Which Browser Should You Use?

Mozilla Firefox 10

Most Versatile

Pros:
• Superb HTML 5 performance
• Thousands of available add-ons

Cons:
• Slow page loads
• Too many add-ons can bog down the browser

Firefox's biggest advantage over its rivals is its vast library of add-ons, which you can use to customize your Web browsing and make Firefox infinitely more useful. Not surprisingly, the more add-ons you install, the slower Firefox will be to start up and run. And some add-ons can turn Firefox into a memory hog, slowing down even the beefiest system.

Firefox led the pack in our HTML 5 tests, and it finished third in handling JavaScript, easily outperforming Opera, Internet Explorer 9, and Safari. On our test machine, Firefox was the second-slowest browser at loading Web pages, taking 9.67 seconds (on average) to fully load an image-heavy page; the fastest browsers, Chrome and Opera, took only 3.79 seconds (on average) to load the same Web page.

Firefox is a relatively full-featured browser. You can save frequently used Web services--such as Pandora and Gmail--as App tabs, which are permanent tabs that Firefox saves in the browser. Think of them as bookmarks in tab form. If you're a power user who leaves tons of tabs open constantly, Firefox will allow you to collect the tabs into manageable groups, a handy feature for keeping your entertainment tabs separate from your work ones, for instance. If you use Firefox at home and at work, Firefox Sync will sync your history, bookmarks, and preferences across computers, and will even sync with the Firefox Mobile app on Android. Firefox has a pop-up filter and supports private browsing. The browser's malware protection will warn you if you happen to encounter a fraudulent website, and its updater ensures that your plug-ins have the latest security patches. Firefox will work with any security software that you have installed on your computer, using the software to scan downloads for malware.

RockMelt 0.9

Pros:
• Makes communicating with Facebook friends easy
• Automatic syncing among computers
• Pages and JavaScript features load quite briskly

Cons:
• Facebook sign-in required to get the most out of this browser
• Extensions and add-ons are relatively scarce

What fans love about RockMelt will undoubtedly drive some people crazy. A thin strip located on the right side of the browser window displays your Facebook friends' icons, and indicates their availability to chat. By clicking a friend's icon, you can chat in the browser window without having to switch back and forth between Facebook and your other tabs. On the left side of the browser window, you can choose "apps" for different websites that notify you of newly posted content. If the information at the edges of the browser window becomes distracting, however, you can silence the visual noise by clicking the bell icon in the top-right corner.

RockMelt has some other potential drawbacks. The browser will add any link that you click in the left-hand bar (such as a link from RockMelt's CNN app) to your Facebook timeline unless you turn the behavior off in the browser's preferences. Also, many extensions that work in Chrome don't function in Rock­Melt. RockMelt's CEO, Eric Vishria, says that the company is working with developers of good Chrome apps to produce RockMelt-compatible versions of the apps. He says that today there are about 200 extensions for RockMelt.

The fledgling browser outperformed Chrome at processing HTML 5, finishing third behind Firefox and IE 9. It took second place in our JavaScript benchmark, only slightly behind the winning Chrome; and it was again the runner-up in loading our static, image-heavy page, with a very good time of 4.15 seconds, less than half a second behind Chrome and Opera, which tied for first place.