If you're as old as me, your first experience with the Internet was on your computer using either 1 of 2 browsers. If you were a Mac user, you had what was the beginnings of the Safari web browser, and if you were on Windows it was the infant of Internet Explorer. For me, it was on the Internet Explorer on what was a blazingly fast Pentium 2 IBM Aptiva on a 56K connection.Looking back then, and how things are going now - my have times changed.

Right now I am working on a Core i5, with 4GB RAM, and on a T2 line. What browser am I using at the moment? Firefox 4 - the successor to Netscape Navigator and one that is giving IE a run for its money. With strides made in browsers, its amazing to think there were times where I lived without these features. I am talking about tabbed browsing, pinned tabs, the awesome bar, and now extensions that make for an even richer experience. That isn't to say thought that Firefox is standing alone as a great browser. In fact, a lot of the features that browser users have come to love today have been developed by the Opera browser team. Why they haven't gained a huge market share, I am not sure why - but they are the leading innovators in implementing new ideas in to browsers that have become a staple.

Google Chrome is also taking a huge bite out of the market thanks to similar features and the reputation of Google itself. Chrome has become completely customizable and is just extremely fast. It has consistently knocked out the competition with its light weight. Perhaps one of the main reasons why people left IE was the fact that it was slow, at times unreliable, and worse, the last to implement new features. Users are craving something new, shiny, and most of all reliable.

Recently, the "browser wars" as everyone has started to call it, has been heating up. With releases from competitors coming out within days of each other with almost indistinguishable features - and in some cases indistinguishable user interfaces as well. The wars are about to get even more ramped up with releases for newer versions coming out faster. Google Chrome started out with a new version this year with 10 and updated in April to 11.  Firefox 4 was just released earlier this year, version 5 is due sometime this summer. Safari has gone from version 4 to 5 in a matter of months as well. The only one still left in the dust is Internet Explorer with it having taken 2 years to go from 8 to 9 and there are no plans for 10 to be released in the near future.

My current favorite is Firefox 4 and Google Chrome with Firefox having a slight edge over Chrome due to the almost identical performance and the plethora of extensions available - more than any other extension library.