I've been a web developer for 15 years, and can honestly say it's a lot easier to pick out the most terrible browser family than it is to pick out the best. The business case alone for IE6+ makes it a losing proposition and it boggles my mind that even later versions of the software have survived in the presence of faster, more mature offerings (I'm not a gambling man, but I'm willing to bet that the amount of time and money companies have sunk into making their offerings compatible with Microsoft browsers could be expressed as a percentage of the national debt) . It's an interesting topic and one I'd love to see an Ars tackle.
As for picking the best browser, opinions among my colleagues and I vary. In the windows world, it's a close draw between FF and Chrome, with the only real differentiating factor being developer preference. FF has the benefit of age; it shows through mature development tools and deeper integration with 3rd party test suites. Also, when FF was born all those years ago, it inherited a bit of the Apple complex -- the underdog, the rebel, the brave David who would stand up to Microsoft. I don't know how much that last bit counts any more as FF gets more mainstream, but I do know that it bred a sense of community and loyalty that makes older web devs hesitant to leave.
As far as my personal preference goes, I love Chrome. It's got 2 things going for it.
#1 is speed. Mind-numbing, soul-crushing speed.
#2 is webkit. I sleep better at night knowing that if my stuff looks good in Chrome, I stand a reasonably good chance that it's going to look good in all webkit-based browsers. I guess I've gotten soft in my old age, but you can't buy reassurance like that in this game.
