Have you ever heard people talking about which web browser they use and wondered what they are talking about? In this article we will hope to give you an understanding.
What is a web browser?
A web browser is a piece of software that runs on your computer, laptop, mobile phone or tablet that allows you to view website pages. All of the mainstream browsers that we will discuss in this article are free.
Why would I want to use a different browser to the standard one on my device?
The main factors are security and performance. Older web browsers such as Internet Explorer 6 which was released on August 27th 2001 (11 years ago at the time of writing this article) are very outdated and do not support some of the technologies that are available today that provide us with a much faster, safer and user friendly browsing experience.
The other issues with older browsers is that they may now be out of support from the developers. This means that certain security flaws may never be fixed exposing you to criminals.
Most common web browsers
Google Chrome – Recommended!
Google Chrome is Google’s web browser. This is becoming a very popular web browser at the moment as it if fast, reliable and very lightweight with an easy to use interface. It has a neat feature, in that you can login with your Google account on Google Chrome on any computer and it will synchronise your favourites, history etc. Google Chrome also has a wide range of extensions to customise the browser.
Google is ahead of the browser game in terms of supported features of the latest and up and coming web standards. We highly recommend this browser!
Internet Explorer
This web browser by Microsoft currently at IE9 or IE10 with the new Windows 8. Internet explorer has had a lot of bad press in the past for being slow and very problematic. Older versions less than IE9 support web standards very poorly and can provide you with a poor browsing experience. Although recent reports suggest that IE10 is a whole lot better! I have also used both IE9 and IE10 and both are much better than their predecessors.
Mozilla Firefox
Firefox is Mozilla’s web browser, this browser is also fast, relatively lightweight and a personal favourite. Firefox has a wide range of extensions and themes to personalise your browser. Very good standards compliant product!
Apple Safari
Apple also have a browser that Windows users can install too. Apple users will be familiar with Safari as this is the default browser when buying an Apple product. This browser is also fast, lightweight and very standards compliant and should provide with a very good browsing experience.
Ready to update or try a new browser?
Links to more browser information is available at browser-update.org. Downloads links to all of the browsers mentioned above are available on this website as well.
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