Ok it's finally time I dump IE9 and at least try a competing browser (again).
I'll let you debate help me decide which one to to try next, but first I'll let you know what I like and dislike in case that helps with the deciding and in case you know of any add-ons I'll need.
For years I've used the latest IE plus an add-on called IE7Pro. I liked IE for it's clean interpace and lots of screen real estate for web content, and IE9 was plenty fast (on my PC). The addon gave me:
Mouse gestures for fast scrolling (and other things, but I only used it to scroll to the top or bottom of pages)
Text saver - never had to worry about losing a long rant post on a forum that crashed.
Spell checker
Favorites sync
Keyboard shortcut to enable/disable proxy (for work PC)
Flash blocker
And a few other things, less important
I've tried the main browsers years ago and have had more recent limited exposure to them when fixing other PCs, but the main things I didn't like were:
Chrome
Had what someone described as a 'Fisher Price' look about it (they make toys for babies/todlers). Are there better themes now?
No mouse gestures. Is there an extension for this?
Didn't like the toolbar layout or download manager. Are there more options now? Do downloads still open in a tab?
Google constantly checking for updates without consent and doing who knows what else.
Firefox
Was very slow (memory hog)
Too many toolbars, not enough screen real estate.
Opera
Has always been my go-to browser when IE wasn't satisfactory
Liked the look, speed, features, options, but never used it enough to set them all up - I only used it for the Opera Turbo, which used a proxy to compress web pages for when I went over the monthly download limit and got shaped bandwidth.
Obviously Opera has page rendering issues sometimes.
Um yeah so I guess the main choices would be between FF, Chrome, and Chromium (leaning toward the latter). Which of the three do you think is best suited to me, and what extensions do you recommend (links)? Not intersted in Safari at all.
+rep available, no flaming :p