Essential Web Browsers
Evolt lists over a hundred different browsers out there on the net but obviously checking your web pages in all of them is unthinkable. Even regularly checking your website in ten different browsers could be an arduous task and you'd probably be better off resting on your laurels with four or five of the 'big boys' (and their various versions) and leaving it at that.
Below is a list of what I consider to be some essential web browsers for any aspiring web author using a PC machine. They're all either freeware or open-source applications.
Be advised that Mozilla Firefox, Seamonkey and Netscape are all based on the Gecko layout engine and hence render web pages almost identical to one another. What differs among them is the browser chrome (user interface) and the features they offer —or in the case of Firefox— the features they have stripped away for the sake of simplicity and browser speed. Personally, I find Firefox to be the best of the bunch.
Internet Explorer 7
With twenty months in the making and over five years gone by since the last major release, Microsoft has finally coughed up the RTM version of Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). I was actually waiting with great anticipation for this release (yeah alright you nerdlingers out there, stop laughing..) Yeah I was thinking... Hey great! Tabbed browsing in Internet Explorer! What a treat!...
Internet Explorer 6
Having muscled its way past Netscape in the last half of the nineties, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) is now the King Kong of web browsers and is, without a doubt, the most widely used. And despite your personal preferences in a web browser or any well-founded intentions to boycott the corporate powers-that-be of computer software, if you are a serious web author then I'm sorry to say that Internet Explorer is a MUST-HAVE...
Mozilla Firefox
Formerly known as Firebird and before that Phoenix, Mozilla Firefox is a stripped down version of Seamonkey and hence is a fraction of the download size and just plain faster to operate. Firefox is not all wrapped up with a pretty bow on top ready to instantly serve all your internet needs. The drop-down menus contain only the bare essentials. There is no built-in email client. There is no chat client. There is no instant cake mix WYSIWYG editor. It is, plain and simple, a web browser...
(See also How to Configure Firefox and Best Firefox Extensions)
Seamonkey
Emerging battered and bruised from the browser wars, Netscape Communicator released its code to the open source community in March 1998 in what some say was a last ditch effort to appeal to the masses to show interest in a non-Microsoft internet experience. The project invited developers the world over to share and modify the code and adopted a name which was originally used as a code name for Netscape in its development phase.
Thus the Mozilla organization was born...
(See also Best Seamonkey Extensions)
Opera
In a surprise move following their tenth anniversary 'free for a day' promotion, Opera is now giving away the ad-free version of their browser on a permanent basis. Thank you very much and it's about time although maybe Google is the one to really thank as the decision by Opera to go the freeware route was reportedly the result of a renogiated contract with them. Opera will now get a bigger piece of the Adwords revenue pie dished up every time users click on ads in search engine results pages generated by the built-in Google search box...
Netscape
Netscape —the most popular browser back in 1995— is actually in danger of being delisted from the W3C browser usage report in 2007 since it has retained the required minimum of 0.5% of browser users for only two of the last nine months in 2006. So I guess I'm listing this midwife of the internet as an "essential web browser" entirely for historical reasons but be well aware that Netscape browser usage is in a steady decline (and shows no sign of recovering). In fact, from a web designer's point of view, the number of Netscape users can now be considered negligible. (For the record, my own web stats reveal that 2.4% of visitors used Netscape in September 2004, 1.3% in September 2005 and 0.3% in September 2006. W3C showed 0.4% Netscape users in September 2006)...
| HOME | TOP | NEXT ~> |
