Seems to me that the minefield is this thread!
"Watch your step, soldier. You never know when you'll activate a hidden flamethrower..."
Anyway...
Boy, when it comes to browsers, I've tried most of them at one point in my life, and I think I can honestly say that I was a die-hard fan of that browser during my time of use. Except IE. Never was crazy for that one.
I'll just say it out loud so nobody is confused: I use and love Chrome, I like Opera, I appreciate Firefox, and I ... recognize ... Internet Explorer.
Chrome is (currently) my favorite browser, mainly because it has the best extension handling in any browser I've seen. Automatic updates, a centralized point of acquisition, and a standardized extension creation system. By that I mean that extensions are coded in standard, everyday JavaScript and HTML. And yeah, its flippin' fast. I find Chrome to be better for browsing the web like people (read: I) do today. Chrome is a relatively new browser; it was built during the time of web apps and flash. It's good at it. It's also got a really non-invasive interface, and that idea has even carried over to the extensions.
I've recently been trying out Opera 10.50 (which was just bumped up to release build) and I am really quite impressed. Its speed is on par with Chrome, its feature set is out-of-this-world, and it's got large amounts of settings for great tweakability. Really, the only issue that I have with Opera is that it doesn't support extensions. Philosophically, I'm okay with that. The dang thing does so much already, it barely needs 'em. And I suppose that you could perhaps code something akin to an extension using a widget... But things like LastPass are really useful, and Opera only supports them through bookmarklets.
Firefox, in my opinion, has fallen from its previous standings. It used to be a blank canvas that you could paint your extensions onto to create a personalized browsing experience. And it still is a fairly blank canvas. So why does that still-blank piece of cloth suddenly take twice as long to run? I haven't seen any breakthrough features, I haven't seen any big improvements, and yet I've still seen it slow down and down and down... Why? I don't know. But even if the idea of an open, third-party extension system did come from Firefox -- Chrome does it better.
On the subject of Internet Explorer: Well, not much news. Still pretty much the same as it was four years ago. As for innovations, we've seen what? InPrivate browsing and Accelerators? You mean, the same type of things that other browsers are doing better? Oh. I do appreciate what IE has done for the Net, really, I do. Standards in web page coding, standards in JavaScript functions, and an omnipresent animation/interface system. Wait, IE didn't do those, either. In my eyes, Internet Explorer set the bar years ago. Other browsers surpassed it (as a capitalist market should expect), and IE sort of just sat there.
In my eyes: Chrome is in the lead, with Opera steadily gaining speed. Firefox used up too much steam at the start of the race, and IE is standing at the starting line, thinking that the race is already over.
Jeez, I oughta copyright that post. Or is it more of an autobiography?
