software settings. Firefox also has built-in content blocking to thwart known trackers and cryptocurrency mining strategies.
GOOGLE CHROME
Most web users don’t need to introduce Google Chrome, the browser of the search giant. Pages load quickly and are attractive. Most website code now targets it, so compatibility is rarely an issue. That said, all browsers are sometimes confused by one or two specific sites, and sometimes even a well-crafted site is broken with a browser update.
Google is constantly working to improve security and functionality, but like all software, bugs happen, so be sure to stay up to date. Another benefit of using Chrome is that you don’t have to ignore the prompts to switch to Chrome every time you visit Google News, Gmail, YouTube, etc.
MOZILLA FIREFOX
Firefox, an open source project from the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, has long been a favorite of PCMag. Browsers have pioneered many web features, and the organizations that develop them have been strong advocates of online privacy. It’s also worth noting the abundance of extensions available. The unique multi-account container extension allows you to isolate multiple logins to the same site in different tabs. Without this feature, you will have to log out of all web accounts by opening a private browsing window or another browser and start a new session.
The mobile Firefox app has a great interface and allows you to send webpage tabs from any device to another device signed in to your sync account. Yes. Read webpages on your desktop PC and instantly open them on your iPhone or vice versa. It’s a smooth and useful feature.
APPLE SAFARI
Safari was a pioneer in some areas of browser functionality. For example, reading mode was the first to remove unnecessary clutter like ads and videos from web articles you want to read. This feature debuted in 2010 and has been rolled out to all browsers except Chrome.
If you have an iPhone and a Mac, the Safari integration is very useful as Apple’s Handoff feature allows you to continue browsing sessions between devices. Safari has followed other browsers for support for new HTML5 features, but I’ve never seen or heard of any major site incompatibilities associated with it.
MICROSOFT EDGE
There is a new Edge in town. Microsoft developers responsible for Windows’ default web browser are tired of chasing compatibility issues with site developers only targeting Chrome. Instead, they decided to use Chromium, Chrome’s webpage rendering code in the Edge browser software. This allowed us to add unique features instead of fixing compatibility issues. Specifically, Edge now runs on Apple macOS and earlier versions of Windows in addition to Windows 10.
Another new feature worth highlighting is the immersive reader mode. This not only provides undistracted web article reading, ad removal, and unnecessary eye candy (or eye poison, more aptly), but also allows you to read web page text aloud using a lifelike neural voice. This is really worth a try. As we come to expect text-to-speech audio, it reads sentence by sentence, not just word by word.
OPERA
With a usage level of around 2%, the Opera browser has long been a pioneer in this space, offering basic innovations like tabs, CSS, and a built-in search box. Some people feared Opera when Opera’s parent company was acquired by the China Investment Association, but the company is still based in Norway and listed on NASDAQ, so the move is clearly an investment and not a plan to send data to Beijing. .
Opera uses the Chromium page rendering engine, so site incompatibilities are rare and performance is fast. Opera also takes up significantly less drive space and memory than Chrome. Hundreds of megabytes were low in a test that loaded 12 media-rich websites.