Comparison between browsers

2006-08-07 | By: A. Lundgren | Comment on this article

In this article we'll go through the four most used web browsers for windows. Web browsers are the program that you use to surf the internet. In the rest of this article we'll call them browser. The four browsers we'll compare are: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape Browser and Opera.

Why these four browsers?

We decided to compare the four browsers above because these are the most used browsers available on Windows. If you're using another operating system other then Windows (Mac OS, Linux etc.) and aren't completely satisfied with the browser that's included, we would recommend you to use Mozilla Firefox. Firefox is a very competent browser that works for several operating systems.

What browser are you using to read this page?

You could determine which browser you are using by checking out the browser name bar. First you'll see the name of the page you're currently viewing and after that you'll see the name of the browser. See the pictures below to see how the main page of this site looks in the different browsers.

Which version of your browser are you using?

If you go through the menu "Help" and click on the option "About" (It may vary some between the different browsers) you'll get a page or a window that contains some information about your browser. You should be able to find some information about witch version you're using there. If you haven't got the latest version of your browser, we would recommend you to update it to the latest version.

Worth to notice is that Internet Explorer hasn't been updated for about two years.

Comparison between the browsers

Below is a comparison between the different browsers functionality. All browsers in the comparison are installed without extensions. We'll only look at functions that vary between the different browsers. You'll find an explanation to each function below the table.

¹⁾ - Available in some version of windows.

Tabbed browsing is when the browser can display several pages in the same window separated by tabs. It's a very popular function that has become standard in all modern browsers.

Pop-up blocking is the ability to block unwanted windows to open outside of your browser. These unwanted windows are often used for advertisement and could in some cases even become a security risk.

Incremental find, or "Find as you type" as it's also called, is a function for searching the page you're currently viewing. It works in the way that the page is search while you're typing. The advantage is that you could keep on refining your search until you find what you're searching.

RSS / Atom is a function witch could be used to subscribe to news and other information that could be viewed without visiting the website that provides the information.

Extensions are small "programs" that extends the usability of the browser. Even Internet Explorer has one kind of extension (add-ins) but it doesn't qualify as extension compared to the other browsers.

Themes is special graphic sets that change the look of your browser.

Speed results are taken from HowToCreate.co.uk.

Languages is the amount of different languages the browser is available in.

Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)

Microsoft Internet Explorer is both the oldest and the most used browser in the comparison. But it's far from the best browser. It's actually the worst browser of the four, at least if you look at the amount of functions included. But also in a security aspect, Internet Explorer is the browser with the most security holes.

Internet Explorer is also the worst browser according to internet standard. In other words: IE is useless at reading webpage's the right way, especially modern ones. But in reality most web developer adapts their homepage to Internet Explorer because of Internet Explorers large market share so that is a problem that you won't notice until you make your own homepage.

The reason of Internet Explorers popularity is because it is included in windows and has been for a long time. So if you have windows installed on your computer you most likely also got Internet Explorer. If you do, we really recommend you to choose another browser.

Microsoft are currently developing a new version of Internet Explorer. The new browser will be titled Internet Explorer 7. The browser is still in development but it looks like Microsoft will fix most of the problem there is with their current browser. So if you don't want to get one of the other browser in this article, at least get Internet Explorer 7 when it become available.

Mozilla Firefox (FF)

Mozilla Firefox is the second most popular of all browsers. It's also the author's browser of choice. Firefox has got all the function a modern browser should have but its best feature is the large amount of extensions available.

The biggest flaw of Firefox is its speed. It's slower then both Opera and Internet Explorer. But except from the startup time you properly won't note any large difference in speed between the four browsers. And if your computer isn't too old you probably won't notice much difference in speed between the four browsers.

There are several hundreds of extensions available for Firefox. The extensions can increase the functionality of your browser a whole lot. There are also a lot of different themes to Firefox that will let you change the look of your browser.

Opera

Opera is the fastest browser of the four and like Firefox Opera offer extensions, but it's called widgets in Opera. Although Opera hasn't got as many extensions as Firefox they got a really impressive way of using them. You can try out the extensions without installing them. If you don't like it, you could just choose not to keep them. The same goes for themes.

The browser got a lot of new features with the latest version (9). Some of them are bittorrent client, content blocker, thumbnail preview of tabs etc. Opera is also the best choice of the four browsers when it comes to accessibility. With features like page zoom, keyboard control, voice control etc. It's perfect to be able to zoom in on a webpage if you have problem reading the text. In most browsers you could increase the text size but Opera is the only one that lets you zoom in on the whole webpage with menu, pictures and everything else.

Netscape Browser

Netscape Browser is based on Mozilla Firefox. The browser can display any homepage with either Firefox engine or Internet Explorers engine. That is a very useful feature but it also means that the browser inherit security holes from both browsers. It could also be quite confusing for beginners when the browser switch engine without telling the user.

The browsers have a few criticized features that include sending anonymous information to Netscape by default. That feature is optional but it can be hard to find where to turn it off.

Summary

To sum things up we would like to recommend everybody who using Internet Explorer to switch, either to Mozilla Firefox or to Opera. At least get Internet Explorer 7 as soon as it's available.