by Puller

Created on: May 13, 2008   Last Updated: October 01, 2011

The three main Internet browser are, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera. The question is always which browser is the fastest?  From personal Experience I rule out Internet Explorer right away, it has nothing on Firefox or Opera. Although the latest Internet Explorer is making strides to catch up to Firefox and Opera, it just isn't there yet.

Numerically speaking Opera is said to be the fastest. Results published on comparisons of browser speeds at

http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html show Opera out pacing Internet Explorer and Firefox in almost all the tests. But these are tests, done in what I would call a lab environment. What the average Internet user wants to know his how will these browsers compare in their everyday browsing and surfing of the Internet.

Like I said before Internet explorer just isn't up to snuff with Firefox and Opera yet, so lets take a look at these two competitors. there is no doubt that Firefox is a fast browser, and although the numerical tests show that Opera is slightly faster it is very hard for the average human being to significantly notice these differences in speed. For personal surfing though, I would also have to say Opera is faster then Firefox. Although I just said its hard to tell the difference between the two, Firefox will ultimately become slower. Firefox has lots of great extensions and add-ons which is actually the browsers curse. The average person will bog down there Firefox with many add-ons that eventually slow down there browsing experience. Opera on the other hand has some of its own special features but does not have the endless repository of add-ons which Firefox offers its users. Firefox starts out when first downloaded a light weight fast Internet browser similar to Opera but eventually gets bloated with added features by its user.

One thing to note is Firefox can be tweaked to be much faster then it is when first downloaded. I believe by some hacks it is much faster then Opera and noticeable. This is not easily done by the average user thought, it involves editing some files in the about:config of Firefox. This can be tricky for the un-experienced, and even problematic if they touch the wrong things. If you are feeling adventurous to explorer these tweaks try searching, "Firefox speed tweaks" in Google.

With that said, I primarily use Firefox over Opera for my browsing. The reason for that is because I find many website are not yet fully functional on the Opera browser yet. This by no means the fault of Opera but the website developers. At the moment Firefox is the most popular Internet browser, so most website are going to be optimized for Firefox. I believe as Opera gain more of a user base and more websites start optimizing toward Opera, I will make the switch to the fastest Internet browser around. It seems Opera is just too fast for the web.

Learn more about this author, Puller.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.