Which Web Browser Is Best Under Windows 8?

Welcome to our first-ever Web Browser Grand Prix on Windows 8! Will Chrome remain the reigning Windows champion? Is Internet Explorer 10 going to smash the competition like its predecessor? Does Opera 12.10 finally deliver on what version 12 promised?

Source

A Guy

 

[McDougal]

Firefox works perfect here in w8 (and has the best collection of add-ons, incl. the great NoScript). The metro-IE is disgusting IMO. And desktop IE (as well as metro-IE) has got this special rendering that makes fonts muddy and blurred (on 3 different laptops) = useless. Chrome works fine, as does it's (chinese) offspring CoolNovo (has sidebar option).

I agree that Firefox works quite well. As for Metro....to be honest I don't use it at all on my non touchscreen desktop. The biggest reason why I upgraded to 8 is performance, not touchscreen support.

 

[walex]

I prefer Palemoon 64 bit, but, that is what it boils down to "personal preference" does it not? The difference in "speed" of all
the browsers comes down to a few seconds. Firefox and it's cousins ( palemoon, nightly,etc) does enjoy an advantage when
it comes to ad-ons. imho

walex

 

[Tarka Dal]

Why only under Windows 8, Google is the best under any OS. What ever I grab my phone, Linux PC or what ever, I have all my favorites, this is the browser to have if you have more than 1 desktop

I have found that Google Chrome 'Aw snaps' more often than I eat cook dinners!

 

[R0bR]

He already has a virtual stranglehold on Operating Systems but linux is catching up, fast, and thats FREE! Wake Up MS, come into the real world.

Lol, sure it is.

 

[Rymax99]

As said above it's personal preference. I prefer google chrome because I usually have 10-20 tabs open, and it handles them well despite the high RAM usage.

 

[kmint]

CoolNovo:



SRWare Iron:



Not too bad.

 

[justinpease]

UIWindows mode

I have read through a lot of forums and plenty of tests and none seem to mention that Chrome and IE 10 can also be launched in UIWindows mode. How?


Chrome:
Click menu button
click "Relaunch Chrome in Windows 8 mode"
To undo:
click chrome menu button
click "Relaunch Chrome on the desktop"

IE10:
Set as default browser.

 

[elbmek]

He already has a virtual stranglehold on Operating Systems but linux is catching up, fast, and thats FREE! Wake Up MS, come into the real world.

Lol, sure it is.

i have quite a few friends running on linix mint maya, they love it

 

[Wenda]

i have quite a few friends running on linix mint maya, they love it

Most of my Linux builds are older ones (pre-2006) so I've just finished installing Mint 14 'Cinnamon' into Virtual-Box. I haven't
had much of a chance to play with it yet, but, so far, I definitely like what I see.

I'll explore it a bit more tomorrow.

Wenda.

 

[tinbin]

Opera64 good

 

[justmetoday]

I use Chrome, IE and Firefox

Personally I use Chrome, Firefox and IE11

And in that order, each one for me has certain functions that work best for its version. So depending on what I am doing I just use that browser which fits the need. Safari is great for stripping out advertising, but I simply don't like it's interface and haven't tried Opera in years.

 

[elbmek]

does it work on 32?

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there.

These days with the whole movie and music industry getting ever more deperate on monitoring what people are downloading and sharing (whether legit or not) any WEB BROWSER that can handle TOR is fine by me -- at least TOR puts another level of difficulty into people blocking access to sites -- even CHINA and IRAN haven't managed to kill TOR yet.

https://www.torproject.org/

About time the Movie / music people made their stuff easier to purchase LEGIT --for example why do people have to wait A YEAR for some TV shows to appear -if they ever get them in the first place --decent LEGIT downloads / streams at a price would work wonders. While some people will always try and get stuff for free a decent legit subscription service WITH NO REGIONAL RESTRICTIONS would stop a huge amount of piracy --but currently thank goodness for TOR -- I'm in the UK at the moment where sites can be blocked at the drop of a hat -- there are about 40 (sharing / torrent sites) currently -- the list is hard to get hold of - but sites are still accessible. I have no probs with Child porno / paedophilia sites being banned but a lot of the others --at least the list should be PUBLIC and reasons given why they are being blocked.

Why is it that the Courts seem OK when the Music people want to attack indviduals - but they can bypass these same courts getting sites blocked purely on their "say so".

Anyway new browsers with decent protocols in them will soon render the whole idea of IP ADDRESS BLOCKING TOTALLY OBSOLETE AND INEFFECTIVE ANYWAY.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[jladwig]

I want to use the modern UI, with a Modern or Metro style browser and still have add-ons. The only browser that does that currently is Chrome. I like the modern or metro IE11 and if it allowed only one add-on - LASTPass, or if it's password management was even remotely close to LASTpass I would switch to IE11.

 

[PBY777]

For me, who usually has 80+ tabs open (research, and ongoing threads, or frequently used tabs,etc.), Firefox is by far the best. With the TabMixPlus extension i can get multiple tab rows, which Chrone, IE and most others do not have, plus reduce the tab width (far more than Opera allows), and with the unbsurpassed NOIA 4 theme i can get about 25 identifiable (via the favicon) tabs across (19'' monitor). Colorful Tabs helps id them also, as seen .

Also, Session Manager enables me to save unlimited sessions, and i think the GooglebarLite is superior to the Google toolbar, and these many other extensions make FF customization the best i think. And with Mozbackup you can backup and restore what you want. I have Chrome, and IE 11 of course for basic searches, and while they are not as good for my needs, yet thank God for variety.

 

[Nemix]

Back on Firefox as my main for Windows 8/8.1, can't wait for the Metro UI version of Firefox looks good in the preview already but most important is it has to run well.

Chrome runs really well on Windows 8/8.1 too but there's too much privacy concerns with the default settings and without AdBlock Plus.

Anyone else notice the thicker black line at the bottom of Chrome where the bottom on the browser touches the taskbar when maximized?

I've only notice it recently when put both Firefox and Chrome side by side with Windows snap in Windows 8/8.1 both Firefox and Internet Explorer does not have that thick black line at the bottom which is really noticeable in Windows 8/8.1 because flatter theme and the taskbar in Windows 8/8.1 does not have drop shadows.

Will try to get Google to fix this, it's visible in Windows 7 too (small nuisance but pretty noticeable in Windows 8/8.1) now that I'm looking for it but since Windows 7 taskbar has drop shadows I never noticed it before and it's not quite as visible.

 

[brotherboard]

Firefox in Win 8.1 desktop for me,
If only I could rid myself of that "Firefox is already running, but not responding" bug/annoyance

 

[Edwin]

Firefox in Win 8.1 desktop for me,
If only I could rid myself of that "Firefox is already running, but not responding" bug/annoyance

I think that's another W8.1 bug, went back to W8 and all is good (and fast again!)

 

[strollin]

I use FireFox in desktop mode on my Win 8.1 machines that have a mouse/keyboard but when I got my Dell Venue 8 Pro tablet running Win 8.1 I found that FireFox didn't work too well with a touch only interface. I don't like the "modern" version of IE so I tried a number of browsers from the store. The one I found that I like is called UC BrowserHD. It works well with touch and is very similar to the Dolphin browser I use on my Android devices.

I also use Chrome on my computers since it can interface with my Google Chromecast device.

I would love to have a Metro UI version of FireFox.

 

[waltc]

Back on Firefox as my main for Windows 8/8.1, can't wait for the Metro UI version of Firefox looks good in the preview already but most important is it has to run well.

Chrome runs really well on Windows 8/8.1 too but there's too much privacy concerns with the default settings and without AdBlock Plus.

Anyone else notice the thicker black line at the bottom of Chrome where the bottom on the browser touches the taskbar when maximized?

I've only notice it recently when put both Firefox and Chrome side by side with Windows snap in Windows 8/8.1 both Firefox and Internet Explorer does not have that thick black line at the bottom which is really noticeable in Windows 8/8.1 because flatter theme and the taskbar in Windows 8/8.1 does not have drop shadows.

Will try to get Google to fix this, it's visible in Windows 7 too (small nuisance but pretty noticeable in Windows 8/8.1) now that I'm looking for it but since Windows 7 taskbar has drop shadows I never noticed it before and it's not quite as visible.

I've settled on Firefox 26 myself in 8.1. I don't have a touch screen (or want one) so I'm not at all interested in the "Metro" UI version Mozilla is planning on releasing soon (I don't use Metro in 8.1). IE 11 is OK, but what I like a lot in Ff isn't supported in IE--the "Zoom only text" feature that zooms the text on a page in and out (ctrl + or -) without zooming the images on the page which remain in their intended positions and sizes as the text is enlarge or reduced. I like that a lot because magnified/reduced bitmaps and jpegs look pretty bad, imo--very blurry and take up too much space, etc.

Google Chrome I won't run--I really don't like Google update that runs whether I want it to or not as long as Chrome is installed. That is malware-like behavior and I won't have a program installed I cannot control and/or contain at will, if at all possible. You remove Google update from the start-up sequence in Windows, reboot, and it comes right back and runs anyway--can't get rid of it.

Also, I run the latest version of Ghostery to block cookies and ads and services I don't wish to see--works very well.