Which is the best web browser for you?

Looking for the best web browser?

The question is often asked: Which is the best web browser for a faster, user-friendly, and safer internet experience? With more usage of mobile phones, people are looking forward to a good browser for their Android and IOS devices also.

The answer to knowing about the best browser varies from user to user and it depends on the device you use i.e Mobile phone or a desktop. It depends on the operating system as well. Further, a supposedly good browser for windows 10 may not be so good for an Android device.

Having said that, there are certain benchmarks and specifications on which we can assess all the browsers and conclude which is the best web browser.

Operating System matters

Not all web browsers have their versions which are compatible on all OS platforms. For example, Safari is a browser that is available for the Mac operating system and IOS devices but it is unavailable for Android devices and discontinued for Windows devices for some time.

This way, the task of assessing the true capabilities of a browser becomes a bit cumbersome. Ideally, a browser should be best on all platforms, which we see- is not the case here. The fastest browser may not necessarily be equally; user friendly. Or, the presumably best web browser for your PC may be lagging on your mobile phone.

Numerous web browsers are being used today. However, the good part is that despite so many, only selected few are used by most of the users worldwide.

By far, Google Chrome remains the best web browser

As per data available with Wikipedia, the majority of browsers and their usage percentage is as follows:

These data may be not accurate as many people like me use more than one browser in a device and the usage time also varies as per the requirement of the content. But more or less, the figures hover around as shown above and it shows that Google Chrome remains the most used web browser for PC and Android phones.

A mechanism that is used here to identify the best web browser on various parameters is known as the HTML5 test. The HTML5 test of these browsers does not verify the effectiveness of the functionality of all of the new features offered by HTML5 standards. However, based on the scores on these specifications, it awards the points to the browsers. So HTML5 can be used as a standard to assess the values of these browsers.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is not the only mechanism to estimate the value of browsers. There are other features and specifications created by other body for HTML named W3C HTML Working Group or WHATWG to assess the performance of these browsers.

The parameters and their major specifications on which all these six browsers have been assessed are:

 Semantics

Parsing rules

Elements

Forms

Web Components

Multimedia

Video

Audio

Streaming

3D Graphics &Multimedia

Responsive Images: To prevent wasted bandwidth and optimize display for both screen and print.

2D/3D Graphics

VR Headset: Comfortable VR experiences on the web. Currently under development.

Animation

Offline Storage

Web Application

Storage ( DataBase, Session Storage, Local Storage)

Files

Device Access

Location and Orientation: Location information includes Global Positioning System (GPS) and location detected from network signals such as IP address.

Output

Input

Performance and Integration

User Interaction

Drag and drop

HTML editing

Clipboard

Spellcheck

Performance

Security

Authentication

Iframes

Payment

Connectivity

Communication

Streams

Peer to peer

Input

Others

Script execution

As on 22 May 2020, the HTML5 test score of these browsers is as follows:

Opera 68.0 on Windows 10 scored 528 points out of 555 points.

Chrome Dev 81.0.4.44.138 on Windows 10 scored 528 points out of 555 points.

Firefox 76.0 on Windows 10 scored 510 points out of 555 points.

Edge 18 on Windows 10 scored 492 points out of 555 points.

Tor (Firefox 68.0) on Windows 10 scored 406 points out of 555 points.

Internet Explorer 11.0 on Windows 10 scored 312 points out of 555 points.

Safari couldn’t be tested on Windows 10 OS environment.

Choice is yours

Based on the award points as scored by each of the popular browsers above, the popularity and recommendation are all here for you to decide. Whereas security, speed and user-friendliness are the areas where the popularity of a browser is determined, for me anonymity is one more area to remain concerned of. That is the reason Tor has also been included here despite having an abysmal number of users and I consider it one of the best web browsers.

Read here: How your online privacy can be secured with a good browser

All the browsers mentioned here are more or less the same in terms of the security, speed and user-friendliness. Combining the scoresheet and your experience as a user, it is up to you to choose the best web browser.