Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

Which is the best browser for me?

by
20th Apr 2009
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Trevor EddollsWindows comes with Explorer as its default browser, and most people just use with little thought about alternatives that could produce better results. Trevor Eddolls (left) takes a look at what browsers are available and why they might be just right for you.

What is a browser?

A browser is a piece of software that allows you to access the World Wide Web (the www part of those website addresses you type in). And, of course, you are using one now to read this. The web was the brainchild of Tim Berners-Lee back in the early 1990s. Amazon first sold a book online in 1996. Google didn't start business until 1998. In those days, Microsoft treated the web as a passing phase.

There were earlier browser-like pieces of software, but the first one of any real note was a graphical browser called Mosaic, which was released in 1993. This was developed into Netscape Navigator in 1994. By 1996 Microsoft realised that it needed a browser too and did what any self-respecting software giant would do, it bought one.

Internet Explorer was originally developed by a company called Spyglass. In 1996 Explorer had perhaps 10% of the browser marketplace; Netscape Navigator was king with about 86%. Even IBM had a browser for its OS/2 operating system – which probably no one remembers.

At this time anyone with a browser could add any proprietary extensions they liked to their software. But websites that looked flashy and modern in one browser would appear strangely odd in another that didn't support the same extensions or treated them differently. There was an obvious need for standards.

To gain market share, Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer with every new Windows computer. By 2004, Microsoft could comfortably claim to have over 90% of the browser market. When Netscape hit financial problems, it went the open source and formed the Mozlla Foundation, which produced the first copy of Firefox in 2002.

What browsers are available?

Internet Explorer from Microsoft is now up to Version 7, although Version 8 quietly became available for download on 19 March this year. There are also add-ins for IE7 to make it "better". These include the IE Developer Toolbar, Fiddler, ieSpell, IE7pro, and many others.

There's Firefox, currently at Version 3.0.8. This for many people was (and I stress the word 'was') the main alternative to Explorer. The big advantage with Firefox for web designers is that it renders what you designed fairly closely to the agreed standards, whereas Explorer still has quite a few unique characteristics.

The browser that has been getting a lot of press since it emerged last year is Google's Chrome browser. Chrome's big selling point is its association with Google and more modern, streamlined design. It is Java-based browser, and people are predicting that Java-based applications could be run inside it – like a Java equivalent of Word or Excel.

Safari has been a Mac browser for a number of years and is now available on a PC. You can currently download a beta copy of Version 4. I found it wouldn't install on the first laptop I tried. It installed but fell over when I launched it on a second laptop. It was third-time lucky to get it to work on yet another laptop. However, when it does work, it does have style – as you'd expect from Apple.

The final contender in our pack, Opera, doesn't have a big presence in the PC world, but it is popular on hand-held devices. So if you use it on one of those, you might want to use it on your PC. Opera runs on Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems on mobile phones. The company that produce Opera (The Opera Software Company) claims that Opera is the fastest of all the browsers. The current version is V9, but a beta of Version 10 is available for download.

Other browsers that run on PCs include SeaMonkey, Maxthon, Avant Browser, Flock, and K-Meleon. There are also a number of text-based browsers available.

Internet Explorer


We'll take Explorer as the standard and see how the others compare with it. After all, if you've already got Explorer sitting on your desktop and you're already familiar with how it works, there's got to be a fairly compelling case to make you change to a different browser.

The big strength about using Explorer is that it's free, readily available, and familiar. So what are its weaknesses? Well the one that most people quote because it turns up on the news all the time is security. Because Explorer is so ubiquitous, it's the one whose security hackers try to get round. And they do, with newsworthy regularity. Explorer is the weakest in terms of evil plug-ins, scripts, and hacks.

The next test is how fast is it. That's really two questions, how quickly does it start up and how quickly does it render a page. It doesn't start very quickly and it doesn't render pages that amazingly quickly either.

But is it reliable? The answer here is a definite yes. And bear in mind that many website designers make use of the non-standard features in the Explorer browser because they know so many people will use it.

Can you make it look pretty? Explorer doesn't come with skins, but there are a number of sites on the internet that will provide pictures that you can use to give your Explorer a new look. You may need to install an IE enhancement first for the new skin to take effect.

So that's the standard, how do the others compare?

Internet Explorer Version 8

Explorer Version 8 is meant to be faster and more secure than Version 7, but, unlike other alternatives to IE7, you can't have both installed. It's either Version 7 or Version 8. And it's worth noting that just being faster than IE7 doesn't yet make it that fast compared to other browsers available.

So, what's good with the new version? It has a new feature called Accelerators, which makes copying information from a web page to another source easier – although, I've never found copy and paste to be that hard to use. It also has InPrivate, which lets users browse without leaving any record on their PC. It also offers a feature called web slicing and colour-coded tabs.

Like Google Chrome, IE8 provides tab isolation, which means the browser keeps functioning even if one tab crashes. IE8 is definitely a big improvement over IE7 with much better support for web standards.

Mozilla Firefox


Firefox had tabbed browsing before Explorer, but it's harder to use. If you want to open a new window you press Ctrl+T at the same time. Otherwise, bookmarks and navigating backwards and forwards are very similar, so, what if anything makes Firefox worth looking at?

Firefox is typically more secure than Explorer. It is less likely to be targeted by hackers. Second, Firefox uses fewer resources on your computer to get the job done than Explorer. It also starts and loads pages faster than Explorer.

Firefox is better at following web standards than Explorer. It ensures that W3C (World-Wide Web Consortium) standards for how a web page should appear are (almost) fully realised in the browser.

Perhaps the biggest reason for using Firefox are the extensions and themes that you can add in. For example, I use an Explorer add-in so that when I look at a web page in Firefox, I can see how Explorer would render it and compare that to how Firefox renders it in a different tab. In fact, there are over 5,000 community-built extensions that are available free.

Firefox does everything that Explorer does and a bit more. And it does it faster and using fewer system resources – which explains why it has been the most frequently used alternative to Explorer.

Google Chrome

What makes Chrome different from other browsers is the fact that it is really a big JavaScript engine and could, very easily, run services and applications as if they were desktop applications. Things, perhaps, like Docs and Spreadsheets or Picasa, and I'm sure many other web-based applications that aren't anything to do with Google.

The interesting thing, from a user's perspective, is that you can type anything in the address bar and Google searches for it, in the usual way, and displays the results of the search in the page.

Chrome also provides a secret browse facility! Ctrl+Shift+N gives you an incognito window, which doesn't save any data locally. Useful, perhaps, for people who share computers with others and might want to hide their tracks.

You can grab a tab a drag it out of the Chrome window into space on the desktop, and you will have a separate version of Chrome running. You also have 'about' commands that you can type into the address bar. These tell you about plug-ins, networks, etc. You may like the 'about:internets' command to see the Chrome Easter egg.

Opening a new tab or window is very easy, you just click on the plus sign next to the other tabs. It shows you your most visited websites:


So, at the moment, Chrome is an easy-to-use browser, pretty average in terms of consumption of resources, but could have a very interesting future ahead of it. It does render images much better than IE or Firefox.

Safari

The Safari browser rose to prominence on the Mac. Because Apple has a reputation for being cool and easy-to-use you'd expect their browser to be the same. It is:


Whereas Chrome shows up to nine websites that have been "most visited", Safari shows 12 "top sites" and makes them look like they are in a semi-circle in front of you, not flat on the page. In addition, you can move the web page images around and pin them to a new position. It also has a bookmarks bar like Chrome.

There were reports that earlier versions were buggy, and I had problems getting it to install and run on a couple of laptops.

To set up default home page, click the sprocket icon and click the 'Preferences' option from the drop-down list. The default web address can be entered there.

On the whole though, first reports are that the browser is very fast indeed and a must-have for fashionistas everywhere. The Version 4 beta came out in February this year.

Opera

The Opera browser may be the least well-known of the more popular browsers, but it scores points in two ways. It is very fast – setting the benchmark that other browsers try to beat – and it is used on lots of hand-held devices as well.


Browser summary
● The main reason for using Internet Explorer 7 is because you're going to find it on every other PC you use. IE8 is more for those who want to be the first person on their block to use it.
● Use Firefox because the user community keeps it safe and full of features you can add to it.
● Chrome not only works nicely, it could be the best way to use Java-based tools in the future.
● Use Safari because it is looks so great.
● Use Opera because it's the same browser you'll have on your phone and PDA.
Like Chrome and Safari, it offers the ability to save your frequently-visited pages and access them by clicking on a thumbnail image.

Opera is meant to be very robust in terms of security and is excellent in the way it adheres to web standards. Features offered by Opera include page zooming, mouse gestures, and an integrated download manager. Mouse gestures are available with add-ins for Explorer. It means the software interprets mouse clicks and drags as specific commands.

If you're using Opera on a smartphone or PDA, then it makes sense to use it on the PC as well.

Also, since Version 8, Opera has an embedded BitTorrent client. Users can click on a Torrent file, and they will see it load in Opera's traditional Transfer window. This means there's no need to install a third-party BitTorrent client if you download films, TV programmes, and music.

About the Author
Trevor Eddolls is MD of iTech-Ed Ltd, a company specialising in IT consultancy and writing. He has more than 25 years of experience in all aspects of computing. He is a qualified Microsoft Office Specialist Master Instructor (MOS MI). Read his blog each week or follow his Twitter or email

Tags:

Replies (5)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

avatar
By kuriyan
24th Apr 2009 16:44

First Direct - use Firefox
You can access First Direct using Firefox !

Thanks (0)
Nigel Harris
By Nigel Harris
23rd Apr 2009 13:15

Problems with online PAYE in IE7?
We're busy filing clients' P35s online at the moment. The HMRC website works fine for filing, but we just can't get IE7 to load the P60 pdfs so we can print them! I have no idea why this is, the page just takes forever to load (I haven't had the patience to leave it to see if they load eventually or if it has just hung).

Solution - run Firefox and the whole operation works fine, the P60s appear on screen instantly.

I have the same problem in IE7 accessing the PDF taxpayer statements from the SA agents pages - and again it works fine with Firefox.

Thanks (0)
avatar
By BryanS1958
23rd Apr 2009 14:01

Stuck with IE?
Two things:

1. Many organisations only accept IE. For example, First Direct wouldn't even accept IE8 Beta and I had to re-install IE7, so it seems many users will be forced to use IE.

2. Is it possible to stop selected websites appearing on the 'last 10 websites' list, etc - if I'm looking for a present for my wife I don't really want her tracking the sites I am looking at!

Thanks (0)
avatar
By cverrier
21st Apr 2009 09:45

Intranets
also, Internet Explorer supports ActiveX, while the others don't.

This can be taken two ways - ActiveX has been the method by which many of Internet Explorer's security breaches have operated, so Firefox has always pointed to this as a benefit not a limitation.

However, some Intranet products use ActiveX elements, and will NOT operate without them.

Microsoft SharePoint also doesn't work as well with other browsers.

At home - pick whatever you like. At work, there may be other factors forcing your hand.

PS - I use IE8.

Thanks (0)
avatar
By jacp400
20th Apr 2009 21:07

Browser Policy
Anyone considering a change of browser should check their companies web usage policy as it may stipulate that MS Internet Explorer must be used. This is because some web filtering applications filter at browser level and the IT department may have configured a policy based on IE only. If this is the case then using an alternate browser may compromise security of the organisation.

Purely anecdotally I have used IE7, Opera, Firefox, and Chrome and of all of them I find Chrome to easily be the quickest and cleanest.

For pda based browsing I have previously used OperaMini which is a browser designed specifically for hand held devices. You can find more information here;

http://www.opera.com/mini

John Clough
www.tmcs.co.uk

Thanks (0)