Microsoft Edge provides a featured image on the homepage, which tells you some interesting facts.Above, Firefox is on the left, and Google Chrome is on the right. Chrome’s homepage focuses mainly on the most visited sites, while Mozilla and Edge tend to feature shortcuts and the latest news. Chrome and Firefox both feel light on usage, whereas Microsoft Edge feels a little lagging.So what marks out one browser from another?Does Firefox use less RAM than Chrome For a system with 8 GB RAM, Chrome ends up using up to 1.5GB memory for 5 active tabs while the consumption for Firefox falls under 1GB. At a basic level, any browser you choose will do the basics — page display, secure websites for matters such as online commerce and banking — to a standardised level. Firefox has the edge for ease of use, however.A good browser does what you want, when you want it to.Firefox is a more compelling fight than you may think. Most users tend to use one browser and stick to it as a familiar kind of playground, but are they missing out on the best the web can offer as a result?Despite a Grand Canyon-esque gap in overall popularity between the two, Chrome vs. We've taken a look at the latest and greatest from Microsoft, Apple, Opera, Google and Mozilla to sort out where each browser scores well or offers something unique that makes them a must-use proposition. For instance, if you are toggling between a dozen tabs on. However, the way it does so is quite memory-efficient.To put it kindly, previous versions could often tend to be rather keen on using up as much memory as possible, but our sampling of IE9 suggests it's been slimmed down extensively. That time has passed, but IE still holds a commanding market share, and its status as default Windows browser makes it the standard choice for a lot of web users.Still in beta at the time of writing, most of Internet Explorer 9's big new features are under the hood and promise speed jumps over previous versions of Internet Explorer. (Credit: Microsoft) Internet Explorer 9 BetaThere was a time when Internet Explorer was the internet for most folks, with market share that was fast approaching 100 per cent. So up first, we've got Internet Explorer 9. These aren't benchmarks or reviews per se we're just using the currently most up-to-date browsers to point out where it might be worth switching browsers.The biggest players get to go first. We're well past the point where you have to pay for a browser, and with the exception of Internet Explorer, everything we're looking at works across multiple computing platforms.
You can launch the sites of your choice automatically, and if the site developer enables it, right-click to launch site jump-lists. Pinned sites can be dragged down to the Windows Taskbar where they act like an individual program application instance. All of these things add up to a browser that, for Internet Explorer, is refreshingly fast and lean.In terms of tweaked features, the two standouts are pinned tabs and the very nifty way that IE manages your add-ons. HTML5 is natively supported, the underlying JavaScript engine has been rewritten, and there's support for hardware-accelerated text rendering, depending on the power of your underlying system. Bing is not surprisingly the default, but you can easily add other search engines.Speed is always a very relative thing to test, but in our use of Internet Explorer 9, we couldn't call it sluggish the way one could so easily do with previous versions. There's no shame in utilising a good idea, however, and that's what the slick Internet Explorer 9 interface does, right down to integrated search in the URL bar. The minimum requirements call for Vista SP2 or better. Quite why we had to wait so long for such a basic feature will no doubt go down as one of history's great mysteries.If you're still using Windows XP, however, there'll be no Internet Explorer 9 for you. So if you enable an add-on and IE9 starts dragging its feet, it's easy to find the culprit and lop its head off in just a couple of clicks with no confusion.And finally — and it's taken long enough, Microsoft — Internet Explorer has a download manager. We'll wait while you do the same.As for Add-On management, the very first time you start up IE9, it'll search out your add-ons and tell you how much time they add to the program start time, with the option to disable them individually or all at once. Cheap steam games two playersOur only complaint with the Firefox button is that it sits in a vertical plane by itself, taking up what feels like a lot of screen real estate. Standard menu layouts can also be invoked with a tap of the Alt key. On Windows (Vista and 7 only), the minimalist design means that all of Firefox's menus spring out from the inventively named (and arguably Opera-borrowed) "Firefox button" that sits at the top left of the user interface. Like IE9, Chrome and Safari, the newest version of Firefox eschews complicated toolbars in favour of a clean layout that emphasises the pages you're surfing to. Over to all things Mozilla we head.Where to get it: From looking at the beta version of Firefox 4, it's clear that browser minimalism and top-loading tabs are the new black in browser design. Holdens" analogy would have to be Internet Explorer vs. Vysor beta(Credit: Mozilla)On the technical side, Firefox 4 supports yet another new video standard, WebM. Not so useful for single tabs, but if you've got dozens shrunk down to the point where they can't be found, it's potentially quite handy. Sorry, "Awesome Bar" by official Firefox parlance, the details of something that matches an existing open tab, it'll offer you the option to switch straight to that tab. If you're entering in the URL bar. Tabs have shifted by default from the bottom to the top, although you can tweak this back if you're not in favour of it.If you're the type of web surfer who always has hundreds of tabs open, you'll appreciate Firefox 4's Switch To Tab feature. This can be worked around with a credit card and a Google Checkout account, but developers keen on getting money out of Google should note that there's no way for Aussie developers to get paid — yet. (Credit: Google)The big new feature (from a web surfer's perspective) in the Chrome 8.0.552 branch is Google's Chrome Web Store, a one-stop shop for various applications — everything from games to productivity applications is on offer, although at the time of writing, it's technically US only. If ever there was a setting we'd figure Google would lock down by default, it's search. It gave us the choice on loading of importing existing settings and, to our surprise, choosing our preferred search engine. The speed jokes continue with the latest beta, with the Spinal Tap-inspired tag line "This one goes to Eleven". We do get what they're aiming at, though, which is to claim that Opera's browser is, perhaps, quicker than other browsers you might consider. PDF viewing is built in, and in version 8 it's sandboxed, so if you do end up with an errant PDF that would otherwise crash the whole browser session, everything else is protected.The Chrome Web Store, in its current incarnation, probably isn't enough to get anyone to particularly switch camps if they're married to their current browser, but Chrome's swift page rendering, even in beta form, just might be.From Google, we head into Operatic territory.Where to get it: Opera's main web page poses the question "What is faster than the fastest?", which, if nothing else, proves that the Norwegian firm doesn't really understand how comparative terms actually work. The stripped down look that every other browser is "borrowing" for its 2011 look was pioneered on Chrome, and it still arguably does it best, with a single bar for all searches and URL entry.
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