Tech Tip Tuesday: Pick A Browser That Fits

A big part of the simple life is learning to choose the right tool, the one that is most simple for the task at hand. Sure, it may be possible to accomplish the task with an inferior, outdated tool, but you’re making it harder and more complicated than it needs to be. And those little complications, the visual clutter, the little annoyances, they wear on us throughout the day and affect productivity and mood, more than most of us realize.

Photo by Flickr user "celikins"

How much time do you spend online every day? An hour or two, or five, or eight? You may go to hundreds of different websites during that time, but there’s one major tool that your using the entire time: your web browser. Browsers are our window into another world, the online world. Have you ever considered what window you’re looking through? If your window to the outside world is hazy, you’re not going to be able to see out as well. If the window glass you’re looking through distorts things, you won’t see them the way they were intended to be seen. If there is a bunch of knickknacks and doodads on the windowsill, it will distract you from what’s outside!

So the tech tip for this Tuesday: Take a step back for a minute and see if you’re outlook might improve if you were looking through a different window! Here are five things to think about as your evaluate the options.

Five factors to consider which web browser suits you…

•  Security

This is the most important consideration in today’s world, when we are shopping and banking online all the time. Special warning: If you are using an older version of Internet Explorer (7 or below), then you are using one of the all-time worst browser in every sense, but especially security-wise. It’s like your window is open, and on the ground floor; any bad guy who comes along can break into your house with relative ease. There are a lot of seedy characters in the world – make sure your windows are locked.

Best: Chrome⁽¹⁾ Worst: Firefox, and Internet Explorer below version 8⁽²⁾

•  Standards

Web standards are rules set by the international World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to ensure that when you go to a website, it works as planned and everyone sees the same thing, what the web designer intended. Unfortunately, not all browser are web standard compliant. If yours isn’t, there may be websites that won’t work correctly, or at least won’t look right.  Not simple.

Best: Chrome, Opera, Safari Worst: Internet Explorer

•  Stability

A browser may be the perfect tool for you in every other area, but if it freezes/quits all the time, it’s worthless. This element is harder to judge, because the issue may be a plugin, not the browser. However, browser can help the problem by isolating your windows/tabs, so that if  you have a problem at one website, it doesn’t affect the rest of the program. Currently the only browser to offer this is Google Chrome.

Best: Chrome, Opera Worst: Internet Explorer, Firefox,

•  Speed

This is one hotly contested debate: which browser is fastest? They all claim to be exponentially faster than all the others. Oftentimes the difference ends up being fractions of a second – not much different. The general consensus of the web is that Chrome, Opera, and Safari are the fastest browsers.

Best: Chrome, Opera, Safari Worst: Internet Explorer

•  Simplicity

Just like simplicity for people, simplicity in your browser means different things for different people. If you’re a hardcore social media junkie, Flock may be your thing. If you’re a techie who likes to tweak everything and have every option available, Firefox probably suits you best. But in this case, by simplicity I mean a very uncluttered and easy to use interface, and I think there are two clear winners here: Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari. Both companies are leaders in simple design, and their internet browsing tools are great examples of that philosophy – they get out of the way and let you experience the internet with minimal fuss.

Best: Chrome, Safari Worst: Internet Explorer

Wrap-Up

So here are the tools we use for surfing the interwebs, and our recommendation from experience:

Windows: Google Chrome

Mac: Apple Safari

Linux: Mozilla Firefox

Remember, these are just our recommendations, the tools that help us simplify our lives. You have to pick the tool that works best for you, the one that simplifies your life the most. But make the choice yourself, don’t just use what’s handed to you without questioning it’s helpfulness.

So what window are you looking through? Have you tried different web browsers before? Which one is your favorite, and why? Let us know in the comments!