I am also an avid Firefox user/supporter. Firefox is the safest browser out there. They are updating the browser constantly so their security is top notch. Also, the variety of add-ons is superb.

Persona's - an excellent way to customize your browser. Choose from 30,000+ "skins" that let you make Firefox fit your own style.

Zotero - for those of us that do a lot of research or writing, Zotero helps you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.

Adblock Plus - pwa89 mentioned this above, and it is worth mentioning again. It makes surfing the web so much better looking and easier.

Forecastfox - an awesome weather add-on that integrates your local weather forecast, including severe weather alerts seamlessly into the bottom bar of the browser.

Easy YouTube Video Downloader - You know you have seen videos on YouTueb you just needed to have on your computer to watch over and over again. This add-on is made just for that.

ReminderFox - a little add-on that lets you set up ToDo lists that alerts, and alarms, right in your browser without the need for a separate calendar program.

You get the idea. I think that FireFox is the most versitle browser out there. If you go with FireFox, I promise you won't be disappointed.

www.firefox.com

By the way, I use all of the add-on's listed above :)

Last, on a side note, I do not and will not ever use Chrome. I love Google but in their Terms and Conditions, they were a little bit tricky with their wording. Basically, when you agreed to their Terms and Conditions, you were permitting them to record and store every site, any media, basically anything you did through Chrome, on their servers. So, your browsing experience was being recorded and kept for their personal records. I found that invasive, hence I don't use or recommend Chrome.

Chrome definitely boots faster and now has add ons available, but I find that flash crashes fairly frequently. Firefox is more stable and secure and is way more customizable, but boots a little bit slower. Personally I use both depending on which tools I need, but I happen to prefer chrome because of the amazing address bar functionality.

Either way both browsers come with an IE extension available that allows you to turn a tab into an IE tab within the browser. This is a must if you're going to convert since there are still a couple of necessary sites that still require IE, such as Blackboard, and Sirius radio player if you want all the features.

Before you decide on any browser, make sure it's compatible with whatever online systems your school uses. My school uses blackboard and I have frequent issues submitting assignments if I'm not using I.E. (which is fun, since I use a mac).

Firefox as main browser, there is a variety of extensions for students.

• Delicious extension for bookmarks, which you keep on you account online, so you don't necessarily need the computer or browser you used to bookmark.
• Text highlighter, really useful for researching, highlight the important parts without having to copy-paste it on a word processor.
• Adblock useful for those annoying or NSFW ads.
• Foxyproxy, lets you manage your proxies easily, because you may need to use proxies to browse those blocked websites.

Also, it allows you to save your current session, so you won't lose your opened browsing tabs.

Chrome as a secondary lightweight browser. When firefox becomes slow enough to startup because of all the tabs you left on the last session, and you just need to do a quick 1 min research Chrome is the key.

After you use Chrome for awhile, everything else feels dated and slow. Firefox extensions are great, and I still use it for certain tasks. The fact is, you don't need to settle on one browser. There is nothing wrong with using Chrome as your primary browser, Firefox in situations that call for a special extension, and IE (if you aren't a Mac guy like myself) for those sites that still require it.

Well, IE lost here, for sure not the savest, not the fastest and it just sucks.

I use Chrome for half a year now, and I love it. Chrome is really, really fast and it is light. You have the searchbar in the addressbar, so you can look things up faster, it claims to have zero crashes (which I can confirm after using the browser for half a year now) and again, it is faaaaaast.

My friends switched from IE to Chrome and they were stunned. They couldn't understand why Chrome was so much faster and they loved it also. My vote goes to Google Chrome!

Depends on your field of study, because in terms of scientific add-ons, Firefox wins.

You can get a slew of add-ons targeted at making calculations, finding definitions, translations, and a lot more. But other than that, I'de recommend anything lean and fast.

I personally use Safari with ClickToFlash and AdBlock. Add a good, fast processor to that, and surfing becomes pure joy.

-- Arjun

www.theproductivestudent.com

I used to love firefox, but recently switched to google chrome. The main reason I switched was for two reasons: 1) google chrome works better on my new netbook, and 2) chrome works better with google products. 1) I just bought a new netbpok and chrome runs faster, with less memory than firefox does., making it a no-brainer for a netbook 2) As a student I use a high volume of google products. My student email forwards to my gmail making it only one inbox to check, google docs is used multiple times daily, google calendar updates everything and makes group work/setting meetings seamless, and I even use google wave to collaborate taking notes in class. Having chrome just makes sense when all of these google products are so prominent in my daily life

Chrome also now has support for extensions (add-ons). I used to hate chrome because I loved stumbleupon, adblock, x-marks, etc. But chrome has adblock, it natively backs up and syncs bookmarks, and has stumble-upon. The only things I do miss from firefox are 1) personas was cool because although chrome has a themes, personas had way more, 2) ubiquity was an alpha mozilla project that was interesting, but eventually lost it's novelty because it was so buggy, and 3) the security of firefox allowed me to never fear where I went, but realistically so long as I use common sense i've put that fear to bed.

You may want to check out Opera. Myself, I use Chrome, Opera, and Firefox. Chrome is my favorite hands down...

It varies a lot from person to person and based on your browsing style-- I've been switching between Chrome and Firefox for years and find that Chrome is a lot better if you don't want to do a lot of customization and Firefox is better if you're into customizing the hell out of your browser.

IE7 (and, I believe IE8) is a lot less horrific than the previous versions of the browser, but it's still proprietary, harder to hack, and (I believe) slower. IE Tabs is nice if you're using Blackboard or other apps that require IE. There are quite a few plugins available, or there were the last time I used it (I switched to Mac about a year ago), which can help if you're using a computer that's locked by IT to not allow the installation of useful software.

And since we're on the Fx plugin bandwagon: I like Torbutton, which can turn Tor on and off at will and ColorZilla, which is a really useful color picker (good for art people). Friends swear by FoxyTunes, and I know a lot of Twitter people who use TwitterFox. Firefox also has a lot of web developer tools, but if you're in that industry you probably already know about them better than I do.