Google Chrome web browser is an excellent choice for anyone wishing to simply and quickly browse as it is lightweight – ie does not use much of the systems resources. Don’t expect too many bells and whistles but do expect reliability and speed.

Mozilla Firefox is the browser I use the most as it comes with a variety of available extensions including two of the most important browser plugins for any web designer – the developers toolbar and firebug

Internet Explorer is the most popular of the web browsers and ships pre-installed on Windows based PCs. Known as IE, versions 7 and 8 of IE are only just becoming standards compliant. Expect many sites to cater for this popular browser and popularity with hackers, fraudsters and other such ‘experts’ – Microsoft patch security as part of the regular updates downloaded to your PC [you know the ones....the ones that keep asking you to shut down]. You can also expect frustration from your average designer who usually experience problems getting a website to look right in IE compared to the majority of other browsers!

Safari is the browser of choice for your average Mac user [though Mac users would certainly not consider themselves to be average ] and it has some great features including one of the first applications of font smoothing, making text look less angular and more attractive – though uses more system resources.

There are some other browsers not mentioned here or only viewed on specific hardware such as Opera and AOL amongst the numerous mobile phone browsers, each having their own quirks and limitations, and some of the more dubious inbuilt console browsers such as Playstation 3′s contribution!

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