Monday, July 20, 2009

Top 3 Internet Web Browsers

Before the internet started consuming my precious sleeping hours at night, I was an avid BBS user. With my ASCII-based client and at a maximum throughput of 14.4Kbps using my now-Jurassic metal-cased modem, I downloaded all the low-res porn and puny DOS games that I can.

Then with the advent of the internet, one-by-one, the BBS servers went out of reach. Shifting to the emerging trend, my so-called BBS browser became not obsolete… but useless.

The very first internet browser that I used was that of NetScape’s. Because of its far more complex page formatting, internet appeared to be slower than its BBS predecessor. Nevertheless, the on-line experience proved to be much more engaging.

Have a look at the top web browsers of today keeping us informed more than ever. May the search engines have mercy on your fingertips.

Mozilla Firefox 3.51
When Firefox was first released in November 2004, I was like "Fire… what?" because I was always hesitant to try applications other than the ones that came bundled with my OS.

Thanks to the layout inconsistencies and countless crashes I had with IE8, I was forced to try Firefox. I have to admit, I’m glad I made the switch.

No longer a fledgling upstart, Firefox 3 is full-featured, lightning fast, and an able foe for both the big-dog competitor Internet Explorer and competitors nipping at its heels. Firefox's killer add-ons remain strong, and the latest update makes v3.5 about 2x faster than v3. However, competition is strong and it can no longer be said that Firefox is the fastest browser available.

Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka GeoLocation) based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.


Internet Explorer 8
Ah... the monopolistic browser that had Microsoft paying millions of dollars in courtroom settlements. It tried and (brutally) succeeded in dominating the browser market share, forcing its competitor (guess who) to concede and eventually disband.

Its latest version, Internet Explorer 8, addresses just about all of the major concerns that users and critics have had with the world's most used browser since 1999. Whether they get answered in a way you like is another matter.

There are several new and interesting features. Web Slices lets you save predefined sections of a Web page for at-a-glance viewing. Accelerators make repetitive tasks one-click behaviors, for instance finding directions or blogging. InPrivate browsing introduces a cache and history on-off switch, while related tabs are color-coded and automatically reorganized as you open them. There's also tab sandboxing, which means that when a tab crashes, IE itself won't, and it even tries to resurrect the page that crashed.

An unwanted new feature (?) in IE8 is that it frequently crashes whenever I change the layout of this blog (say add a widget) and tried to hit on the Refresh button. I don’t recall experiencing the same glitch with IE7, nor with my current Firefox browser. It seems like the "frequent crashes" were far from unusual.

Google Chrome 2.01
Chrome is Google's endeavor to make the browser facade disappear and to shift focus on the applications and pages the users are viewing. Some of Chrome's basic supporting architectures are quite novel, similar to other open-source browsers on the market today. Initially for Windows, versions for Linux and Mac OS X were released as well.

Chrome is blazingly fast and is easily the quickest browser available. Its minimalistic interface is a drastic departure from the norms of modern web browsers. Instead of the traditional toolbar, Chrome puts its tabs on top. Tabs can be detached into a separate window, and can be dragged and dropped back into the browser (a neat feature actually).

The search bar and the address bar have been fused into a single control Omnibox. The Omnibox includes suggestions from URLs stored in the browser history and from the search engine. The stealth mode, Incognito, lets you surf without storing any history information or cookies.

12 comments:

  1. In my opinion, Firefox still win this competition browser. The latest 3.5 version has improved its loading speed make it even better

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  2. I agree with you there Darmawan. I used to be a fan of IE from v5 to v7. Too many IE8 crashes made me switch to FireFox.

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  3. nice blog.... and very good your article

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  4. A lot of my officemates have positives responses with Chrome too!

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  5. I like chrome and use it as my primary browser but still feel that Firefox is overall a much better browser!

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  6. Why opera not in the top 3 best browser???

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  7. As of July 2009, usage share of Opera in the web browser market is less than 2%. It wasn't even able to come close to newcomer Google Chrome which has a 2.59% share.

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  8. well i appreciate ur aticle. keep it up.http://sportsseeker.blogspot.com/

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  9. i think that safari is best and fast browser than all 3

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  10. Safari is the premiere choice for Macbook users Amol. Sadly, it doesn't work that well in Windows.

    Someday I might be able to try it on a real Mac machine.

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  11. thax cuz E8 sure bites me were the sun dont shine

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