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Copyright © 2007 - The Crazy Mind
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Internet explorer is advised if you dont want to use advanced options. If you want more out of your browser, choosing Firefox or Opera comes down to whether you like to play with the settings which require a fair amount of time and effort.
The browser war continues among the most downloaded browsers firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.
While IE7, Firefox 2, Opera are more alike than different in some areas with the new IE8 and FF3, Opera version we will see the three most popular browsers head off into different directions
Mozilla recognizes that its strengths for normal users are its extensions and customization. It notes on the wiki that “Microsoft will continue to establish deeper ties from IE7/Vista to live.com & MSN” and even that other “web service providers” may introduce their own browsers (Yahoo? Amazon?). So Firefox is aiming to be the best general Web browser – e.g. it wants to be faster for AJAX apps.
Among the mandatory requirements listed for FF3 are improving the add-on experience, providing “an extensible bookmarks back-end platform”, adding more support for web services “to act as content handlers” – all of which show that Firefox wants to be an independent information broker rather than a simple HTML renderer in its next version. Microformats will be a key part of this too – and this is currently listed as a “highly desirable” feature for FF3. Also good to see extensible identity management listed there. All of this encourages best-of-breed apps to flourish, which is an excellent direction for Mozilla to take with Firefox. It probably also plays into Google’s hands, as they have a number of best of breed web apps – and are acquiring them at a great rate too (YouTube, JotSpot, Writely, etc).
As far as innovators go, Opera is the first having a ton of features like the tab browsing, rss feed reader, or bittorrent client. While Internet Explorer 7 rolls out its first tab browser with feed reader, opera is 3 or 4 revisions ahead. This makes for a very quick and nimble browser.
To give you an idea of the popularity of Opera, according to a servey, of 19,659 visitors, only 2.47 % use Opera. Compare that to the 51.78 % for FireFox and the 24 % for Internet Explorer. Not too great. The only problem with looking at these stats is, up until Opera 9 – Opera misidentified itself as Internet Explorer. Why? Microsoft, a couple of years ago, was trying hard to corner the market on browsers, actually locked Opera out of their web sites based on the browser identification. It was a HUGE scandal and lead to Opera having to “fake it”.
Recently Opera Software announced availability of the Opera WebUI (Web user interface) for the Opera 9 SDK for Devices. Opera continues its history of innovation by launching a Web browser user interface for devices that runs on the browser itself. Device OEMs and network operators can now radically reduce development costs and time-to-market by using the Opera WebUI for their device browser instead of the typical native user interface.
Opera WebUI(Web User Interface) is a user interface for the Opera Web browser that is entirely created using standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and DOM. Since the navigation buttons, menus and window frame of the Opera WebUI for Devices are all Web technology based, they can be quickly customized, skinned or updated over the network. The reference Opera WebUI provided with the SDK is designed to provide end users with a simple, user friendly browsing experience that can be adapted to suit different device types.
The Opera WebUI is an excellent fit for set-top boxes, net TVs, DVRs, portable media players and VoIP screen phones that offer Internet access. With the Opera 9 SDK for devices, all aspects of the WebUI can be easily customized and integrated with the Opera rendering modes and capabilities of the input mechanisms available. Remote controls, touch screens, keypads and keyboards can all be quickly mapped to Opera.
We will have to wait to see how we can use the different browsers but for now
Why choose just one browser?
I normally have all three browsers open on my desktop at the same time. My favorite is Opera because I always open it with my last session and because I can customize features. I prefer Firefox when I need to open multiple windows because I can open the new window with a keyboard shortcut to avoid using the mouse. Finally, I use IE7 for sites that don’t work with either of the two browsers above.
January 12th, 2007 at 5:35 am
I only use FireFox, but it seems that recently Opera is coming back (at least in the world of web designers/developers), also FF isn’t what is used to be, now it eats more RAM than ever, while a few years ago it was a lightweight browser.