Web Browser War

I more than anyone can appreciate a well designed web browser. Growing up in the dark days when one could only choose between Internet Exploreer and Netscape, the current diversity of choices in the browser market is a welcome change.

Nowadays there are loads of browsers. A search on Wikipedia turned up dozens of different browsers. For example there is ManyOne, based on the Gecko engine on which Firefox is written. Avant Browser which is based on the Trident engine that was developed by Microsoft for Internet Explorer. Despite this huge amount of different web browsers there are three major browsers in use. They are Internet Explorer which comes with the Windows operating system, Firefox, and Opera. Despite the yells of the anti-microsoft crowd's, the new version of Internet Explorer, IE7, has solved most of the security and functionality problems that plagued the earlier versions. Microsoft had grown settled in their position at the head of the market and Firefox's assention caused them to rethink their strategy.

Though i am a fan of the Firefox browser, if Microsoft or anyother company makes a better product i will jump ship. In the fastpaced environment of the internet there is no room for undeserving favorites. I used Firefox from the beginning, first in 2003 when it was called Firebird and then when it was called phoenix. It seems like a long time ago.

I will write further when i have further researched this topic and it is an earlier hour. Extreme Tech has a comprehensive and fair article looking at these different browsers. Read it.

Another test that i find kind of revealing is one that shows how well the browser uses the internet standards that have been agreed upon. Many of these standards are not in use, but as the internet grows up they will eventually be put into use. Webstandards.com has a test to see if a browser can use all of these standards. This is the picture that the page is supposed to make.



This is how Firefox fared.



Not bad but not perfect. Now we look at the abysmal IE 6.0.

Yeah...no wonder half the world stopped using internet explorer. Extreme Tech's test found that Opera 8 performed better than even Firefox, rendering the page perfectly.

Another problem is that the only thing that still sets Firefox apart from the others is the extentions that have been made. Even in the upcoming change to Firefox 2, there are relatively few changes. A new browser call Flock, built on top of Firefox, is trying to give a more multimedia based approach to the internet. Flock is an attempt to bring about the standard of Web 2.0. I would love to explain this concept but I will let Wikipedia do it instead.

The term Web 2.0 refers to a second generation of services available on the World Wide Web that lets people collaborate and share information online. In contrast to the first generation, Web 2.0 gives users an experience closer to desktop applications than the traditional static Web pages. Web 2.0 applications often use a combination of techniques devised in the late 1990s, including public web service APIs (dating from 1998), Ajax (1998), and web syndication (1997). They often allow for mass participation (web-based social software). The concept may include blogs and wikis.


So I will test Flock and tell you what I think. Until Tomorrow. It is quite the time for bed. May the force be with you.