I use IE7 / Firefox 3 Beta4...

Well... its Firefox most of the time ;)

For most surfing I prefer Firefox because of its ability to be customized to my liking. With the extensions All-in-One Gestures, Grab and Drag, and Gecko TIP, the browsing environment is just superb.

However, for online banking and secure sites I prefer IE7 on Vista because of the protected mode it runs in. What I do not like about IE7 is the rather limited ability to customize the appearance and browsing experience.

On my slates, which run Vista, I grudgingly use and prefer IE7 because of superior pen input and dictation support.

On everything with a keyboard attached, I find that Firefox provides the best browsing experience.

I occasionally make use of Opera or a a Gecko-based browser (i.e. K-meleon on Windows, Epiphany on Linux, etc.) when I need to run a secondary browser concurrently.

I find KHTML and its derivatives to be garbage. Thus, I never fire up Safari on my Mac.

In the interest of full disclosure, my favorite browser appears whenever I type "links2 -g" at the command line.

I use Firefox because it allows you to customize the browser by putting all the tools you need on two tool/menu bars. For me, the most important thing to add is the Google Toolbar, in order to get the Word Find feature that allows you to see where each word in the search textfield appears on the page. I use this feature many times a day, and to get the Google Toolbar in Internet Explorer you need to add a third toolbar.

Internet Explorer has some better Tablet support in Vista, but one can get by with Firefox extensions, and it sounds like the situation will improve when the release version of Firefox 3 is out in June.

I use Safari on the Macintosh, but haven't tried it on Windows. The folks at Apple don't know the Windows environment very well and I see no point in taking the risks of a browser written by amateurs.

I've listed some annoyances of various browsers at http://www.segal.org/browser/, including some workarounds. Additions or corrections to that list are most welcome, particularly details about Tablet features for Firefox 3 under Vista.

I use Firefox 3 beta 4 these days. It's faster than Firefox used to be, particularly on my tablet.

Mostly Firefox, because I use multiple PCs. Two Google extensions that are only available on Firefox use the "cloud" to make these PCs' Firefox browsers almost identical:
1. Google Browser Sync (bookmarks are available on any PC with this extension installed), and
2. Google Notebook (ditto for clips available on any PC with this extension installed, a poor man's Evernote 3.0, great for web clipping/note taking).

I use FireFox 2; it never gets in the way of my browsing as IE7 does. That is, FireFox loads pages very quickly and responds to my commands very quickly. IE7 leaves me waiting too much; for pages to load AND reload after clicking the back button, for example.

This hangup I have for speed is not about me being a speed demon. Rather, its about responsiveness. FireFox 2 is far more responsive than IE7 (or IE8, which is beta, so fingers crossed they make it as responsive as FF2 by release but I don't expect that wish to come true). Safari on a Mac is very responsive, less so on Windows in my experience.

So, its all about the responsiveness for me. Not just page-load times; clicking the back button and opening another tab figure heavily in my browsing - why is IE7 so sluggish at these tasks?

My biggest complaint with FireFox is its pen-support; Tablet usage is horrible; so, I use IE7 when in Tablet mode. Since purchasing the Portege M700 recently I very rarely use Tablet mode so I use IE less and less. When my Motion LE1600 was my only tablet I used IE much more frequently and its such a relief to not have to put up with its sluggishness anymore.

peter

Opera. Unless I am mistaken it is the only web browser that will fit the page to the screen (especially in portrait) so that you never have to scroll sideways. Worked really well with the P1510 in portrait.

I haven't used FF in a while. Is this possible in FF?

Great blog. I always read it.

Firefox. Love the addons.
Using FoxMarks, Chatzilla, FireFTP, PicLens(so awesome), ScribeFire, GeckoTIP, Download Statusbar, delicious, and a few others.
Firefox is starting to become my platform. No need to launch separate apps like filezilla, mIRC, or Windows Live Writer when I can find a similar featured app as an addon.

MAXTHON. Seriously we need to get some more Maxthon love, this browser is by far better than all the rest.

FireFox, ofcourse :)

It's just what i needed - a small, efficient browser that you can costumize to your licking.
I have the following Add-ons installed:

No Script (to block all flash-ads, bad scripts and stuff)
Foxmarks (to sync my Favorites across all of my PCs)
Close Button
Colorful Tabs
IE Tab (lets you open weird pages in IE inside firefox)
FlashGot + Orbit Download Manager
Image Zoom
Bookmark Duplicate Detector
PicLens (GREAT plugin for viewing photos on facebook/google/flickr!)
and ofcourse -Tab Mix Plus-
With TMP I usually save out a preset window with every site
I read daily in a tab, and i can load them all with one click.
so i've made several 'packs' -
News, sports, Geeky Tech, all my emai accounts...

I typically use IE7. I used to use only FF and I was a huge fan, but I really started to hate messing with extensions everytime I switched to a different computer or user profile (I have multiple ones at work). IE7 is the exact same on every machine, and happens to be a very usable browser. It works on EVERY SINGLE site (although FF is very good these days also). I am very excited for IE8 also.

The only customization I do to IE7 is show the links toolbar, and I have all my favorites synced using Foldershare (which I have running for my documents and things already).

Firefox - though I do run a portable version of Opera

Peter,

Why do you use tablet mode less on the M700?

I'm with SKP

I use IE7 / Firefox 3 Beta4...

Wow, amazing. Thanks for the details.

I use Firefox (not beta, but might be ready to jump in), like all the ways I can manipulate tabs (esp. Tab Mix Plus, depending on how my research is going), never, ever have gotten Gecko to do a thing for me, so despite that half my work is in tablet mode or on a UMPC without a keyboard, I just put up with it, if needed for a website, use IE Tab. I also rely on Foxmarks to sync my bookmarks across several computers, so that they're all alike automatically.

I switched to Firefox when everybody took advantage of Active-X to put ad-ware on my drive, and just never went back, enamored of the customization.

The few times I've pulled up IE7, I haven't been able to easily customize it, but if the tablet functions are so fantastic, I'll give it another go. Would like to know what's so special about Maxthon for tablets or other mobile devices.

I use Thunderbird using the RSS feed. I usually read the posts as if it were an HTML email. Despite that I read on a 1024x768 screen on my X61T, I only need about 700 pixels of width to read the content of the feed. It's clean and easy to read. The comment box doesn't work, though, so I need a browser to leave comments...

Therefore, I occasionally use FireFox 2 to use the site to leave comments. There I have Adblock Plus and Flash block, which prevents flash from running until I click it.

Your site looks marvelous! The content's not have bad either... <grin>

What gives, no Opera love? I use opera exclusively (except for Netflix) because it offers me a complete browsing package, one I can't live without.

FireFox just doesn't have the featuers I want. To make it comparable to Opera, I need to add all these via extensions (and some are impossible like the mail client. And yes, I use every one of these features regularly)

Page Zoom
Custom style sheets
Fit to width
Fast forward
Mouse Gestures
Trash Can
Side bar
Fully featured E-Mail client (contacts, spell check, spam blocker etc.)
E-mail style RSS reader
Sessions
Trash can
Chrome-less full screen
Speed dial
Quick disable images
Password wand
Auto fill-in forms
Ad blcoker
Right click menu (dictionary, thesaurus, search with, translate, goto url, send by mail, opens on double click etc)
Bit torrent downloads
Tab thumbnail preview
Auto reload
Paste and go

The list goes on and on. I get all these features by default and I don't have to worry about maintaining a bunch of extension or worry about code integrity and continued support from a gaggle of developers.

The kicker is I get all these features with a smaller memory foot print, a faster start, faster html and javascript execution times, and a smaller download.

Firefox for me! Even on my MacBook. I did install Safari on one or two of my Windows boxes, not sure which ones. I'm just not very fond of IE7, yet. I love the ability to customize FF with Add-ons like Gecko-Tip, BBcode (great for forum posting and HTML editing without a keyboard) and GreaseMonkey. Oh, and the GUI MS programmers leave me precious few choices for changing what I look at day in and day out, so I add a little of the colors I desire by installing Themes.

I won't write a book like Antimatter did, but I also frequently use Opera. It mostly depends on whether I'm checking my MS Exchange e-mail at the time. If I am, I open IE7, if not, Opera gets opened.

Avant Browser. Can't find anything else that'll open new pages and bookmarks in a new tab automatically. Autofill is useful as well. Very customisable.

Gordon

I use RSS Bandit Feed Reader (which integrates IE7) for 90% of my browsing and stand-alone IE7 for the rest. I tried Firefox but use a "naked" browser so little it wasn't worth the hassle maintaining two (updates etc)

Hi Cuhulin,

I rarely use tablet mode on the Toshiba m700 due simply to the fact that it has a keyboard; my Motion LE1600 forces me to use the pen simply because it is a slate. I'm sorry if I appeared to be making a sweeping judgment against slates; that wasn't my intent. The LE1600 slate is so much more practical for pen input than the convertible notebook form-factor.

Having used both form-factors (slate for two years, convertible notebook for only three months), my experience compels me to conclude that the convertible form-factor allows me a single-computer solution, whereas my slate was a satellite to a another main computer (be it a laptop or desktop). Its more clear to me now than it was two years ago that my usage habits are far more germane to the choice of form-factor.

However, after two years I find the speed of laptop computers to be on par with the desktop computers I can afford. This allows me to use one laptop for all my computer needs, whereas four months ago I was using a desktop pc at my office, a laptop at home and a slate tabletpc inbetween. Now the m700 docks to a 24-inch display at home AND at work (using Toshiba's Express Port Replicator). I have to bring the m700 back and forth to work everyday, but I had done the same with the LE1600 for almost two years and the m700 is the same weight (2kg) as the LE1600 with the extended battery (1.5kg+0.5kg). (by the way, the extended battery for the LE1600 is amazing!)

Rock on, peter

Opera. Have been a loyal user for years now, even to the point of paying for one of the earlier versions.

Many reasons but the pure responsiveness of the UI is one. The unique window handling in the browser is great too - pages, as opposed to tabs. Keyboard use - utterly brilliant. Being a touch typist I frequently find it faster to just type in a page address than to go look for a bookmark... in Opera, that's just CTRL-T, type immediately (no delays, pauses, BS of any kind) and hit enter and you're there. Sounds like a small thing but do that on IE and there are pauses and BS, enough to drive me mad. You have to actually click the address bar to get the cursor up there, completely inexplicable.

That same philosophy of "never getting in the way" is all through the Opera UI... I just love it. The customizability of what you want where is also fantastic, just drag stuff around and move it.

The 9.5 beta is not only lightning fast and highly compatible, it does a bookmark sync up to MyOpera. Brilliant with multiple devices, just add bookmarks anywhere and next time you use another device, there it is. All built in, and bookmarks are stored at Opera who have a real vested interest in keeping them safe and secure. Opera is also best at reformatting content for smaller screens, which is definitely a concern for mobile users.

In my opinion it's just by far the most usable and speedy browser for "pro browsing", period.

I use Firefox 2.x on my desktop and laptop systems, and I use Pocket IE on my Mogul.

I use opera. The fastest IMO

I use Konqueror on Kubuntu. Although, my result might be showing up as "Unknown" because I mostly read posts via rss and akregator.