There are several reasons I prefer Firefox over everything else. The list used to look like this:

• Works on multiple platforms
• Fast
• User friendly
• Standard-based (lack of JavaScript/DHTML bugs)
• Firebug, firebug, firebug

With Firefox 3 I added one more item to that list:

• Awesome bar

But over time that list has been chipped away by Safari/WebKit. Now it’s down to:

• Firebug, firebug, firebug
• Awesome bar

Well, the next release of Safari will drop that list down one at least one more. Take a look at the Firebug equivalent they’re building – http://webkit.org/blog/197/web-inspector-redesign/

Very, very nice. And Firebug compatible for JavaScript logging.

IE8 is also going this direction. It’s going to incorporate a Firebug-lite developer toolset. Not nearly as powerful as Firebug or what’s in the WebKit nightlies but far better then what was there before.

Just in time for the coming wave of JavaScript applications.

BTW, I didn’t forget add-ons. I’ve gone up and down with Firefox add-ons. I used to use adblock and Fasterfox and others but over time just found them to be superfluous or to cause problems. Now I have very few add-ons and none that I really care about.