Ubuntucat

This is a follow-up piece to “The New Browser Wars.” Instead of recounting my experience with various browsers, this piece focuses on the factors that go into deciding which browser is right for you.

Netscape. I’d say for the majority of Windows users, this is the “right” browser for you. From my experience the majority of Windows users fit what I view as the Netscape 8.0 profile:

• Wants everything to “just work”
• Doesn’t really want to customize stuff
• Cares about functional security but isn’t paranoid about viruses, spyware, etc.
• Uses Windows almost exclusively.
• Enjoys a few new features that come-out-of-the-box

Netscape’s latest release has the distinct advantage of having some of Firefox’s features (tabbed browsing and lack of integration with the OS—i.e., not ActiveX for secretly downloading spyware), while still have Internet Explorer on hand for “trusted sites.” I recommended Netscape to some friends who previously had had a bout with spyware but who still needed to check their Yahoo! Mail. Apparently, Firefox and Yahoo! Mail do not get along. Luckily, since Yahoo! is considered a “trusted site” by Netscape, Netscape will use IE settings for rendering Yahoo! pages. By the way, as a side note, Netscape does not emulate IE. It actually uses IE. So if your IE settings are lax (or too tight), then your IE through Netscape settings will be equally lax (or tight).

There are a number of downsides to using Netscape, but if you fit the profile above, you won’t care. First of all, in its current state, Netscape 8.0 is available only for Windows—no Mac, no Linux. Netscape also does not have much customizability. Sure, you can drag a few buttons around, but if you have only one toolbar, you’ll be hard-pressed to fit your address bar, search bar, and bookmarks in the top area. Also, there are no extensions for Netscape and only two themes.

Firefox. This is your next best choice. It runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. It’s fully customizable (with extensions and themes—many extensions and themes), and it starts off very bare-bones. You can add search engine plug-ins. You can add almost anything you like (my personal favorites are adblock, flashblock, foxytunes, forecastfox, and user agent switcher). There are a lot of nice little things about Firefox (you can read about them at my Switch to Firefox page), but Mozilla products in general do not tend to always work with certain proprietary software (say, Hotmail and Yahoo!). Firefox is also not extremely stable. I’d say it crashes on me once every week and a half or so. That’s often enough to be an issue/consideration. Still, with the sessionsaver extension, it’s not that big a deal, and I believe the rest of Firefox’s functionality and extensibility makes up for a little bit of instability. Hopefully, version 1.1 will fix a lot of that.

Opera. Opera, in many ways, is an amazing browser. Almost every benchmark test I’ve seen has rated it the fastest browser on any platform. It, like Firefox, is one of the few browsers that’s available for Linux, Mac, and Windows. It also is usually at the cutting edge for features (mouse gestures, turning images on and off, voice navigation, opening tabs in the foreground or background easily, the inclusion of multiple search engine bars). Its approach is a bit the opposite of Firefox’s, though. Whereas Firefox starts of barebones and allows you to add only what you want, Opera starts off fully loaded and allows you to disable certain features or make them at least disappear. The one thing that won’t disappear unless you pay for it to disappear is the banner ad at the top of your browser. This can be annoying, especially since the latest version of Opera has animated banners. Also, Opera is even worse than Firefox at working with proprietary software or “designed for IE” sites. It presumably has something like User Agent Switcher, but it doesn’t really work. If you care about speed and cutting edge features and don’t mind paying for a browser or putting up with a banner ad, Opera’s your friend.

Safari. I have to say—I’m not a big fan of Safari. Sure, it has tabbed browsing (if you enable it through preferences), but it’s severely limited in terms of functionality. For example, it has nothing like a user agent switcher, so it will not work with certain websites at all. The first time you start Safari, it allows a one-time import of bookmarks from another browser. After that, you have to do some kind of weird workaround in order to import bookmarks and other settings. You certainly can’t export bookmarks from Safari. And there aren’t many Safari extensions. Safari also isn’t the fastest browser out there. The only thing that really sets Safari apart from other browser is that it is native to OS X. Therefore OS X keyboard shortcuts and caret browsing actually function as they should. Unfortunately, it’s not only native to OS X; it’s exclusive to OS X. No Linux Safari. No Windows Safari. Use Safari if you’re a Mac zealot who likes only Mac products, or if you cannot live without keyboard navigation in a Mac environment.

Internet Explorer. Don’t use this browser. Honestly, what’s the point? It doesn’t have tabbed browsing. If you need to use IE-only features or visit an IE-only website, you can use Netscape’s IE (which will activate only for “trusted sites”) or Firefox’s User Agent Switcher. If you want a fast browser, Opera is far faster. If you want something that operates natively to a Mac environment, you use Safari. IE is for people who are too lazy to realize that the simple act of using another browser would immensely enrich and make more efficient their internet experience. Oh, and guess how most spyware/adware gets on computers…

Lately, I’ve been on a conversion spree—converting people I know to Firefox. So far, I’ve “converted” my wife, my pastor, and half my co-workers. (My parents were already using Firefox when I visited them last Christmas.) It’s been great getting people, especially my co-workers over to Firefox, because most of them don’t really seek out alternatives on their own; in fact, most of them didn’t even know there were alternatives. Usually, when I approach them and say something like, “I noticed you’ve been using Internet Explorer. Do you want to try something else?” the response I get back is, “There’s something else?”

Granted, it’s been easy to get people to explore alternatives for a few reasons. First of all, at work, our IT department is very supportive of Mozilla, and they’ve already got most of the staff using Thunderbird, the email client, so users are already comfortable with the idea of alternatives to Microsoft. Secondly, I often approach people who are having problems with their computers. One of my co-workers had her computer loaded with spyware. Another couldn’t get Internet Explorer to load any pages, and she’d already tried loading those same pages on other people’s computers that were sharing the same internet connection, so she knew there was something wrong with her browser. I loaded Firefox onto her computer, and all the sites loaded immediately.

There are some other selling points, as well.

First of all, people like the simple look of Firefox. It’s got a location bar, a search bar, a bookmarks bar, and the displayed webpage. Sure, you can get Internet Explorer to have a simple look, too, but when IE is simple, it won’t do much any more. Most people I know who use Internet Explorer need to use the Google Toolbar or some Yahoo! equivalent in order to get some good functionality out of the browser.

On a related note, another selling point has been the search bar. New converts love the fact that you can search using multiple engines from one bar and that you can add engines. I’ve added, as you can see here, the NIV Bible, Google Maps, and the Internet Movie Database.

Only one new convertee has been as thrilled with themes as I’ve been, but they’re there. If you don’t want to use them, that’s okay, too, but they are an option. Two of my favorites are Red Cats/Green Flavor and Saferfox Xpanded.

My wife and I are cat lovers, and Red Cats/Green Flavor doesn’t go too crazy with the cats—it has enough cats to appease the urge to worship felines while not obscuring the browser’s functions and displays. It’s also a fairly consistent theme in terms of appearance.

Saferfox Xpanded doesn’t have the consistency of Red Cats (for example, there is no visible button to close the find-as-you-type search bar), but it’s great for Windows users who love the Aqua appearance of Macs.

Internet Explorer users who read the news or like to click on multiple links off a site are always amazed that something like tabbed browsing exists on other browsers. They’re used to right-clicking a link, clicking on “open in new window,” then clicking back to the original page to find other links.

With Firefox, you can middle-click on any number of links (or right-click and click on “open in new tab”), and they will all load in “tabs” within the same browser window but in the background, so you can get to them when you’re done reading the page you’re on. This is great for when I look at Google News, see five or six stories I read. All I have to do is middle-click them all, and they’ll all be lined up to read later.

I have to confess—when I first started using Firefox, I hated the bookmarks toolbar, and I chose to hide it; I felt it just added an extra layer that pushed down the browser display window. After a few months, though, I tried actually using it (instead of clicking on “bookmarks” and dragging the mouse down to the appropriate site link) and I loved it. Here’s a place where you can put all your most frequently used bookmarks, and they will appear as easy-click buttons below the address bar. On a side note, there’s a great feature in bookmarks that allows you to open everything in a folder (say, a bunch of sites you visit every day) in tabs—all at once.

Extensions are the best part of Firefox, and it’s one of the few things that sets it apart from Safari, another great browser (for Macs only, though—Firefox, however, is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux). I used to be a big fan of Opera, before Firefox came out. In many ways, the three browsers (Safari, Opera, and Firefox) are similar. What makes the difference for me, though, is Safari and Firefox are out-of-the-”box” simple, pared-down browsers. Opera, although high in functionality, starts from a fresh install as a crazy all-over-the-place browser. Unlike Safari, though, Firefox starts off simple in its features but can get as complex as you want it to be through the use of “extensions.”

Here are some of my favorite extensions…

FoxyTunes: Ever been listening to your music (through iTunes or WinAmp) while surfing the internet? Suddenly a song comes on that sucks or is too loud, or suddenly the phone rings and you need to pause. Sure, it might take you only that extra few seconds to switch applications, press the appropriate button on your music player, then switch back, but wouldn’t it be nice to have all the controls on the status bar at the bottom of your browser?

Adblock: Sure, banner ads aren’t as annoying as pop-ups (which Firefox blocks by default and does a pretty good job of blocking), but they’re still annoying. Adblock lets you block individual ads or ads from a particular site. You’d be amazed how much cleaner some pages look after the ads have been taken out of them.

Bloglines: Most blogs (not all) are syndicated using something called an RSS feed, which lets RSS aggregators see exactly when a site has been updated and what the new content is. Bloglines allows you to collect together your favorite blogs, and it notifies you, via this extension in Firefox, any time a new blog you read has been updated. A little red dot appears on the “B,” and you can have immediate access to what’s been updated. Even comic strips and newspapers have RSS feeds.

ForecastFox: I used to visit the weather channel webpage, but now I have a three-day forecast that appears as little pictures on my status bar. If I hover over any picture with the mouse, I get details (temperature, clouds, wind, rain, etc.).

User Agent Switcher: When I first came across this extension, I had no idea what it was because of its cryptic name. One of the downsides to using Firefox is that it isn’t compatible with every website (or, rather, those websites aren’t compatible with W3C standards, instead catering to Internet Explorer’s non-standard HTML and use of ActiveX). Granted, Firefox is compatible with most websites, though. The only websites my wife and I have ever used that didn’t support Firefox were Cingular Wireless’s webpage and the FAFSA webpage. Once we installed User Agent Switcher, which essentially tricks websites into thinking Firefox is Internet Explorer, both sites worked fine with Firefox (interestingly enough, Opera supposedly has a similar function built into it—”identify as MSIE 6.0″—but Opera’s feature doesn’t really work).

I also recommend TabBrowser Preferences, FireFTP, and Download Manager Tweak.

A couple of other Firefox bonus features…

“Find as you type” starts finding words in the page as you’re typing the word, instead of popping up a search dialogue in which you have to type the word, then click “find next” to actually find the word.

Great Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Control-T opens a new tab (if you use TabBrowser preferences, you can make each new tab opened go to the homepage by default)
• Control-K goes up to the search bar
• Control-L goes up to the address bar
• Control-W closes the current tab
• Control-Tab moves to the next tab in the window

Built-in “feeling lucky” searches: People who like the “I’m feeling lucky” feature in Google will love this. For those not familiar with “I’m feeling lucky,” there are two buttons below the search bar in Google. One searches and displays a page of search results. The other button takes you straight to the first search result. If you type a search query in the address bar of Firefox, it will go straight to the most likely site.

I’ve tried many of the major browsers out there: Netscape, Camino, Safari, Opera, Internet Explorer, Deepnet Explorer; and I have to say Firefox has been the best I’ve seen so far. Use what works for you, of course, but at least try Firefox.

Below is a complete “list” (in image format) of my favorite Firefox extensions:

P.S. Someone suggested Luna as a theme worth trying out for those switching from Internet Explorer, as Luna is Windows XP’s default theme. There are also instructions on the Firefox site for how to switch from IE—it’s usually quite effortless, as the Firefox installer automatically imports Internet Explorer’s “favorites” into Firefox “bookmarks.”

Read more about Firefox in the news.

Why does anyone use Internet Explorer?

I used to be an Internet Explorer person, but lately I’ve been playing around with different browsers. These have been my experiences with several (this is not a comprehensive list, by any means—it’s only the ones I’ve tried):

Netscape
My first web browser ever, apart from Lynx (the text-only web browser) was Netscape. It was an early innovator, and, it seemed, the “only” browser around. It wasn’t really, but to someone new to the internet and to email, Netscape was just there. When I arrived at college in the mid-1990s, I knew a few people who used email, but I swore I wouldn’t use it. After a few weeks, though, I was checking my email every day—several times a day. I would get annoying forwarded jokes from friends, and if I ever needed to look something up, I would use Infoseek on Netscape. Sure, even back then Netscape was clunky, but there didn’t seem to be any other alternatives. I hated the buttons with those lavender diagonal slashes and green arrows. I didn’t like the status bar that would keep dancing back and forth at the bottom of the screen. Still, Netscape was the first thing I used, so it has a special place in my internet experience.

Internet Explorer
Sure, all the news now is that IE is not secure—it welcomes spyware, viruses, pop-up ads, and the like. Back in the late 1990s, though, that stuff wasn’t as much of an issue for the average user. IE was fast. Netscape was slow. That was all that mattered to me. Over the years, I came to like IE. Soon, I even had a Google Toolbar installed on IE, making it even more useful and fast. In the end, though, IE was only a utility. It got the job done. There was nothing flashy about IE. I just knew it was faster than Netscape.

Opera
Even before all the recent buzz about “alternative browsers” (meaning alternatives to IE), I gave Opera a shot. I’d just read Liz Castro’s book on HTML, and she mentioned that Opera was a browser at the forefront of the W3C (web standards) movement. There are a lot of great things about Opera. I immediately became enamored with the idea of opening tabs in the background and getting to them later. I liked that new links could be opened in either the background or foreground with a simple right-click. Opera has a button that will toggle the showing or hiding of images (for faster browsing, presumably). It’s supposed to be the fastest browser on earth (I don’t know—it’s fast, but so is Firefox). Another great feature Opera has is the ability to have multiple search bars at the top of the browser (one for Amazon, one for eBay, one for the Dictionary, one for comparison shopping, one for Google, etc.). This is also an Opera annoyance, though. No matter how you toggle your Opera preferences, all of the top gunk manages to clutter up what seems to be half the screen, leaving little room for the actual webpages you visit. On a related note, Opera is not free. You can either pay $40 for it, or you can put up with the lousy banner ad that is part of what clutters up the top bit of the screen. Ultimately, though, what sinks Opera is its lack of compatibility with non-W3C-compliant websites. Even something so “basic” as the San Diego Zoo website simply does not work on Opera.

Deepnet Explorer
As far as I can tell, Deepnet is just IE with additional features. It looks like IE, feels like IE, even imports all of IE’s preferences and bookmarks. Supposedly it’s more secure, faster, and smaller on your hard drive. I don’t know how that works. There has to be a downside. Ultimately, if you’re looking for something else… but basically IE, go for Deepnet. It has peer-to-peer sharing without spyware.

Firefox
No matter what other browsers I try (and I love playing with new browsers), I somehow always end up coming back to Firefox. Even though it shares a lot of features with Opera, in many ways (in approach, for example), it’s the exact opposite. When you download Opera, it opens up loaded with all sorts of toolbars, shortcuts, menus, buttons—it looks like some kind of crazy Christmas tree of a browser. If you take the time to customize your preferences, you can remove all that, of course, but Firefox is the opposite; it’s just barebones browser at first. Then, through extensions, you can add on little features and tweaks as you see fit. Firefox also has multiple searches built in (and you can add more through search plug-ins), but they don’t clutter up the top of the browser window—there’s only one search bar with a drop-down for each search plug-in (IMDB, Amazon, etc.). The best thing about Firefox is that it gives you a great web experience, great security, great expandability, but it’s also highly functional. I’ve found only a small handful of sites that don’t work on Firefox (Cingular Wireless, Yahoo!’s Launch, and Windows Updates).

Safari
What’s wrong with Safari? It’s a beautiful-looking browser, and it shares many of the same features with Firefox, but it’s not that customizable, and it’s for only Macintosh. Sound like an Apple product?

Camino
This is supposed to be Mozilla’s Mac-friendly browser (Firefox works on Mac, but it isn’t ideal for Mac yet), but it’s really just a cheap imitation of Safari. It doesn’t have anywhere near the options and expandability that Firefox has, even though they’re both Mozilla products.

In the end, anyone reading this may say, “Who cares?” It’s true: when it comes down to it a browser lets you look at a webpage, and when you click on a link, it opens a new page. That’s the gist of the internet. Everything else is bells and whistles. Some of the bells and whistles are quite fun, though!