There's the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" crowd who tend to stick with the browser that's included with their OS -- Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Windows and Apple's Safari on the Mac. There are the "I've just gotta be me" folks who prefer lesser-known browsers, such as Opera from Opera Software. And there are the "live free or die" open-source true believers who champion Mozilla's Firefox above its commercial counterparts.
Then there are those people who simply demand the best browsing experience there is. They'll defend their favorite browser to the death because they think it kicks all the other browsers' butts in terms of elegance, features, security and so on. But if a better option comes along, they'll happily switch and speak out just as loudly for their new browser of choice. At Computerworld, we fall into this camp, always looking for the Next Great Browser.
In terms of market share, the winner is obvious. Most estimates show Internet Explorer commanding between 80 and 85 percent of the browser market, with Firefox trailing at somewhere between 8 and 13 percent. Safari is the third most popular browser, with approximately 2 to 4 percent market share, followed by Opera and AOL's Netscape, with around 1 percent each.
But in terms of quality, there's no clear winner right now. For years, Internet Explorer lagged far behind the competition in both features and security, but the October launch of IE7, a fairly radical overhaul of the aged browser, has brought it up to par with the rest. Almost simultaneously, Mozilla released Firefox 2.0, a less ambitious update that nevertheless made some important and well-thought-out improvements.
Meanwhile, Safari (currently in version 2.02) and Opera (in version 9.02, with 9.1 on the way) have been quietly improving and innovating away from the spotlight. Thus, for the first time in years, the top browsers are roughly equal. (Note: We chose to leave Netscape out of our browser roundup. In our testing, we found it too buggy and unstable for serious consideration.)
So which browser should you use? Which is really best? To help you decide, we asked four power users to do battle in support of their chosen browser: Scot Finnie for Firefox, Preston Gralla for Internet Explorer, Dennis Fowler for Opera and Ken Mingis for Safari.
Each expert is positive that his browser is the best and will try his hardest to convince you of the same. These are not rational, disengaged reviews; these are opinionated essays meant to sway your point of view.
When you've read all the arguments and looked at our of features, you make the call by voting in our . You can also and let us know what you think; we'll use the best responses in a follow-up article.
-- Valerie Potter
Firefox: The best browser of all
Scot Finnie
The people who live and breathe the Internet will all tell you the same thing: Firefox is the best Web browser for Windows and the Mac. Even after Microsoft played catch-up patty-cake with the release of IE7 earlier this year, Windows users who truly know the Web are continuing to choose Firefox.
The funny part is that it's not about features for Firefox users, it's about compatibility, customizability and convenience. In many ways, IE6 gave Firefox more competition because it was the de facto standard. That's no longer the case with Internet Explorer 7. Many enterprise users are finding that IE7 breaks this or that required Web site or Web-based enterprise application. A standard that's no longer standard is, to many, a lot less valuable.
In the end, Firefox's rich pool of third-party customizations puts it over the top. You can't tweak Internet Explorer 7's interface all that much. In fact, the excellent toolbar system from IE4 - IE6 is partially missing in IE7. You can't even uninstall many of the browser add-ons that are available for IE7.
Size and performance
Opera is the anti-Firefox. It's all about features, features, features. That's so Nineties! Opera bristles with bells and whistles most of us are never going to use. That's only part of the reason, though, why it has such a clunky interface. Opera's designers are great at thinking small, but not great at thinking small and smooth. The rough edges are apparent everywhere you look.
Opera's only true advantages are small size and solid performance. But get this: Opera's International edition (which is what came down when I clicked the main download link for Opera 9.02 on the Opera home page) is 6.27MB, while the Windows version of Firefox 2.0 from the main download link is 5.62MB. So much for Opera being teeny-tiny.
Of course, that bloated pig, Internet Explorer 7, tips the scales at 14.78MB. No matter how you slice it, it's pushing three times the download size of Opera or Firefox.
Which one of these three browsers -- and the fourth in our roundup, Apple's Safari -- is fastest? I would submit to you that it just doesn't matter. They all perform in the same range, which is to say they're all pretty fast. There's no test that would be truly meaningful, because each loads different Web sites at different rates, depending on the coding used.
Security? IE sure needs it
What about security? IE7's will interrupt you frequently with yellow bars and other prompts to deliver the same security that Firefox offers out of the box. If you want to feel like you're browsing from jail, be my guest. I prefer the feeling of freedom Firefox engenders.
Firefox, Opera and Safari won't run ActiveX applets, and that's a big part of why they are innately more secure than IE. It's true that ActiveX is comparatively easy for developers to code, but it lacks the security features of Java. We are paying for a mistake Microsoft made in the early 1990s. Instead of building ActiveX the way it should have been built, Microsoft is throttling the client software -- which is the security measure of last resort. The future is open-standard Java and JavaScript.
Whose anti-phishing is better? Let's be serious. Internet Explorer is currently the only browser that absolutely requires this technology. It's also the only one that needs protected-mode browsing (only in Vista) or any of the other "locked down" stuff that Microsoft is touting. IE is literally unsafe on the Internet without anti-malware and anti-phishing protection. That's just not the case with other browsers.
It's true that this is not because of some better design in Firefox, Opera or Safari. It's because most spyware, malware, and phishing exploits are about one thing: Making money. And the focus is on the browser with the overwhelmingly superior market share. As the browser with the next largest share, however, Mozilla (and the rest) is smart to get ahead of the game on phishing protection. I'd like to see these same companies work harder on malware protection too.
Firefox: It's the real thing
When all is said and done, Web browsers represent a very mature product category. When the hot features in IE7 are browser tabs and RSS support, you know for sure that it's not about features. That's similarly true of Firefox 2.0, where the big cool features are inline spell-checking for forums, blogs, comments and Web form posts; a session-restore feature; and an Undo Close Tab feature.
So, again, it's not about features, it's about the user experience. While Microsoft has finally deigned to give IE users tabbed browsing and RSS support, the security lockdown and possible compatibility issues represent a larger disadvantage that outweighs the improvements.
Microsoft is also further seeking to extend its market share by rolling out IE7 in Automatic Updates, along with high-priority and critical operating system updates. Microsoft calls this "opt in" because it is possible to tell Automatic Updates not to install IE7, but it should be called "opt out" because the default behavior is to install IE7. So you could say you're getting an unsolicited 14.78MB Web browser.
Mozilla's Firefox is the only browser development effort that is truly focused on the user, instead of on the needs of the company building the software. That very definitely shows in the finished product. Firefox 2, though not an ambitious upgrade, is a better browser than the 1.5 version that preceded it. In use, it provides the best overall user experience. When you come right down to it, that's the essential factor in your choice of a Web browser.
Internet Explorer: Top dog for good reason
Preston Gralla
Common wisdom holds that it takes Microsoft three versions to perfect a product. That's not quite the case with Internet Explorer -- it's taken Redmond all the way until version 7 to get it right. But now that IE7 is here, there's little reason to use any other browser.
I know that lauding anything from Microsoft is a bit like taking the side of the Empire in the Star Wars saga. After all, in the computing world, everyone hates a winner. So everyone hates Microsoft.
But that's no reason to hate its newly released browser. In fact, if you put your prejudices aside for a moment, you'll discover something really quite remarkable: Microsoft has released the greatest browser there is. Tabbed browsing, superb RSS handling, and dramatically improved security all make IE the best browser on the market.
At long last, tabs
It's a mystery why Microsoft took so long to introduce tabs to IE, but now that it has, it's leapfrogged the competition. It's simple to launch, close, and rearrange tabs. Unlike all the other browsers in this roundup, IE7 does not put an "X" close button on every tab that's open, just the active tab. Move to a new tab and the X comes too -- an elegant and space-saving way to manage multiple tabs.
Better yet is the Quick Tabs feature, which lets you display all your tabs as thumbnails on a single page. Click any thumbnail to go to that tab; click its X to close it.
Tab List is another useful tab-navigation tool. Click a button, and it displays all of your opened tabs in a list, with a check box next to the live one. Click one you want to visit, and off you go.
You can also save groups of tabs as a Favorite. Use this feature to open groups of news sites you like to visit, or sites related to a special interest, such as digital photography. All you need to do is open all the sites in separate tabs, then save them as a tab group in the same way as you'd save a single favorite. Then you can later re-open them all at once.
Superb RSS handling
What really sets IE7 apart from competing browsers is its impressive RSS support. In fact, IE7 may well bring RSS to the masses. Its built-in RSS reader is simple enough to use so that those who have never heard of RSS can easily use it, yet sophisticated enough that it may make you throw away your dedicated RSS reader.
Subscribing to a feed is as simple as it gets. When you visit a Web site with an RSS feed, the small RSS button on the toolbar lights up orange. Click it and select a feed to read it, and if you want to subscribe, click "Subscribe to this feed." As with Favorites, you can save feeds to folders.
The RSS reader integrates into the new IE Favorites Center. In the Favorites Center, click Feeds, and you'll see a list of feeds and feeds folders. Click a feed to read it; click a folder to see a list of feeds in it. IE7 automatically updates your feeds -- no need to tell it to get to work.
You read a feed in a single, long page, for easy browsing. You can also search through the entire feed; sort by date, title, and author; or filter by any categories the feed has created. So if you're reading an RSS feed of a blog about Microsoft, for example, you can filter to see only entries about Vista, Internet Explorer, and so on.
In Windows Vista, IE's RSS support is even better than in XP. RSS feeds can be displayed live, as they come in, inside a nifty RSS gadget on your desktop. That way, you don't even need to take an action to read feeds; they're right there on your desktop.
Improved security
Everyone's biggest complaint about IE has been security, and in the past there was good reason for that criticism. But no longer. The new version of IE has been locked down to a remarkable degree. The most obvious tool is the new anti-phishing filter, but there's a lot more security underneath the hood you don't see.
Several techniques protect against malware attacks, including new URL-handling protections that stop the exploitation of malformed URLs and buffer overflows from executing code without a user's knowledge. The new browser also offers cross-domain script protection that allows scripts to interact only with content from the same domain in which they originate. (This also helps protect against phishing attacks.) There are also new ActiveX protections, as well as other security features, such as protections against RSS-borne dangers, including accepting only completely valid RSS feeds.
Most powerful of all new security tools is Protected Mode, available only on IE7 in Windows Vista. Protected Mode shields the operating system from actions taken by Internet Explorer or any Internet Explorer add-ins. That means that even if malware breaks Internet Explorer's security features, it shouldn't be able to do harm to your PC, because Protected Mode in essence locks Internet Explorer inside a safe box.
A look at the competition
There's only one real competitor to IE -- Firefox. The total market share of Opera and Safari don't even amount to rounding errors, so there's no need to consider them. Firefox, though, has started to gain traction.
But Firefox is beginning to show signs of the problems many people attribute to Microsoft, primarily an inability to innovate. Look at Firefox 2.0. Can you name a single major feature -- a single new one -- that's in the browser? The interface hasn't changed and looks dated. RSS support remains pitiful; Live Bookmarks is unusable. Mozilla hasn't even bothered to improve tab handling by adding Quick Tabs-like functions. Put simply, the browser feels old and tired. Except for extension support, which is superior to Internet Explorer's support for add-ins, IE beats it hands-down.
Bottom line
You'll no doubt be reading about Firefox, Opera and Safari in the rest of this group review, and you'll be gauging what each reviewer says about each browser to help you decide which is best.
But there's a better way to decide. Just look at the numbers -- and numbers don't lie. Internet Explorer has over an 80 percent market share, and that won't change any time soon. People are smart enough to download competing browsers if they're not happy with IE. The evidence shows that they've been happy. And with all the improvements in IE7, from RSS reading to tabbed browsing to security, they'll be happier still.
Opera: The true browser star
Dennis Fowler
So Internet Explorer version 7.0 is finally with us. And so is Firefox version 2.0. Whoohoo. Such excitement.
Forgive my lack of enthusiasm, but my heart belongs to Opera. Back in the '90s I switched from IE to Opera for its compactness, speed, and security. While I've occasionally tried others, I've always come back to it.
Opera version 9 was released last June. It is now up to 9.02, and 9.1 may be available by the time you read this.
A browser prodigy, when Opera debuted in 1995 it could open multiple documents in a single browser window, a precursor of what are now tabs, which it added in 2000. No prima donna, its demands are modest. It sang like Callas on my outdated system in the mid '90s, and today, requiring nothing greater than Windows 95, 32MB of RAM and a Pentium 100 processor, it continues to play the Web's full repertoire, supporting all the bells and whistles set by W3C without dropping a note in terms of speed and security.
Featur-riffic
When it comes to features, Opera has always been a trailblazer, leaving Firefox and IE to play catch-up. For example, today's Firefox 2 saves your session in the event of a crash, so you can pick up where you left off when you recover. And you can save a group of tabs as a bookmark, new in both Firefox 2 and IE7.
Guess what? Opera pioneered these features back in version 7, released in 2003. Crash or prematurely close Opera and it's no loss, just relaunch for an instant encore. You can also save your browsing sessions under the File menu on the menu bar. And in version 8, Opera added a trash can icon to the page bar where closed tabs and blocked pop-ups are saved, just in case you need them.
Opera continues to lead the way with every major upgrade. Version 9 introduced thumbnail previews, which make it easy to find your way among multiple tabs -- just hover your mouse over any tab to see a thumbnail image of the Web page. Also new is the content blocker. See something you don't like on a Web page -- an ad or an offensive image, for example? Just right-click and choose "Block content" to make it disappear. Opera remembers your choice, so the next time you visit that page the content remains blocked.
Opera 9 also incorporates Widgets, small Internet applets that run directly on your desktop and can be saved on your system for quick future access. There are games, newsfeeds, reference tools, image tools, even a text editor. Mac OS X, Windows Vista and Yahoo have similar offerings, but the beauty of Opera's Widgets is that you can run them directly from the browser without having to have a Mac or get Vista or download Yahoo's Widget Engine. As of this writing there are more than 800 Widgets to choose from on Opera's Web site, written by programmers from all over the world.
Also native to Opera 9 are BitTorrent file transfers, available from Firefox only by downloading and installing an extension. BitTorrent is a file-sharing system in which users access files from each other rather than downloading from a central server. This load-sharing vastly speeds file transfers. Find the download you want by searching BitTorrent (available on Opera's configurable list of search engines) and initiate the download with a click. But if you use it, remember, BitTorrent requires sharing files you download with others. The sharing is terminated when you close Opera. BitTorrent is enabled by default, but it can easily be configured to limit bandwidth use, or disabled completely.
Tweak to your heart's content
This brings up another of Opera's strong points: It has always been highly configurable. If there's anything you don't like, chances are you can change it, often just by dragging and dropping. There are six toolbars to choose from, configure and place where you want. You can add colors and skins to personalize your window -- or strip it back to the bare bones.
The default list of a dozen or so search engines is editable. Opera can emulate a text browser, show images and links only, show only pictures that have links. You can block image downloads, which speeds things up on a dial-up connection. You can reconfigure your keyboard or create macros to open applications from Opera. Java can be turned on or off, cookies blocked or allowed, and so on, and so on.
Admittedly, finding and applying Opera's configuration tools used to be like trying to conduct Wagner's Ring Cycle without a score. Then, in version 8, the company consolidated the configuration options into four easy-to-use submenus under Tools on the menu bar, where they can easily be found for quick tweaking.
To really get under the hood, in version 9 there's a new Preferences Editor (enter "opera:config" in the address bar). With it you can configure anything, from Author Display Mode to Colors to Fonts to Security to Widgets. Each setting gets its own line with a checkbox or pick list, and each can be easily reset to the default setting which makes it fairly safe to tinker. Nevertheless, this is a powerful tool, so novices should stick to the menus if they aren't sure what they're doing.
Safe and secure
By default, Opera's security is conservative but not restrictive. Most cookies are allowed, most pop-ups rejected, and so on, but any of these settings can be changed under the "Quick preferences" menu. Of course, since Opera doesn't support Active X controls or Visual Basic, it avoids those notorious IE vulnerabilities.
There's also the "security by obscurity" factor. With a small share of the browser market, Opera doesn't present much of a target for black hats -- and that's the way I like it. (Which means, I suppose, that by writing this I'm shooting myself in the foot, shining a spotlight on Opera. But I hate to see you missing out on a great thing.)
Opera's ultimate security feature is what I call the "nuclear option." With two mouse-clicks you can instantly close all tabs, toss your cookies, erase the history of pages linked to, links typed in and the list of downloads, clear bookmark visited times (but not the bookmarks), delete all form-filling information, and erase all stored passwords. And of course you can configure this list to suit you.
Version 9.1, due out later this year, adds anti-fraud and anti-phishing features. I have yet to see a beta of the release, but Opera's record is good on making sure things are right before releasing them to the public.
A browser for everyone
What's that? You use an operating system other than Windows? From Mac OS X to Linux to Solaris to FreeBSD and more, Opera's got you covered, and most versions are available in multiple languages besides English.
In short, Opera has an unmatched repertoire of features, including what is probably the fastest browser rendering engine available. I've only scratched the surface here, not covering mouse gesture navigation, for example, or voice activation. Some people chide Opera for having a plethora of features as if it were a dirty word, claiming all the choices confuse the user with unnecessary complexity. I suspect it's because these features are something their browser doesn't have'yet. An unused feature isn't a complexity unless it gets in the user's way, and that simply doesn't happen with Opera.
Despite all the features it packs in, the Opera 9.02 for Windows U.S. installation file is only 4.6 MB, about 18 percent smaller than Firefox's 5.6 MB -- and the Opera download includes an e-mail client (POP3, SMTP and IMAP), IRC chat, and Usenet and RSS newsfeed readers.
As for IE7, I'm told to expect a Wagnerian 14.7MB download. Thanks, but no thanks.
Safari: Tops for Macs
Ken Mingis
If you're reading this browser roundup on any of Apple Computer Inc.'s laptops or desktops, chances are good that you're doing so with Apple's own Safari Web browser.
The nice thing about Safari, which is now up to version 2.0.4 and will be updated yet again early next year when Apple releases Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard," is that it comes out of the box with just about every feature you'll need to cruise along on the Web safely and securely. It's also only for Macs, so Windows and Linux fans, you're out of luck.
Safari uses strong 128-bit encryption when accessing secure sites. Pop-up ad blocking is easily enabled, as is tabbed browsing -- with each tab having its own "close" button. It has a built-in RSS reader so you can subscribe to RSS feeds for speedy tracking of sites and stories you're interested in. Safari's Web rendering is based on the KDE project's open-source KHTML layout engine, and I've found it to be as fast as any other browser in Mac land.
The built-in search engine is Google, and it has a handy snapback feature incorporated in that search field. Let's say you've entered a few search terms, landed on a page with hundreds of links and clicked on so many of them that you're not sure how to get back to your original search. Rather than retracing steps you've already taken, just click on the orange snapback icon and it immediately takes you back to your list of Google links.
Think easy. Think intuitive.
Safari emerged in Apple land in January 2003 -- about the same time Microsoft decided to stop development of IE for the Mac. At the time, browser development for Mac OS X was an oft-neglected backwater, although the Mac-only OmniWeb showed promise -- and still does. But you have to pay for that one, and in this day of free-is-good, having Apple's developers come up with their own take on browsing was a Godsend.
Attention to detail
Of course, what matters is how well an application works. And Apple has gotten the little things right in Safari. Take bookmark management, for example. It's easy to add bookmarks and organize them into folders -- and then add those folders to Safari's bookmark bar. That means all of your favorite tech bookmarks, or news sites, or even RSS feeds, can be lumped together and ordered however you want. Click on a folder of bookmarks in the bookmark bar and the drop-down menu offers easy access to all the sites you want. You can choose to open them all in separate tabs with a single click, and you can even have them open up automatically in tabs when you click on the folder of links in your bookmarks bar.
Importing links from another browser? Some browsers I could mention (Opera and Internet Explorer) import bookmarks and then list them alphabetically. I'm willing to bet that 99 percent of browser users don't organize their surfing that way. With Safari, they're imported in the same order used by the other browser.
Making Safari an RSS reader was also a smart move by Apple. RSS feeds are increasingly popular because they allow surfers to quickly scan headlines for the sites and stories they want to read. In Safari, a site that offers RSS feeds is designated with a blue RSS icon in the URL address bar. Click on the icon, and the RSS feed drops down in place of the standard site. Click it again and the feed rolls back up and you're right back where you landed originally. Want to add that feed to your bookmark bar or RSS folder? Click the RSS icon, then drag and drop the link from the address bar to wherever you want it. Again, think easy, think intuitive.
In its last major update to Safari last year, Apple also added "private browsing" as an option. If you're concerned that someone else might use your computer and take a look at where you've been online, you can turn this feature on with one click. Once it's enabled, you can surf away knowing that sites you visit and information you type in won't be saved. Go ahead, enjoy the anonymity.
That's not to say Safari is perfect. No application is. It's nice to have all those tabs, for instance. But wouldn't it be nicer to save them between browser sessions, so you can pick up again with all those sites when you reopen Safari? Not possible. Want to use keyboard commands to cycle among the tabs you have open? Not happening. Or let's say you're a weather nut and you like having a browser add-on that sticks weather information in your browser window. Forget it, at least for now.
To tweak, or not to tweak?
True to its Apple nature, Safari doesn't offer much customization. You're not going to be filling up the toolbar with endless icons or downloading lots of add-ons. Nope, if you want to tweak the way tabs display or add weather forecasts to the toolbar or re-skin Safari -- well, let's just say you're in the wrong browser. Go play with Firefox.
The whole raison d'etre for Safari is to browse, in the easiest, least complicated way possible. And while it may seem obvious that ease of use and good user interface is a given for a Web browser, it's not. Just take a look at the latest version of Internet Explorer (IE). You're likely to get lost just trying to configure the darn thing before you even get started browsing.
If you really must tinker with Safari, third-party developers have made it possible to change the look and feel and add a few features. Three of my favorite freebies are SafarIcon, Safari Enhancer and Safari Bookmark Exporter.
-- SafarIcon, from Reinhold Penner, can be used to change the look of browser function buttons and even the brushed metal window Safari uses by default.
-- Safari Enhancer allows you to deactivate Safari's cache, activate a debugging menu with which you can make Safari report itself to other sites as a different browser, revamp link colors and change the browser's history options.
-- And for those who can't live with just one browser -- this includes me -- Safari Bookmark Exporter will export your bookmarks in the proper format and to the correct location on your computer for use by other browsers.
Do you need these little apps to enjoy Safari? No. But for those interested in tweaks, they allow you to make changes not readily available. And they won't mess anything up.
A peek ahead
Other than security updates to close a handful of vulnerabilities that have shown up since Safari 2.0 was released last year, Apple hasn't made any major changes to its browser in about 18 months. So what's coming for Safari users in Apple's next OS, Leopard? Apple is, as usual, mum about what changes and updates you can expect in Safari when Leopard is released early next year. But informed speculation points to a Safari 3.0 that will include a phishing filter, improved tab functions (including my most-hoped-for feature -- the ability to save a set of tabs between browser sessions), added RSS functions and improved compatibility with Web formats like Flash, JavaScript and Java applets.
Exactly what Steve Jobs will pull out of the company's proverbial hat is anyone's guess. But given that Apple usually tries to take what competitors are doing and leapfrog their efforts, it's likely that a great browser will be even greater.