What is the best web browser?

Fastest is not always safest, or in this case best. The fastest web browser ENGINE is Webkit, which is used (and apparently supported) by Apple in Safari. It is also used in Google Chrome. It is DERIVED from the KDE project's Konqueror Web browser. At this point I generally make obnoxious comments about how you have to like Bondage and Discipline to put up with Konqueror's UI but I'm tired and can't think of any worth making. You can ONLY get Konqueror if you use the KDE desktop, which doesn't necessarily mean you have to use Kubuntu -- you can also install it on Freebsd, Mac OS X Solaris Fedora or other Unix and Linux OSes. The whole desktop. Not Konqueror. Apple has replaced the user interface with their own custom-written proprietary code. Google has replaced it with routines which use various Mozilla libraries used in Firefox and seamonkey (which has just convinced me of the advantages of allowing access to source code. I use it a lot. I also use Gentoo on this laptop -- which generally installs from source but Google makes binaries available and slackware -- which supposedly google chrome doesn't support -- on my desktop. Installing it on slackware meant simply creating symbolic links between my seamonkey libraries and the libraries they were looking for. It's well documented on the web and the browser works fine. It USED to work fine here too, until Gentoo installed the latest version of libjpeg. Because Google Chrome uses an earlier version it won't run. Because it distributes it as a binary Gentoo can't recompile it to run with the newer version. And until THEY recompile it I'm back on Seamonkey). Opera is a fine web browser. Because it is used by so few people it is less open to attack than IE or Firefox. Firefox has its advantages and disadvantages. My understanding is that Microsoft's patch of a year ago for which -- seriously -- I think they should be prosecuted and sent to Federal Prison -- specifically targeted Firefox. It wouldn't affect me because I am on Linux but still... I learned about Open Source when I did a temp job word processing for an engineering firm in the late eighties. In '91 I went back to college to study programming and painting where I used the a port of the GNU tools (djgpp) on my MS-DOS box. In '94 the school opened a Slackware Linux lab because -- mainly -- Netscape was not available for Windows yet (wouldn't be for six months). It was there I learned about permissions and the Unix/Linux Security setup. I came to appreciate that most applications in *nix run in user space and have NO permission to write to the OS directories, which made trojans and so forth tougher. Microsoft's preference for having EVERYTHING run in administrative space where it can access ANY directory made it easy to write trojans and so forth for IE and is probably more responsible than anything else for the multi-billion dollar malware industry which has bootstrapped itself into existence since then. Over time, Netscape became moribund for a variety of reasons -- which actually included difficulties in conducting the research needed to make their browser more efficient. By the time that research was concluded most development was going on on the Open Source fork Mozilla. Firefox was a complete, ground-up rewrite of the browser section of the updated fork, without the backward compatibility. It was so successful they took the same approach to the whole package and came up with Seamonkey. It still ran or runs in User Space but is otherwise quite different. Microsoft's patch of February '09 made Firefox run partly in administrative space on Windows. To put it another way, the old joke on Slackware was "If you surf the net as root, you may as well be running Windoze" and they were making you surf the net as root regardless of your browser. Don't fix your product, break your competitor's. There are LAWS about malicious tampering with computer code and in this case they SHOULD be enforced. Firefox and Seamonkey (though for some reason less so) have become real memory hogs too. They are not necessarily faster than anyone else any more. I perceive differences in Seamonkey. I personally spoke to a Firefox developer last summer who made two points. One is that I am by no means the only one. Two is that this is inexplicable because the code for the Seamonkey browser is the code that runs firefox -- they are the same browser and no one can understand WHY we feel the way we do. Opera is good. So is Google Chrome. Neither is perfect. I wish Firefox were less a memory hog, but again, I'm writing this on Seamonkey which is the same browser. Even today I will sometimes hop around just because. While there are differences I don't consider them that important. Just as I hop around various Linux and Unix distros (though usually on Live CDs -- I have installed various versions but keep coming back to Slackware and Gentoo so those are what are on my machines by default).

Chrome. It has the best performance overall by far right now. Every once in awhile a page won't work quite right and I have to use Firefox. Either way don't be tied down to one browser. I use all 3 you mentioned depending on what I'm doing or specific sites. Product loyalty often gets in the way of productivity these days.

I give Opera -55% Firefox-45% Thankyou

Mozilla firefox opera is also like firefox but it not Gog as firefox. and the chrome is faster than firefox but it doesn't support download managers and other stuff. also chrome doesn't support java and flash much. firefox also has a lot of add-ons and plug-ins and also its totally customizable! normally netscape, opera and some other browsers are like firefox but firefox is the best because it supports most programs and plugins.

apple safari otherwise firefox!!!!!!!!!

Forget Goog Chrome and IE FF is OK but http://maxthon.com is the best for sure, you will like this one !

I like google chrome

i think Google Chrome is better, im using it NOW.