the thing i hate about IE is that microsoft basically said "screw you" to a lot of web standards, and instead just decided to recognize their own versions. as a web designer that pisses me off. their CSS support is incomplete.

besides that, its pretty smooth, and yeah, most webpages are designed for it (unfortunately). i think that designing web pages really should not be browser specific. if microsoft and everyone else just stuck with standards, you wouldn't have to worry about making your pages work in multiple browsers. getting complicated javascripts to work in all browsers is a PAIN IN THE ASS. its even different with the same browser accross different platforms...

opera is a really nice browser. i LOVE the mouse gestures and tabbed browsing. opera is also the fastest at formatting pages. i haven't tried firebird. mozilla has a lot of the same features as opera, but its big and slow as hell. thats my only complaint about it.