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What are the best browsers for web development?

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The Best 1 of 10 OptionsWhy?

10 Options ConsideredPriceDefault Search EngineDefault Adblocker
Excellent
Mozilla Firefox
Yahoo!Disconnect (Simple OR Strict)
Google Chrome
Google–
Chromium
Google–
Firefox Developer Edition
––
Vivaldi
Bing–
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Excellent

Mozilla Firefox

Add Video or Image
thermoplastics
tuxayo
Top Pro

Libre/open source

•••
thermoplastics
Timothy Farrell
Top Pro

Organization that cares about your privacy

•••
Mozilla is a non-profit organization that cares about your personal privacy. All other major vendors release a browser to boost some other market.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Awesome customizability

•••
Mo Hax
Top Pro

Superb inspect tool

•••
The inspect (CSS debug) pane/window is very good. Especially the Font tab is extremely helpful.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

High performance

•••
The Firefox Quantum update (FF57) greatly increases the render speed and general performance of the browser, by taking better advantage of the user's hardware.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Easy screenshots without extensions

•••
Within the browser itself, you can easily take screenshots and save them to your computer.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Reader View

•••
Reader View in Firefox allows users to read an article without any distractions by removing ads, unrelated elements and other distractive objects (similar to Microsoft Edge's Reading Mode and Safari's reader mode).
Paolo
WisePoseidon
Top Pro

Lightweight

•••
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Syncs between devices

•••
Firefox Sync is an optional feature in Firefox that allows syncing bookmarks, passwords, and add-ons between devices.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Ethical and pragmatic company mission

•••
The Mozilla Manifesto outlines the company's mission and principles. Paraphrasing, they want the Internet to be a free and open resource, and to enable individuals to get the best use of that resource. They do this by creating open source software to which anyone may contribute, so long as su...
Monika
Janaka Bandara
Top Pro

Offline mode

•••
Firefox has the best "Offline Mode" feature implementation which allows you to revisit previously opened pages (even the static ones, not only those which use app-level offline storage) without having to connect to the internet.
Monika
Janaka Bandara
Top Pro

Uses less resources

•••
Firefox 57 (Quantum) and newer uses less resources than ever. It is proven with benchmark done by AppleInsider.
Janaka Bandara
Top Pro

Lower memory fingerprint than competitors

•••
Firefox used to be a trailer in memory usage, but as of 2017 it's less hungry for memory than competitors like Edge, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
Janaka Bandara
Top Pro

Free, open source and community driven

•••
Firefox is available as a free download. All Mozilla software is licensed under the Mozilla Public License. Instructions on how to obtain the source code can be found here.
Jared M. Smith
Top Pro

Strong HTML5 feature support

•••
Firefox scores strongly on HTML5 feature support.
Monika
joelthelion
Top Pro

Great developer tools

•••
The built-in developer tools have been merged with the popular FireBug extension since FF57.
Andris Pelcbergs
thermoplastics
Johnny Cage
Top Con

Need to "enable" after opening devTools

•••
Network capturing and debugging should work out of the box without the need to reload the page.
Monika
Janaka Bandara
Top Con

Sometimes stops working for few seconds

•••
Sometimes stops working for 10/15 seconds, then starts working again. Inconvenient when streaming video on youtube or twitch.
Janaka Bandara
Top Con

Doesn't care for its original guidelines/goals

•••
Mozilla originally aimed to be the "good guys" with user choice and privacy in mind. Their current leadership cannot be trusted to hold those goals in high regard: 1) Added Pocket - a privacy data sensitive plugin, made it mandatory 2) Tried to sneak in advertisement as "drive-by h...
See 13 more ProsSee 17 more Pros & Cons
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9 Other Options Considered

Google Chrome

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Carl Walsh
thermoplastics
Milán Nagy
Top Pro

Great developer tools

•••
Can map web resources like CSS and JS to files on disk, so you can make edits directly from the debugger. If you change the files, the website seamlessly updates with new functionality.
Endi Sukaj
Baris Bikmaz
Top Pro

Great CSS3 animation debugging

•••
In the inspection tab you can fallow the animation frame by frame.
thermoplastics
Yonatan
Top Pro

Great responsive mode

•••
Has a bunch of predefined devices to choose from, ability to add custom devices, has mode that enables dragging to change resolution. It's also the smoothest when resizing in responsive mode (doesn't flicker on repaints like Firefox).
Yonatan
Top Pro

Very strong profiling abilities

•••
Google also has a lot of video guide for how to use them properly and what to use each profiler for.
Alex
Seokho Seo
Top Pro

Strong community of extension developers

•••
thermoplastics
Yonatan
Top Pro

Can offer good suggestions for how to improve your site

•••
The audits tab in the dev tools has lots of great suggestions for performance in different areas (network utilization, page performance and load times, etc).
Johnny Cage
Top Pro

Debugging Node.js server side

•••
thermoplastics
Frederick Tshimanga
Top Pro

Offline storage support on all technology

•••
Web SQL, IndexedDB (webWorker), Local/Session Storage, App Cache, Service worker.
techbeamers
Top Pro

Find network bugs with Chrome's built-in net-internals

•••
A network troubleshooting tool, net-internals is built into Chrome and Chrome devices. Use chrome://net-internals to isolate TCP/IP-related issues.
thermoplastics
Yonatan
Top Pro

Allows easy mobile device (Android) debugging/inspection

•••
chrome://inspect can be used to easily debug any Android device using Chrome.
Ivo Raisr
Top Pro

Multiple account login

•••
You can have multiple Chromes with different accounts logged at the same time. And it is really easy to manage different accounts.
pinage404
Top Pro

Great built-in developer tools

•••
Chrome comes with built-in developer tools, making testing and enhancing web pages simpler for those of us involved in working with such technologies. As well as being beneficial to developers, this also has some benefit to non-technical users; in that by making testing simpler for developers tho...
pinage404
Top Pro

Simple user interface

•••
For example, the address bar is also the search bar. Google calls it Omnibox.
pinage404
Top Pro

Customizable by user

•••
Each of the managed users can have their own configuration (themes, extensions, ...)
pinage404
Top Pro

Syncs between devices

•••
By logging into Chrome using a Google account it's possible to sync history, extensions, passwords, bookmarks and other settings between devices. This makes it great for anyone working with multiple devices as it allows experiencing consistent context when in the browser.
Ivo Raisr
Top Pro

Excellent HTML 5 feature support

•••
As of February 2015, Chrome scores highest of all browsers for HTML5 compatibility.
Luiz Barni
Top Pro

Fast rendering

•••
Renders HTML pages very fast. As a Google's commercial shows, Chrome renders HTML pages faster than a gun shot.
Ivo Raisr
Top Pro

Good performance

•••
According to TopTen Reviews, Chrome is currently one of the best performing browsers for initial (cold) startup, average startup, and navigation times.
Chloe Montanez
Ivo Raisr
Top Pro

Popular

•••
As of March 2015, Chrome is the most popular browser on the Internet, with a 43.9% - 63.7% market share, meaning most developers will be testing their sites against this browser to ensure compatibility.
Chloe Montanez
Ivo Raisr
Top Pro

Backed and supported by Google

•••
Whilst Chrome is based on the open-source browser Chromium), Google reviews this code and builds on top of it. This means it takes (and contributes to) a number of the benefits of the open-source model whilst having the resources, support, and investment of a major company.
pinage404
Top Pro

Automatically updates

•••
Chrome updates in the background ensuring you're always on the latest version. This makes it much more likely that sites will work on your browser, since (almost) all Chrome users will be running exactly the same version.
Carl Walsh
jabbathehutt1234
Top Con

Uses lots of memory

•••
Chrome spins up separate processes for different tabs. This gives better isolation from crashes, at the cost of using more memory!
An_dz
Carl Walsh
tuxayo
Top Con

Proprietary/not open source

•••
Chrome is based on Chromium, an open source project. Google adds auto-update and usage and crash telemetry. Learn more: https://fossbytes.com/difference-google-chrome-vs-chromium-browser/
Ray
PopularOmfale
Endi Sukaj
Top Con

Not privacy-friendly

•••
Ivo Raisr
Top Con

Increasingly slow

•••
When Chrome first came out, it was known for being lightweight and very speedy. Over the years, more and more features have been added to Chrome. Because of this, crashes, errors, and general laggy-ness has increased noticeably.
ResponsibleOshosi
Top Con

Huge memory hog

•••
Each tab and extension in the browser uses significant chunks of RAM, giving the browser poor performance on machines without enough RAM to supply.
Maratik Asiatic :3
Top Con

Hard/impossible to transfer passwords to a different machine without uploading them to Google

•••
Maratik Asiatic :3
Top Con

No mobile extensions

•••
Chrome on Android and iOS does not support extensions.
Maratik Asiatic :3
Top Con

Bad for battery life

•••
Drains battery life on both Windows laptops and Macs much quicker than the alternatives. It can shave hours off the battery life of any non Chromebook laptop.
Chloe Montanez
Ivo Raisr
Top Con

Online tracking by default

•••
Chrome allows opting out of tracking by going to Settings > Advanced > Privacy and un-checking any unwanted services. Alternatively, Chromium can be used to get a similar browser experience without Google's services on top of it.
Ivo Raisr
Top Con

Gives too much weight to Google on the future of the Web

•••
See 29 more Pros & ConsSee 29 more Pros & Cons

Chromium

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Endi Sukaj
Alexey Strokach
Top Pro

Free and open source

•••
PowerfulElegua
Top Pro

Provides latest debugging features

•••
The browser updates frequently and is on the bleeding edge when it comes to new features.
Rahul Soni
Top Pro

Superset of Google Chrome

•••
Matthew Bauer
Top Con

May not have Google API integration

•••
Depending on the distributor, Chromium may not have any Google API keys, which means you can't use Google services.
Matthew Bauer
Top Con

Doesn't report crashes

•••
Crashes are not reported automatically to Google.
See 3 more Pros & ConsSee 3 more Pros & Cons

Firefox Developer Edition

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Alex
CheerfulAnjea
Top Pro

Ready for work right out-of-the-box

•••
AgreeableSwayxtix
Top Con

Buggy

•••

Vivaldi

timlyo
Top Pro

Designed for power users

•••
An_dz
timlyo
Top Pro

Chrome's debugging tools

•••
Since Vivaldi is built over Chromium it comes with the Chromium developer tools, meaning you have all the same tools as Chromium or Chrome.
An_dz
Top Pro

Tab behaviour can be customised

•••
The order you toggle, open, close or clone tabs can be modified to match a workflow that best works for you. For example you can choose tabs to toggle in recent order so you can go back and forth between the last most useful tabs without needing to change their position on the tab bar.
An_dz
Top Pro

Custom keyboard shortcuts

•••
You can change and add keyboard shortcuts for basically all commands. It also has single key shortcuts to execute actions with one click.
An_dz
Top Pro

Non-closable fixed tabs

•••
A setting lets you prevent closing fixed tabs so you don't close anything important by accident.
Alex
An_dz
Top Pro

Scheduled theme change

•••
Themes can be scheduled to be set at a particular point in time. You can set up a light theme during day and a dark one during night time.
An_dz
Top Pro

Mouse gestures

•••
Integrated customisable mouse gestures. Allows for navigating the web, switching tabs, closing windows, opening settings and other actions with a flick of the mouse.
Alex
An_dz
Top Pro

Can be completely keyboard-driven

•••
All actions required to interact with the browser, like navigating webpages and changing settings can be performed using only the keyboard, no mouse required.
An_dz
Top Pro

Add websites as web panels for easy access

•••
You can add sites as panels for easy access them. It allows reading two websites side by side with a simple click on the panel button. Useful for programming language documentation manuals like from DevDocs or Mozilla Developers. Panels can be hidden when not in use.
An_dz
Top Pro

Notes

•••
A notes panel allows leaving notes about webpages, they can include screenshots for reference. It has tags as well as folders to help manage them.
An_dz
Top Pro

Chrome extensions support

•••
As Vivaldi is built over Chromium it supports Chrome extensions.
Alex
An_dz
Top Pro

Tab stacks

•••
Tabs can be grouped under a single tab to easily group similar tabs.
Alex
An_dz
Top Pro

Tab tiling

•••
Tabs can be put in a side-by-side or grid view to make comparisons or read and keep track of multiple pages at the same time. The feature can be toggled on Tab Stacks or by selecting the tabs with Ctrl+clicking.
An_dz
Top Pro

Built-in page capture

•••
Vivaldi can grab a picture of the whole webpage or part of it and saves it automatically inside a note or as a file in your disk.
Alex
An_dz
timlyo
Top Con

Closed source

•••
While Vivaldi is currently available gratis (without monetary charge), it is currently not fully libre (meaning that it does not allow users to view the source code used to create, to modify that code, or to redistribute modifications) and is, therefore, neither free nor open-source software. The...
An_dz
Top Con

High RAM usage

•••
As Vivaldi is built over Chromium it has the same bad RAM performance of Google Chrome or any other Chromium browser. As the Vivaldi UI is also technically a webpage it uses slightly more RAM, around 40MB more.
See 14 more Pros & ConsSee 14 more Pros & Cons

Opera

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Paolo
Top Pro

Customizable

•••
Opera is full of user controlled settings. Everything can be imported and exported even RSS feeds. It can be skinned in a variety of different themes or it can be extended through the use of a large number of plugins available.
Paolo
Top Pro

Opera turbo

•••
Opera has a functionality called Turbo which increases browsers speed and reduces data consumption considerably by compressing the data that's found in a web page.
Paolo
Top Pro

Strong HTML5 feature support

•••
Opera scores highly on HTML5 feature support.
Paolo
Top Pro

Compatible with Chrome extensions

•••
Since Opera is built on WebKit, the same engine Chrome (among other browsers) is built on, it was possible for Opera developers to allow Chrome extensions to run in their browser.
Paolo
Top Con

Proprietary

•••
While Opera is currently available gratis (without monetary charge), it is currently not libre (meaning that it does not allow users to view the source code used to create, to modify that code, or to redistribute modifications) and is therefor neither free nor open-source software.
Paolo
Top Con

Uneditable default search providers

•••
It can not delete or replace already built-in search services such as Yahoo, Google, DuckDuckGo, and Wikipedia.
See 4 more Pros & ConsSee 4 more Pros & Cons

Ghost Browser

Add Video or Image
thermoplastics
Cat Climaco Kokoszka
Top Pro

Projects function removes the need to log in

•••
With the new release (as of Dec 6th 2016), you can save a group of "Sessions" with logins stored to a Project, which you can launch with the click of a button. "Projects" eliminates the need to spend time setting up your workflow every day, so you can get right to work.
Laura Kyle
SeanAtkisson
Top Pro

Log into any website with multiple accounts in one window

•••
thermoplastics
Larry Kokoszka
Top Pro

Save a set of isolated cookie jars into a project

•••
thermoplastics
Cat Climaco Kokoszka
Top Pro

Color coding for session organization

•••
Different sessions are distinguishable by color for easier organization. You can also rename sessions to fit your needs.
Laura Kyle
SeanAtkisson
Top Pro

Group your cookie jars

•••
thermoplastics
Cat Climaco Kokoszka
Top Pro

Developer tools for each session

•••
The developer tools work just like Chrome, except that you can separate dev tools by session.
jeff r
Top Pro

Assign a different proxy to each tab for international sites

•••
ConfidentPeitharchia
Top Con

Doesn't support linux

•••
Supports only windows and mac
WhiteLilac
ConfidentPeitharchia
Top Con

Closed source

•••
See 7 more Pros & ConsSee 7 more Pros & Cons

Safari

Add Video or Image
thermoplastics
jabbathehutt1234
Top Pro

Excellent dev tools

•••
Believe it or not, Safari has amazing dev tools, To enable them, go to the Preferences -> Advanced -> Show develop in the menu bar. There are many many options to help you with mobile site development, and much more.
DeliberateAnbay
Top Pro

Works elegantly in OSX

•••
The rendering of the pages and the browser compatibility with OSX works smoothly, when compared to other browsers. Also you get very high battery life with Safari, when compared to Chrome.
thermoplastics
jabbathehutt1234
Top Pro

Good source map support

•••
To use source maps, go to right click -> show page source and you can use the document browser on the left to navigate scripts. If a script has a source map, an arrow will appear next to it. You can click it to expand the file to show the source map. If you need more help go here.
jabbathehutt1234
thermoplastics
Top Pro

Safari TP supports all ES2015/16/17 features

•••
Safari is the first browser that supports all ES2015/16/17 features. (Currently the Tech Preview only.)
jabbathehutt1234
Top Pro

Apple Pay support

•••
You can use Apple Pay on any sites that support it
thermoplastics
jabbathehutt1234
Top Pro

Handoff and bookmark sync

•••
Safari has a feature called handoff. This allows you to have a tab open on your computer, turn on your phone and swipe up on the Safari logo in the bottom left corner. Unlock your phone and the tab should be open.
thermoplastics
jabbathehutt1234
Top Con

No Windows or Linux support

•••
jabbathehutt1234
Top Con

Not very popular

•••
Many people prefer the alternative Chrome, which may lead to less support.
See 6 more Pros & ConsSee 6 more Pros & Cons

Blisk

Add Video or Image
thermoplastics
Dario Brignone
Top Pro

Device emulation

•••
Dario Brignone
Top Pro

Auto-refresh pages

•••
thermoplastics
Dario Brignone
Top Pro

A browser made for development

•••
thermoplastics
Dario Brignone
Top Pro

Actions sync

•••
PerceptiveSoteria
Top Con

No Linux support

•••
Although it has been announced since 2 years nothing happened.
Solon
WittyVastospati
Top Con

Some useful features are only for the premium accounts

•••
Cloud storage, taking screenshots, auto-refresh, screen recorder are all features that are only available if you get the premium version which costs $9.99/per month or $8.49/annually.
See 4 more Pros & ConsSee 4 more Pros & Cons

Microsoft Edge

Add Video or Image
IntuitiveManaf
Top Pro

Longer battery life

•••
IntuitiveManaf
Top Pro

Strong integretion with Visual Studio

•••
Chloe Montanez
Colton Colcleasure
Top Con

IE's brother

•••
It shares the same bloodline as Internet Explorer.
See 1 more ProSee 1 more Pro
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276 Community Recommendations

0xREDev
Nathaniel Blackburn
An_dz
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gilch
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+204
Request recommendations from the community
Janaka Bandara
Janaka
Contributor for 6 days
4
Total 
Recs.
550
Total 
Karma
Mozilla Firefox
Recommended a day ago
I have been using Firefox for over 6 years, and have been fascinated by its degree of customizability (despite the sad fact that it is eventually losing the very same thing with the latest abolishment of XUL in favour of the new inferior WebExtensions APIs). It used to be a great resource saver as well, esp....
Pro
 Organization that cares about your privacy
Pro
 Great developer tools
Pro
 Lightweight
Pro
 Awesome customizability
Pro
 High performance
Pro
 Easy screenshots without extensions
Pro
 Strong developer tool
Pro
 Free, open source and community driven
Pro
 Lower memory fingerprint than competitors
Pro
 Uses less resources
Con
 Doesn't care for its original guidelines/goals
Con
 Sometimes stops working for few seconds
Pro
 Offline mode
See full
ColorfulEunostus
ColorfulEunostus
Contributor for 4 months
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Mozilla Firefox
4 months ago
No response preview rendering
See full
WisePoseidon
WisePoseidon
Contributor for 5 months
1
Total 
Recs.
225
Total 
Karma
Mozilla Firefox
Recommended 5 months ago
Really good as of the new update.
Pro
 Libre/open source
Pro
 Superb inspect tool
Pro
 Lightweight
See full
DiplomaticAoGuang
DiplomaticAoGuang
Contributor for 7 days
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Blisk
Recommended 7 days ago
It is the best for web developers
See full
Justin Chung
Justin
Contributor for 3 months
2
Total 
Recs.
100
Total 
Karma
Google Chrome
Recommended 2 months ago
Some js frameworks such as vuejs have a chrome extension for easier development although you should test your website on all the popular browsers such as firefox, safari, ie and chrome itself.
See full
DignifiedZarik
DignifiedZarik
Contributor for a month
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Firefox Developer Edition
Recommended a month ago
Fast, clean, just works.
See full
CoolCymopoleia
CoolCymopoleia
Contributor for 5 months
1
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Google Chrome
5 months ago
Does not work in Mac Safe Mode
Con
 Uses lots of memory
See full
Electrux Redsworth
Electrux
Contributor for 7 months
46
Total 
Recs.
4.5K
Total 
Karma
Google Chrome
Recommended 5 months ago
Has some quirks, but is great to work on/with.
Pro
 Great responsive mode
Pro
 Very strong profiling abilities
Pro
 Allows easy mobile device (Android) debugging/inspection
Con
 Proprietary/not open source
Pro
 Great developer tools
Con
 Uses lots of memory
Pro
 Strong community of extension developers
Con
 Not privacy-friendly
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MightyDogoda
MightyDogoda
Contributor for 5 months
3
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Safari
5 months ago
as we know this is not for windows or linux
See full
MightyDogoda
MightyDogoda
Contributor for 5 months
3
Total 
Recs.
0
Total 
Karma
Vivaldi
5 months ago
I don't know but some css code wont work in this browser
See full
Currently displaying 10 out of 276 total recommendations.
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