Dear PropellerHeads: I'm using Internet Explorer. Will it win the next browser war?

A: Almost assuredly, but not because it may or may not be the best browser. Now whether Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is the best browser for you personally, that is another question entirely. But first, to quickly answer your actual question, where does BWII (Browser War 2) stand today?

Back in 2005, IE had a 90 percent share of the browser market. That level of domination is unlikely to be obtained again. Currently, the top five are ranked as follows, depending upon which source you use: IE (45-64 percent), Firefox (21-32 percent), Google Chrome (5-10 percent), Safari (4-8 percent), and Opera (1-3 percent).

But here is the thing about IE: there are three major versions in use - IE 6, 7 and 8. No other browser is like that. Other browsers' users are using the latest version of that browser, or are fairly quickly transitioning to it. But a third of IE users are still using IE6, a browser that will celebrate its ninth birthday next month. That's older than my dog! And that dog needs to be put down (Microsoft's, not mine!).

I suspect those users are not personal users, but are business users who probably have internal software critical to their business that was designed specifically for use with IE6 (winner of BWI) and does not work in any other browser. Companies are slowly retrofitting those applications, but chances are they are not making them ultra compatible, but instead just good enough to work in IE8. So as long as businesses are entrenched in the IE camp, IE will remain the champion. That answers your question.

But, now let's turn to that more interesting question of which browser is better for you personally. First, you cannot really make a bad choice amongst these five. Nobody will rag on you for using any one of these browsers, assuming you have a reason to. But if you are just using IE because everybody else does, well, then you deserve to get ragged on.

The four S's of browser rating criteria still remain: speed, stability, simplicity and standards support. Let's look at each of these more closely.

Speed - I don't put much faith in benchmark testing. I like the stopwatch method best. And I went with the top sites people actually use. Google Chrome pulled it out by a tag, but they were all fairly close.

Stability - Google Chrome upped the ante here when they started to put each tab into a separate process for ultimate stability. This means a problem with one site won't take down the whole browser. IE followed suit, but to me was the clear loser in this category. I would get JavaScript errors when opening new tabs and, gasp, the whole thing actually crashed... twice!

Note that having separate processes for separate browsers does have a negative impact on your computer. The browser will require a lot more memory. So if you have a computer that is already tight on memory, and you like to browse with many tabs open, you may want to avoid Chrome and IE.

Simplicity - This is the hardest category to rate, as beauty (and usability) is in the eye of the beholder. However, I particularly like the way Chrome and Safari handle typing searches and URL's into the address bar. They offer a nice, organized list of possibilities based on your bookmarks, history and search results for what you have entered so far. IE is the worst in this respect.

Standards - Browsers are behaving better with each version. This means they are supporting more of the HTML and CSS standards and they will render the same page exactly the same as the other browsers with less hair pulling by the author to do so. That said, Opera definitely is the front-runner in standards support, especially in HTML5 and CSS3, while IE is the clear loser.

So, who will win PBWII (Personal Browser War 2)? I think in a couple of years it will come down to the same two competitors as everything else has: Microsoft versus Google. Opera and Safari likely won't ever go truly mainstream and Firefox is starting to lose some ground to Chrome. Place your bets.

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. E-mail them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.