what's this browser doing so high in my top 5?

I got a surprise today when I looked up my browser stats from visitors. Internet Explorer was top dog of course, but in 2nd place was a relative newcomer over the last year - Firefox. Here's the percentages for the top 5 as they figure in my website life:

Internet Explorer - 86.3 %
Firefox - 9.5 %
Netscape - 1.4 %
Safari - 1.2 %
Opera - 0.5 %

They all have their uses. I use each one separately for different purposes:

Opera as a daily browser for its speed (it's 2-3 times faster than IE!)

Firefox for its built-in Google Page Rank and Alexa toolbar, and keyword density calculator. More about that later.

IE for some operations that Opera won't do for some unknown reason. For example, Opera won't allow me to add a new newsletter in my favorite autoresponder, GetResponse

I test every new webpage through these 3 browsers before releasing them to the world, and I recommend you run your webpages through the top 3.

I'll be writing about many more tools in upcoming posts, but it's surprising how few you need to run a profitable internet business.