Jervacio Cornejo Browsers 2012

Pros

Chrome Instant means your Web page is ready to read before you finish typing the address. On top of this parlor trick, Chrome's speed, minimalist design, and advanced support for HTML5 have deservedly been attracting more and more users to the browser. It's dominance in JavaScript speed tests is waning though, and it still lacks tracking protection.

Among other new features, the latest Chrome features a redesign of its "new" page. Now, at the bottom of this page, you can jump to either your Chrome Apps or a page with your most often visited sites. Besides giving you easier navigation between online apps and your favorite Web sites, you can also organize apps by dragging and dropping them into new sections. You do this by dragging a program to the bottom of the page until a new apps section appears. You can then name the section to something useful by double-clicking on its label. For example, you can make one called "Office" to place Google Docs and Gmail in.

Cons

While Google has steadily been eating up IE’s market share, it has suffered a minor setback in recent weeks thanks, in part, to its own terms of service. Google was discovered by independent sources to be using “black hat” SEO techniques that involved paying blog and website owners to link to a site to download Google Chrome. While Google often uses legitimate backlinking techniques, this internal scandal threatened to diminish the moral superiority Google often garners through its unofficial motto, “don’t be evil.”

To its credit, Google temporarily downgraded Chrome’s PageRank for the next six months, meaning that if people search for “web browser,” other browsers will pop up before Chrome. This has resulted in a slight jump in IE users and a slight drop in the market share of Chrome users. However, analysts do not believe that this will have much of an impact on overall trends. Google’s high-end cloud server technology and its centralized business model, analysts predict, are still the way of the future as businesses and individuals alike try to cut costs.

Pros

Firefox 4 got Mozilla back into the game, with its lean look and fast performance. Now at version 11, thanks to a new rapid release cycle, it's still the most customizable browser, and can hold its own against any competitor. Firefox is also ahead of Chrome in offering some graphics hardware acceleration, though few sites take advantage of that yet

Clean, minimal interface. Fast performance. Innovative tab implementation. Highly customizable. Good HTML5 support. Good security. Most cross-platform support. Syncing for tabs, history, passwords and now Extensions. Graphics hardware acceleration. Independent from large vendor. Host of developer tools.

Cons

Lacks client-side tracking protection like that found in IE9. Lacks Chrome's built in Flash, PDF reader, and Instant page view.

That last part is important. I have to say I'd gotten to the point where I was going to give up using Firefox on any kind of regular basis. Firefox 6 and 7 just kept locking up over and over again. I'd loved Firefox from its very first days, but the way it was breaking every time I looked at it in recent months had gotten me to the point where I was going to toss in the trash. Firefox 8 seems to have fixed whatever it was that kept it crashing on a regular basis on both my Linux and Windows systems. Thank God.