Firefox here, with the “View in IE” extension for the odd site that doesn’t play well with Firefox.
Opera user here for the last two years. I used to use IE at home and Netscape at work. I investigated Opera for my Mom who is vision impaired and discovered I liked the ease of increasing the web font with only one button “0” and decreasing “9” for myself as well. Then I discovered the joys of tabbed browsing. So I switched to Opera at home and at work (I even paid for it I liked it sooooo much).
Then my IT guy at work decided to “upgrade” my 9 year old desk computer with XP and Firefox-------can you imagine how sloooooooooow it became? Opera was the only browser that I could even marginally tolerate. Said computer is now on the floor in my office waiting for disposal.
I’ve not gotten a single pop-up on Opera in two years. Occasionaly a tab opens with some ad, but I just delete it without opening. Yeah, no ads 
Another happy Firefox user here - at home, only, unfortunately. Our desktops are locked down at work and we have to use IE.
GT
I use IE simply because Firefox is ugly and drives me crazy. I did, however, just download Opera. We’ll see how well that goes.
Like so many others here, I use Firefox. I don’t run Windows on a regular basis either at work or at home (I run Ubuntu Linux in both places) so IE’s not even really an option for me. I do have it on my dual-boot laptop if I need it. I keep hearing there are sites that don’t work at all with non-IE browsers, but I haven’t personally seen one in a long, long time. I must travel different parts of the web than others do or something, I swear.
Firefox extensions I use: Adblock (with Filterset.G auto-updater), Bugmenot, RefControl, Tabbrowser Preferences, Flashblock, Slashy. I disallow most annoying Javascript features (like resizing windows, etc.), disallow cookies for non-authorized sites, and block pop-ups. I barely remember what web ads look like any more. Heh…
Safari 2.0 with PithHelmet (shareware adblocker, best $9 program ever).
There’s one website I use that requires both IE6 and Windows, but it’s just for work so I use one of their PCs for that.
Firefox user here. I’ve never even noticed the memory leaks, as I shut down my machine every night(the noise of the fan drives me nuts when I’m trying to sleep).
Isn’t that what everybody said was going to happen once MS finished crushing all the competition? Bit 'em in the butt, as it turns out, though 
My biggest beef with IE is the way so many Web sites still use IE-specific features that make their sites next to useless in any other browser.
I’m on a Mac (Mac OS X 10.4) and I have ten “different” browsers installed. In order of preference:
• Safari
• Firefox
I alternate between Safari and Firefox, using one for a month or two and then switching to the other, then back again. Mostly a matter of wanting a change of pace. I prefer Firefox for pr0n-fishing, because I like its “Save image…” method better than Safari’s implementation. I also prefer Firefox’s username/password management better than Safari’s. Safari is a little quicker all around, though.
• Camino (Mac OS X specific, Mozilla-based)
This is a quick little browser. Like Firefox, it is a browser-only implementation of Mozilla. It’s also completely Mac OS X native (Cocoa). I’ve recently discovered that it seems especially well-suited to browsing forums like this one. In fact, I’m using it right now to post this message. I don’t know why, but it just seems to handle forums better than my other browsers.
• Mozilla
• Netscape
I use Mozilla more often than Netscape., though I don’t use either all that often. I don’t really need the multi-functional bloat 
I keep them mostly for testing my Web pages (though I guess having both is kind of redundant).
• OmniWeb (Mac OS X specific)
This seems to be the Mac conversion of a browser originally built for the old NeXT computers. It’s attractive and has some nice features, but it has a few quirks that bug me.
• IE5 (last Mac version)
There are only two reasons I keep IE: Testing web pages and viewing content on non-standards-compliant sites that will only work in IE.
• Opera
Eh. Another one for testing pages.
• Shiira (Safari-based)
I downloaded this mostly out of curiosity. It’s actually faster than Safari, but its feature set is still incomplete.
• iCab (Mac OS X specific)
An interesting browser that will let you almost entirely eliminate graphic-based advertisements. It also has built-in HTML-testing, which is handy. However, it’s made by just two or three guys, so development is excruciatingly slow. It’s been in beta for about seven years now.
Thank you, Thank you, everyone! I downloaded Firefox a couple of hours ago and can’t believe how fast it is.
I made it my default browser and am still learning all the nuances but so far I’m very impressed.
People mention certain sites for which they keep IE on board. What are some of these and what should I expect when I encounter one? Keeping in mind, I’m not very techie.
Well, firstly, if you’re running Windows XP you have to “keep IE on board,” because you can’t uninstall it even if you want to.
Second, you don’t really need a list of sites. If you happen to arrive at a site that looks like there’s something wrong with the display, try it in IE. Personally, of the hundreds of websites i visit on a regular and semi-regular basis, not one of them has any problems with Firefox.
Well, the only one since post #4 in this thread, yes.
As I use Linux at work IE is not an option. I’m a fairly happy FF user here and at home, but all this talk of Opera has made me curious. I should also look into that IE extension to FF, there are still a couple of sites I need IE for and running it through Citrix is a pain.
I’ve been using Opera for years. I love it.
I have Firefox and IE which I use in that order if Opera doesn’t display correctly (which is damn near never these days).
I don’t mind switching browsers from time to time.
I use Opera to preview pages when I’m programming because if it looks good in Opera it only means a few minor tweaks in IE or Firefox to get the site to render correctly in everything.
What’s the URL for your website?
Internet Explorer at work; not sure about home, just had a boffin in to rejig it.
Thanks mhendo , glad to hear. Reading this thread and after seeing how Firefox works makes me wonder why IE is such a horse and buggy with all these race cars around.
Does Microsoft feel they already have a captive audience with Windows and don’t give a shit? They must realize this will finally catch up with them, if in fact, it hasn’t already.
I think Microsoft is waiting to see what is out there and then do it better. This seems to be it’s strategy. They did it with Netscape with it was dominant, then they put up IE4 and started crushing the competition.
Hehehe… Amasing how many of these ‘Make FireFox behave like Opera’ customisations there are nowadays
My colleague uses that, as well as deepnet explorer, FireFox, Opera, IE and pretty well every other browser ever written that runs on XP. I think it’s some sort of fetish.
Firefox (default) and Mozilla, now and then using Opera and IE on the odd occasion.
The reason IE starts up much faster than Firefox is because it cheats. IE is so wrapped up in the OS that most of it stays in memory the whole time. Look for a process called explorer.exe in your Task Manager. You’ll see it’s there, even when IE isn’t running.
exploere.exe is not internet explorer. It’s jsut the xplorer shell, which is the interface for running any program in Windows. However, IE is still tied into the OS, which is why it starts faster, but it’s not “always on.”
What **bouv **says is true. In fact, if you can put a url in the address bar in Windows Explorer and it will take you to the site.