Article two of a series of articles entitled, Free Alternatives.
Using Internet Explorer, but want something different? Check out these alternatives!
By Mike McCarthy
A lot of us grew up on the World Wide Web using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (MSIE); which was all we knew at the time. Truth is, before MSIE most of us in the software development industry were using a popular new browser called Mosaic. Netscape Navigator was released a bit later (under the code name Mozilla) and eventually MSIE was released for both PC and MacIntosh. Mosaic died a slow death over time and Navigator (evolving to Open Source Code) was re-developed as Mozilla by its creators. Netscape was later bought out by AOL (they released Navigator version 6), but was eventually shelved in 2007 (source: wikipedia.com).
Today there are still other choices available to us. The most popular being Mozilla's Firefox (remember, this was the original Navigator) and the recently released (2007) Apple Safari browser for PCs. For a complete list of current and historical browsers, click here.
Top-Two Alternatives to MSIE
Firefox is the most popular, defacto alternative to MSIE 6.1 and MAC OS X. Firefox was the first browser to utilize tabs instead of pages (one page per instance of the browser). By utilizing one page per tab, Firefox greatly reduced memory overhead and the number of browser instances running in your taskbar.
Note: MSIE 7.0 (utilizing the tab design) is available for XP and Vista users if you like the concept of tabs. However, if you have Windows 2000 or ME, then your most likely alternative is Firefox.
While Firefox had become the defacto alternative for MSIE 6.1/7.0, the Safari browser has become a defacto standard for Macintosh (Firefox is also available to Macintosh users). Safari is crisp, clean, uncomplicated, and supports an attractive browser toolbar that provides you all the features and functionality a PC user has become accustomed to; actually a lot more than that.
Performance
Something to consider -- while MSIE 6.1 and Firefox is relatively easy on your computer's memory, Safari is a bit heavy. In a simple, non-scientific but controlled test, I rebooted my computer and ran all three browsers simultaneously linked to my website (www.itcaz.com) and sitting idle. I registered their performance via my Task Manager and found:
MSIE 6.1 33,188 MB memory
MSIE 7.0 46,048 MB memory
Safari 52,668 MB memory
Firefox 40,728 MB memory
You can learn more about these two products by linking below:
www.firefox.com
www.apple.com
www.netscape.com
www.microsoft.com
Contact Information:
mike@itcaz.com
http://www.itcaz.com
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