For most of us, picking a Web browser is as simple as clicking the little blue "e." Security risks with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), however, should give you plenty of reason to think about which vehicle to use when accessing sites on the information superhighway.

Last month, Penn State's Information Technology Services issued a recommendation to students, faculty and staff that they use a standards-based browser other than IE.

As you probably know by now, that particular browser has long been plagued by vulnerabilities that can do significant damage to Windows machines. The workstations used to produce this newspaper typically have between five and 80 pieces of spyware or adware installed on them, many of which were installed via IE. Micro-soft's own Web site lists more than 40 "critical" updates for the browser.

Despite IE's flaws, it remains tremendously popular. Microsoft's bundling of IE with Windows in the late 1990s enabled it to decimate Netscape Navigator and take a 94 percent share of the Web browser market. Today, though, several strong alternatives have emerged, including Mozilla, Netscape, Opera and Safari, the last of which runs only on the Mac. My personal favorite, and the one that has attracted the most attention, is Firefox.

Firefox (www.getfirefox.com) has some great features that significantly improved my Web-browsing experience. First and foremost is tabbed browsing, which allows you to quickly switch between multiple Web sites that are open at the same time. Once you go tabbed, you never go back.

I also love Firefox's extensions, small plug-ins that add functionality to the browser. Some of these include ones designed for ad-blocking, sharing your collection of bookmarks with other people, and finding a definition for a word on a page.

Firefox's Live Bookmarks feature allows you to view RSS news and blog headlines from your bookmarks toolbar or menu. If the preceding sentence didn't make any sense to you, don't worry; you're in the majority.

RSS is a way for Web sites to quickly push updates such as breaking news stories to people. Firefox can alert you when a page offers RSS, and if you choose to do so, you can view its headlines as bookmarks.

Conscientious Web developers love Firefox because it is compliant with the standards that make the Internet accessible to people running computers on different platforms. Anyone who has tried to make a Web site that runs on Internet Explorer, Netscape and Safari knows about the particular differences between them that can make you want to pull your hair out.

Firefox presents a great opportunity for each browser to finally give up with its peculiar way of doing things, and allow everyone access to see the same great content, no matter what browser they're using or if they're on a Mac, PC or Linux box.

These features have allowed Firefox to take 7.4 percent of the market -- no small feat in a category that was once considered fully monopolized. Even though I think Firefox is great, I don't want it to be the only choice in town. There needs to be a healthy ecosystem of browsers. Any software that becomes overwhelmingly popular makes a great target for hackers and other people with malicious intent. If everybody uses Firefox, then people will begin to write spyware and adware that can compromise it.

If you like Firefox, you might want to consider several other great open source applications, all of which are free and serve as great alternatives to other programs you might be using. Check out www.sourceforge.net.

Of course, for the ultimate in secure, junk-free computing, I'd recommend you switch to the Mac. But I'll save that can of worms for a future column.