We have to visit a lot of different websites in the course of running an ISP. Over the last few years this has become more and more dangerous. Internet Explorer 7 and 8 at least take a stab a security. Explorer 6 and prior were jokes and if you are still using them your machine is probably already infected with something.

I strongly recommend Firefox rather than Internet Explorer for a variety of security and convenience reasons, but I really can't say I recommend the NoScript plugin without a few caveats. NoScript will drive you nuts if you don't understand what it is for. Out of the box it blocks just about everything. Therefor, almost no website works as intended. However by blocking all the executables on the page it protects you from a wide variety of click jacking, phishing, and other malicious exploits.

The key is to develop a profile of sites that you use regularly and trust and allow all the different things necessary to make the sites work. After a while most of your daily browsing will require no interaction with NoScript. When you go to a new site and content is blocked you can decide to permanently or temporarily allow the scripts to run. You can do this selectively and only need to allow the scripts that provide the functionality you want.

A couple of other tips are turn off the sounds, they are really annoying. If you go to a site and it seems to be acting strange or has large gaps look at the NoScript icon. If it shows that it is blocking something then open the menu and see what. With a little experience it becomes second nature to quickly figure out which sites to trust. If you are not sure then temporarily allow them and see if the content you need works. Finally if a flash movie, pdf, or java applet is blocked you can click on the placeholder to get a menu that lets you temporarily view the content.