Top 5: Free & Fast Internet Browsers

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They're all free, fast, and compliant, but each of today's web browser choices has its own particular capabilities and features that may best suit your needs. 5. Opera Opera has been around since the early days of the Web, and it is now distinguished for two things. First is its Speed Dial start page of tile links. This page not only gives easy access to frequently used sites, but it can also even display live-updated content from said sites. The second is its Off-Road mode, which reduces webpage data by sending it compressed from Opera's cache servers. This can save you money on metered data connections. 4. Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) Now available for Windows 7 as well as for Windows 8 (but not for Vista or XP), Microsoft's latest browser is faster, trimmer, far more compliant with HTML5—a major improvement over its predecessor. It even now supports WebGL and SPDY, but not WebRTC. IE brings some unique capabilities like tab-pinning, leading hardware acceleration. Its excellent privacy tools include Do Not Track enabled by default and the more-powerful Tracking Protection feature. 3. Firefox 27 Firefox versions keep coming at a fast clip, now that Mozilla hews to a Chrome-like rapid release schedule. These frequent versions haven't brought the kind of earth-shattering changes we used to see in new full-number Firefox updates, but the development teams have tackled issues of importance to a lot of Web users—startup time, memory use, speed, and of course security. This lean, fast, customizable browser can hold its own against any competitor, and it offers graphics hardware acceleration, good HTML5 support, and the unique Panorama system for organizing lots of tabs. 2. Chrome Chrome's speed and minimalist design have deservedly attracted a devoted group of users to Google's browser. Leading HTML5 support means it will be ready for the future, application-like Web. Hardware acceleration adds even more speed, and though Google has implemented Do Not Track privacy protection (set to off by default), it's probably not the best choice for privacy mavens. 1. Maxthon Recently re-dubbed a "Cloud Browser," thanks to its extensive online syncing and storage service, Maxthon is the app in this roundup known and used by the fewest people. But it offers among the most in tools, and surprisingly good performance and HTML5 support. If the idea of being able to take a screen capture of a webpage, download video, or switch to a dark view for night viewing appeals to you, give Maxthon a download. Site compatibility is guaranteed, since Maxthon uses both Chrome and IE's webpage rendering engines. The latest version even adds hardware acceleration. That's it for this countdown, if you hope for more, make sure to show interest and respond to this question: Why did Facebook shoot Myspace?