Firefox!!!!
Why? It's open source, meaning that development and evolution of the program occurs quickly. Features, such as tabbed browsing, tend to be superior (in IE they seem like an afterthought to compete with Firefox). Add-ons allow you to add all types of functionality to Firefox--anything from checking your e-mail account, to monitoring the weather, to adding snippets to your Google Notebook. Firefox is also much more efficient with RAM, which helps your computer run more smoothly than when running IE. Firefox is also much more secure, and has anti-phishing measures to prevent you from being suckered into "look-alike" PayPal sites etc. Bookmarks are also easily managed, and you can create buttons for quick access to favorite sites.
Internet explorer:
Opens fastest
Runs smoothly
Freezes occasionally
Crashes occasionally
Firefox:
Opens dreadfully slowly
Runs average to slow
Freezes rarely
Crashes very rarely
Opera:
Opens very slowly
Runs slowly
Freezes rarely
Crashes rarely
Safari:
Opens dreadfully slowly
Runs smoothly
Freezes often
Crashes occasionally
I use Safari for it's convenient favorites menu, but it's very incompatible, and slow, and it freezes a lot.
Internet Explorer has had a history of freezing and crashing, which is why I gave it up, but I think it's probably the best out there.
Firefox and Opera are the worst at loading pages and often freeze for a few seconds on every page load.
It's probably because of the unnecessary customization. Plus, none of them are any more compatible than internet explorer.
Firefox is much cleaner and if you ask me, more efficient. Almost any computer savvy person will be running Firefox, however, some scripts and ActiveX controls require IE still. The newest version of Firefox works with mostly everything but every once in awhile you'll find a website that will require you to flip over to Internet Explorer for some flash object or something similar but Firefox is definitely the way to go. You wont be bogged down by addons and popups nearly as much and the browser itself tends to be a little easier on your computers resources.
