Browsing the browsers

Computerworld - It's safe to say that your browser is probably Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer, since IE installs automatically with Windows or Office. The browser wars of the 1990s are long gone, and Redmond won decisively.

But after the Netscape/IE struggle, a funny thing happened. With no serious competitor, Microsoft stopped development of IE. New versions appear from time to time, but it has been years since IE offered groundbreaking new features. Meanwhile, development of other browsers has continued to the point where many consider them preferable to IE in performance, security, ease of use, added features and even help desk support.

This review looks at IE's principal competitors: Opera from the fjords of Norway and the fraternal twin children of Mozilla. All offer more features, run faster than IE and are available on a variety of operating systems, including Linux, Unix and Mac OS X.

The Mozilla Twins

When Netscape Communications Corp. gave its Communicator code to the public-domain, open-source Mozilla.com project, no one quite knew what to expect. The Mozilla Foundation's developers scrapped the original code and started over to produce efficient, cross-platform software. The Gecko browser and layout engine appeared quickly after the 1998 handover. Since then, several Netscape-labeled browsers have been based on Mozilla code, but these have lagged behind the open-source beta track in features and performance. Mozilla's browser development culminated in the September 2004 release of Version 1.0 of Firefox.

The two major Mozilla products—Netscape Navigator 7.2 and Firefox 1.0.—are mainstream, and the availability of their open-source code can be a real plus for corporate developers.

Common Characteristics

I really liked the tabbed browsing within Netscape and Firefox; it's easy to open up new tabs, keep numerous pages open simultaneously and switch quickly among them. This is particularly helpful when using a search engine, since you can keep the search results in one tab while looking at pages in a new tab by just right-clicking on the link. Going back to the search page doesn't require a reload or refresh, as a page-back command would, just a switch in the display window. Also, the ability to open predefined groups of pages with one click can be a real convenience.

Another search aid involves the sidebar, an optional, multifunction panel to the left of the main window that can display bookmarks, history or search results. Just type a word into the sidebar's search box, and links appear below, with the first one opened in a new tab in the main window. You determine which search engine does the fetching. Finally, from any Web page, you can simply highlight a word or phrase, right-click it and select "Web search" from the context menu. It's a fast, smooth operation.