First of all, if you’re still not quite sure what a web browser is or how it’s different from your Operating System you’re not alone. With the Internet becoming increasingly entwined with everything we do on our computers it is easy to be more than a little confused about what exactly the web browser part is. If you’re one of the many many web surfers out there that wouldn’t mind a little clarification on the issue I recommend this brilliant website called “What Browser?” Watch the video below to get from that site to get started, and visit www.whatbrowser.org/en/ to learn more.

With the recent beta testing launch of Google’s Chrome web browser for the Mac it seemed a good time to discuss some of the choices you have in choosing a web browser. If you;re asking yourself why you might want to consider choosing a different web browser than the one you’ve got the reasons are that because your web browser is what is interpreting all the code that goes into making a web page it determines a lot in terms of the speed pages load. Another reason is function in that your browser is really your gateway to the net, and how that browser works (whether it offers tabs, or shortcuts, or better search integration) all has a huge impact on your experience online. Some browsers like Firefox also allow for an incredible number of extra plug-ins and features to be added to allow you to create a completely unique interface and application all your own. All that said here are some of your top choices:

Safari – Every Mac ships with Apple’s Safari web browser. Nothing wrong with this fully featured browser from Apple. (But a little variety never hurt anyone).

Firefox – Developed by the not-for-profit Mozilla group, Firefox is the second most common web browser on the Mac platform (and if you remember back that far, is the most directly linked descendant of Netscape). Firefox is developed as an OpenSource project, meaning that thousands of software developers from around the world are working together constantly expand and improve this program. With customizable themes and a huge plug-in list, this is a great browser.

Chrome (beta) – the newest player on the block, Google’s Chrome browser is currently in beta testing (meaning there may still be a lot of bugs but they’re working on it) but already it proves to be one of the fastest browsers out there. When I tested it on our website the webstore did not render properly, but on most of the other sites I tested there were absolutely no problems other than the pages loaded much much too quickly (wait is that a problem?). As always with a Google product they produced several videos to explain their new offering. These ones for Chrome I thought were particularly ingenious! Check out the one below and watch all the videos here>

If you’re looking for something a little bit more unique there are a number of smaller browsers available that fit some interesting niches. Flock is a browser (developed partly locally) that’s geared towards socially networked users. Featuring built in Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Twitter support (to name just a few), Flock is quickly building up a loyal user base and well worth a look if you’re connected at all to any of these sites.

And finally, popular on both desktop and mobile platforms, Opera is a web browser that focuses on speed and performance no matter where or how you’re browsing.

There are of course other browsers out there (honorable mention to Camino), but this perhaps gives you an idea of what else might be out there. Google can help with the rest (who knows, you might be a fan of Shiira - a browser out of Japan). No matter what you use, it’s always nice to have choice, and as the Internet is only ever increasing in terms of being our primary use for our computers that choice make a bigger and bigger difference to our overall experience with our technology in general.

For those few of you real web geeks out there I though this was kind of neat – a diagram demonstrating an example of some historical statistics on of what percentage each browser on each platform has had over the years.