There are three leading
web browser applications, and several other options.
Dozens of
browsers have been developed over the years, many of which are described
in the section on browser history. Today,
most people use one of the mainstream browsers: Explorer
or Mozilla.
Some people run more than one browser, but you can conveniently keep
all
of
your bookmarks
only in one, and links only get marked as visited in the browser
you use, so you probably want to standardize on one browser
for
most
of your surfing.
A
high-level trade-off matrix between the top three browsers is shown below.
You can also ask your friends for their experiences, and download and try several
browsers.
Trade | Pro
|
Con
|
| Internet
Explorer | Faster. More
web application features. | Integrated
with OS, more vulnerable to viruses.
More complex, deeper
menus. |
| Mozilla
FireFox *
|
Open
source. Good bookmark functionality.
Multi-platform.
Available email (Thunderbird), newsgroups, and IRC clients | Not
quite as fast for some functions on Windows. Less
widely used on Windows. |
This Living Internet site recommends Mozilla
Firefox because
it is well coded, multi-platform, free
open source software, compliant with web standards, and has the best bookmarking
and tabbed
viewing functionality.
Mozilla also has developed a suite of basic
Internet applications, including an email program and newsgroup reader called Thunderbird,
and an associated ChatZilla IRC
client. These open source applications perform well on all platforms, and
get better with each release.
Other browsers. There are several other web browsers
which compete on various feature sets and have different strengths:
- Arachne -- A graphical full screen web browser for DOS computers.
- Lynx
-- A venerable web browser for character mode terminals without graphics originally
developed at the University of Kansas Academic Computer Services Distributed
Computing Group.
- NeoPlanet
-- Integrates several Internet applications together, including a browser, email, and
chat.
- NetCaptor -- A user-friendly browser built on top of Internet Explorer.
- Opera
-- Small, fast, customizable application.
Indexes:
Resources. The following sites maintain statistics about web browsers:
You can also see the section on Web Statistics.
Other browser sites are listed below:
