Browser Wars
The average user in India still uses Internet Explorer that ships with all Windows computers sold in India as their primary browser for surfing the Internet. However, for seasoned Internet users IE is clearly not the first choice browser. There are several other much better alternate browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera that give users a faster, richer and better browsing experience.
In the next few weeks the war of the browsers is likely to heat up even more with new releases expected for the most popular browsers. I managed to get my hands on some beta releases (pre-release versions) of these browsers and decided to do a head-on
comparison.
Speed
Google Chrome 10 is easily the fastest of all with 66 per cent speed increase in rendering scripts. Mozilla Firefox is still behind Chrome but the newer version is 600 per cent faster than the previous one.
And IE 9? Well, it still remains excruciating slow.
Cool new features
Chrome 10 offers easy sync passwords, bookmarks, preferences, themes and other stuff across all devices. The settings interface opens in a new browsing tab instead of a popup (just the way downloads and history opens as a new tab in the existing edition).
There’s also a box to search through various settings and direct URL to specific setting. And then there’s better security for saved password.
Firefox Mozilla 4 has the same sync features as Chrome plus allows you to open the same website across all devices. If you viewed a page on your laptop and then want to later access it on your mobile device, you can easily do that!
No navigation buttons at the top and all consolidated under one button! (A Chrome copy)? It also turns frequently used websites into App Tabs that appears as a small square on left top corner. They light up when there is updated content. All tabs are located above the URL bar.
Then there’s Panorama which organises similar tabs into one group — close or open all tabs in a group with a single click. Supercool! IE 9, meanwhile, has a ‘Pinned Sites’ feature that lets you pin a website to the taskbar, making a website seem more like an application. Clicking on the taskbar will take the user to the site.
There’s also tracking Protection which significantly improves protection from tracking cookies and other unneccesary bread crumbs and Web junk.
IE’s download manager also protects you against malware and allows you to pause or resume downloads. And last, but not the least is built-in geo location features.
When are they out?
By the time you get this, IE 9 has already been installed by the neighbour and if you’re looking to kick some, don’t despair, because both Chrome 10 and Firefox have released BETA versions.
Happy browsing!
The writer is a 25-year-old Ethical Hacking Expert, a TV show host and the
author of 14 best selling books. He can be contacted at ankit@deccanmail.com.
Post new comment