I used Mozilla Firefox for a few weeks as I wanted to experience the hype around that browser and also many of my friends were using it and were talking about it positively. I didn’t like it at all.
It is really slow and buggy and takes ages to start. It also consumes a lot of RAM. The way the webpages are rendered using Firefox is also too artificial, there is no natural feel to the rendering as in Opera or even Google Chrome. I don’t like the look of its UI either, whether it is the latest UI or the older ones. Moreover, Firefox is a highly unstable browser. It keeps crashing a lot, probably due to its memory problems.
Sure, Firefox is known for its add-ons, but add more than 3 of them and the browser becomes slower than usual, in fact so slow that I constantly had to check whether there was a problem in my Internet connection. Also, do web users need too many add-ons? Also, they say that Firefox is highly customisable, but what’s the use of customisation if the browser is too slow and the web content is rendered in an ugly manner?
And I am not too impressed with the browser’s security. I can’t access Facebook without receiving a warning saying "Get Me Out of Here!" unless I add a security exception to that website. Also, Firefox is the browser most affected my malware, trojans, adware and other malicious software.
The only good feature of this browser is the option for Firefox to never remember your history, even in normal mode. But this one feature will not make me overlook all the other serious flaws in Firefox and use it. In better browsers, I can just access the Web in Private mode if I don’t want the history to be saved.
If you really want a good alternative to IE, my suggestion is to try Opera. It’s fast as well as secure and it also has a good set of add-ons. It never crashes either.