But Highbrow isn't the only game in town; George Brocklehurst's Choosy 0.9.1, a System Preferences pane currently in beta, offers similar functionality via a slightly different interface and with a few unique options.

As with Highbrow, whenever you click on a Web link outside of a Web browser, Choosy lets you choose the browser used to open that link. Specifically, Choosy's browser picker pops up, displaying all the programs that you might use to open the link; you use your mouse cursor or the arrow keys to pick the desired program.

Choosy's horizontal (top) and circular (bottom) browser pickers

(You get two options for the appearance of Choosy's browser picker. The default is a horizontal line of icons that appears directly under your mouse cursor; the other choice is a circle of icons centered on your mouse. The latter option requires less mousing, as every icon is the same distance from your cursor. You can also change the size of the icons--smaller icons are more difficult to differentiate, but the smaller layout similarly reduces how far you have to move the cursor.)

But that's where the similarities between Highbrow and Choosy end. On the one hand, Choosy is missing Highbrow's options to automatically pick the most-recently-used browser or to simply use your preferred browser. On the other hand, Choosy gives you several alternate behaviors of its own, and you can choose different options depending on whether any browsers are already running. For example, if no browsers are running when you click on a Web link, Choosy can either launch your favorite browser or ask you to choose a browser. If one or more Web browsers are already running, the options include using the "best" currently running browser; asking you to choose from among currently running browsers; launching your favorite browser; or asking you to choose from among all browsers. Although I miss Highbrow's most-recently-used option, Choosy's alternatives are varied and useful.