*14 June 2008 Update- Opera has released 9.5, Mozilla is releasing FireFox 3 on 17 June 2008, they are aiming for world record of most software downloaded in 24 hours.
The web becoming the more powerful medium of information these day’s. Breaking news, cricket score’s filimi gupshup and may more things all out there. Just for you to dig through them and get the information. The websites are now craving for greater for more attention these days. They are optimising their pages so that you can get better experince. But this is at their end. How about you taking an intitative to get better experince. You may be wondering me? how?. Yes , by choosing a right browser ofcourse.
You may be aware in the previous days Microsoft had monoploy over lots of things, the scene is fast changing. You have competitors for Microsoft who have started giving it a run for the money. Yes, every one knows about the futile effort of the software giant to gulp down Yahoo!. And all this to give competion to Google (the new baap of internet). Of these monopolies one was the browser that it supplied with the Operation system. Even if you dont have plethora of choices in this product you surely have enough to choose from.
All of these have one aim in mind superior user exprince. What are the factors that these browser’s will keep speaking to gain your attention.
a) HTML perfomance
b) Javascript perfomance
c) Stablity on the OS
d) Slick UI
Some of the most popular browsers in the web world are as below
1) Fire Fox (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/) coming up with version 3.0
2) Internet Explorer(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx) working on 8.0
3) Opera(http://www.opera.com/download/) working on 9.5
4) Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/) 3.1.1 now available.
There are some which are build upon these as base and more enhancements going over them one of them is Maxathon which is based on IE.
if you ask me my experince goes to say that by far FireFox is the best browser.But, at the same time the fastest browser so far for me is the Safari for Windows. Having said that some sites do not render as smooth as in FireFox.This however boils down to the way the site is been designed and CSS the browser supports.Internet Explorer is at the bottom of the table for me.
Although Internet Explorer team has been trying to bring updates.Yes, IE8 is coming up. I might not be interested in trying the beta version as opposed to FireFox which I had the beta version(First relase candidate is already out for the same).
All the browsers are trying to make themselves as slick and light as possible.All of them having the tabbed look and feel.All of the browsers are trying to give some type of Add-ons. Like the widgets for FireFox and Opera, Plugin’s in Internet Explorer and something called WebSlices is coming up in IE8.Ofcourse these browsers have their own language pack, Fire Fox has gone to the extent of creating Gujarati Lnaguage pack (the gujarati language pack is however not available for the Mac version of the browser)
This is not the end to it, browsers are going to the mobile OS as well. And one of the strogest player here is Opera with its free version of OperaMini and payed version of browsers for Windows platform and the Symbian platform as well.
Now the according to many review on broswers ,Opera is the fastest ,secure and best broswer available till date. Opera also has the smallest footprint in memory while you load the browser with webpages and diskspace. Actually IE has smallest footprint on disk however, this is attributed to its usage of the components from the Windows OS.
It, depends now on your need why you use the browser. Like me if you are a website developer you will want to use FireFox as it has many addons which support you in devlopment. Right from the DOM reader to laod speed to Test Automation.(As website developer you will need to ake care that your webpage displays equally well in all the browsers.) Now, even Opera has the widgets but i havent spotted any like the one available for the FireFox.In case you are a some one who just surfs the net casually any of them would suufice. Incase you need speed and security my friend you should go for Opera.
Now, you would wonder what do the companies making the browsers get out of rolling their respective versions. well hold on ,Mozilla made 50 million in 2005 from their Firefox search bar alone.Such is the sucess of the browser story.
P.S. the views expressed here are my own and not influenced by any company or person. The results whereever depicted in the post are good for me.I have been using Windows Vista OS. You will have to test the same for yourself to decide which browser suits you.