Mozilla Firefox 1

So, Firefox is everything that IE is not: it's got a small overall footprint, it's gentle on system resources, it's quick to render and it's fully W3C standards-compliant. But, because it isn't IE, it also means there are still some sites that just won't render correctly, or even let you through the front door in the case of some banking services. This is no fault of Firefox, rather the short-sightedness of developers building non-standard sites, which end up being IE specific.

The good news is that the number of such sites is decreasing as the popularity of other browsers increases, and out here in the real world it's becoming less of a problem. However, you'd be advised to check any sites you need to visit regularly before committing 100 per cent to a default browser swap. We appreciate that migrating to Firefox is less likely to be an option in the larger enterprise, but for home and small business users it should be pain-free - and IE will still be there should you need it.

Author: Davey Winder