Recommendations?

[Bramble_killer]

firefox or opera. i don't like chrome so much (must be the only person)
opera is the fastest browser I've found but lots of sites are not compatible (think the combination of mac and lesser known broswer doesn't help).
firefox can get quite clunky and seems to like to remind you to update things too much. or it self updates when you don't want to just in case an update isn't going to work so well.

[Alison]

I have to use IE at work so chose to use it at home also as I want the two systems to be as similar as possible really. Have had a play with Firefox and Google Chrome and didn't like them much as things seemed in the wrong place for what I was used to. Probably your best bet is to to have a play with a few of them and see what you like.

[smallblueplanet]

Things I like about IE - most sites display properly with it. The fonts look better. It's supported by MS. Like the zoom facility (bottom right).

Things I like about FF - the ability to view how websites are coded, using add-ons. The ebay add-on (although I think there's one for IE8 too?).

The main two seem fine to me, whichever you use keep them updated (as you should your anti-virus & OS) and can't see there'll be much trouble...

[SueA]

Like Snadger I've been wondering about this too as I just have IE as default & Google on AOL. It seems Firefox is the most popular on here, I had been thinking of that, Google Chrome or Opera & think I might give Firefox a try.

[Two_Sheds]

Google Chrome for me: I like the personalised page. Mine's got weather forecast, horoscope, news and funnies on it.

It also has an "incognito" page, so I can do (secret) present shopping etc without other people going through my history and seeing what I've looked at.

[organic]

Just in case "incognito" is a selling point to people...
...the "Stealther" addon for Firefox does the same job, as does a standard feature in Opera - I think it maybe be called "Private Browsing" or "Incognito" or some such but can't remember off hand.

Collectively I've heard them all called "porn mode" which makes me chuckle.

The one issue many of the privacy modes have though, is blocking cookies so sites that rquire you to log in often won't work too well (if at all) with them.

[HotStuff]

Just in case "incognito" is a selling point to people...
...the "Stealther" addon for Firefox does the same job, as does a standard feature in Opera - I think it maybe be called "Private Browsing" or "Incognito" or some such but can't remember off hand.

Collectively I've heard them all called "porn mode" which makes me chuckle.

The one issue many of the privacy modes have though, is blocking cookies so sites that rquire you to log in often won't work too well (if at all) with them.

And similarly Internet Explorer 8 has "InPrivate" browsing.

Things I like about FF - the ability to view how websites are coded...

If you mean being able to view the source of a web page you can do that in IE too.

[organic]

I didn't know that, HotStuff.

Unfortunately, when I installed IE8 it was a complete and utter failure. No matter what I tried or which obscure Microsoft Knowledge Base article I read it just wouldn't work. It was constantly moaning about a missing or disabled plugin that it really didn't need (and as far as I could tell I'd never had before, which in the context of the error, was significant) and none of the methods for addressing the problem had any bearing on it at all.

Eventually I rolled back to IE7 for the rare occasion where someone makes a website that will only work with IE (and IE Tab in FireFox won't render the page) and it works as it should.

I'll probably try the upgrade again, but it's only ever going to be a backup browser. As other, more "standards compliant" browsers become more popular, there will be fewer and fewer reasons for developers to make websites which are also non-standards compliant and that will be all the better for the IE alternatives.

[bishop]

IE8 for me, tabbed browsing, runs fast, never fails to load a site, does everything i want.