For the great majority of computer users, Mac or PC, a Web browser
means one of two things: Internet Explorer or Netscape. I've always
been fascinated how many people don't even make a distinction between
these application programs and the Internet itself.
I act as an occasional local agent for my ISP, and when we from time
to time (happily not very frequently) have a system outage, subscribers
will phone to report, as often as not, that "my Netscape isn't
working," when what they really mean is that they can't get on the
Internet.
And in this neck of the woods, it usually is Netscape. Atlantic
Canadians, especially in rural areas, tend to be both brand-loyal and
brand-conservative, and Netscape is the browser brand most of them
initially identified with. They're also, regrettably, inclined to use
Wintel PCs, which most still refer to as "IBM-compatibles," the term
which is a bit archaic and rarely used anymore in the avant-garde
computer community.
I've been personally boycotting Microsoft software for nearly a
year, and I don't much like Internet Exploder and its email sidekick
Lookout Regress, but Netscape has been a good, solid browser over the
years. Some users also prefer Netscape's feature of being a browser and
email client in one application, although its Messenger module has
never appealed to me as an alternative to Eudora or one of the other
more recent Mac email clients like Nisus Email.
However, I haven't used Netscape much, except as a backup browser,
for a couple of years now. I am hooked on what might be referred to as
alternative browsers. My favorite Mac browser is a iCab, which has been in beta for what seems
like nearly forever - but don't let that scare you off. iCab is the
most polished, stable, and bug-free browser available for the Mac OS. I
also find it mostly the fastest.
Developed by Alexander Clauss and the iCab Company, a small, private
software development firm founded by Oliver Joppisch, and based in
Braunschweig, Germany.
Joppisch's admiration for Internet Explorer is evident in iCab,
which incorporates many of IE's better features, like a persistent
History, the ability to download Web pages as complete archives with
images or sounds embedded, the ability to autocomplete URLs and forms,
cache surfing, convenient Hotlist (bookmark) editing, and a great
Download Manager. However, unlike IE, iCab is very small, parsimonious
of RAM, and doesn't load up your System folder with shared
libraries.
I quite like iCab's clean, understated, un-busy appearance, but if
you find it too austere for your tastes, iCab has posted many alternate
button "skins" on their download site. Just drop an alternate icon set
in the iCab folder, and the program will load it automatically on
startup.
iCab instantly copies your Explorer or Netscape Favorites/Bookmarks,
so you can get underway with a minimum of hassle. iCab also supports
Netscape plug-ins and Apple's Mac Runtime for Java.
iCab's only significant deficiency, at least for my purposes, is
that it's JavaScript support is not yet fully implemented, so it
doesn't work on some Web sites. I don't run into this very often, but
it happens enough that I want to keep a second browser open as a
backup.
That browser used to be Netscape 4.7.x, but in recent months in has
been Mozilla. Mozilla is the basic
browser that underlies Netscape 6.x, but without some of the
superfluous gingerbread that AOL insists on adding to the Netscape
version.
The latest Mozilla download it is also usually a version or two
ahead of the latest Netscape 6 iteration. For example, Netscape 6.1 is
based on the Mozilla 0.9.2 build, but the current Mozilla milestone
version is 0.9.4.
Like Netscape, Mozilla is a big, RAM-hungry application, and it
incorporates an email client and an HTML authoring module as well as a
browser, so Netscape fans should feel right at home.
Unfortunately, the first Netscape 6 preview and the pre 0.9.2 builds
of Mozilla acquired a nasty, but not inaccurate, reputation for
instability and bugginess. However, since the release of Mozilla 0.9.2
(Netscape 6.1), this browser has been a rock of stability.
With the 0.9.2 build, Mozilla became a fully usable browser. Mozilla
0.9.3, and 0.9.4 have proved incremental improvements on that level of
refinement. This is now a very nice browser - if you have the RAM and
hard drive space to support its heavy demands and a beefy enough
processor to run it adequately. The minimum processor specified is a
266 MHz 604e, but I wouldn't suggest bothering with anything slower
than my 233 MHz G3.
Mozilla has wonderful drag & drop support, and its JavaScript
implementation works well. I prefer the appearance of pages in iCab to
Mozilla's renderings in most cases, and Mozilla still has no option to
save Web page data as a plain text file, which limits its utility for a
lot of the browser work that I do.
Nevertheless, you now could use Mozilla as your only browser,
something you cannot yet do with the much more refined and polished
iCab or with Opera.
It's also pretty fast, although running some comparison tests, I
found it is not quite as fast as iCab or Opera (see
below). It actually feels faster than it is loading pages, but
starting the program up and doing things like opening windows are still
definitely draggy combined with its browser.alt competitors.
Nevertheless, if you like the Netscape-style all-in-one solution and
prefer to live without the AOL add-ons, Mozilla is for you. It handles
JavaScript nicely and has become my favorite Mac browser after
iCab.
Opera, which I mentioned in passing a moment
ago, is our third Mac browser.alt. Like iCab, it comes from Europe (in
this case, Norway, and it also has some Icelandic parentage as
well).
Opera is a powerful browser, rich in enhancements and features, and
is now available on the Macintosh in two flavors: Carbon and Classic.
(All three of these browsers.alt have OS X versions).
Beta 3 of Opera 5.0 for Mac is an initial partial work build.
Features presented in the standard Opera version might be missing or
only partially included.
Opera is fast, small, secure, configurable, and standards compliant.
Opera Software has licensed Macromedia Flash Player technology in the
Windows, Linux, and Macintosh versions of Opera. Macromedia Flash
Player delivers motion, sound, interactivity, and graphics.
Like iCab, Opera takes care of itself, making little use of shared
libraries, which results in increased efficiency and a faster
response.
Opera features 128-bit SSL encryption, version 2 and 3. It was the
first browser on the market to support TLS 1.0. This means that you can
do secure online ordering of goods and services, online banking without
any additional security proxy software or modules, ensuring complete
security for your online transactions.
Multiple downloads are possible at the same time. Opera features a
special download window with your download items listed.
You can choose whether to show menus, buttons, scroll bars, progress
information etc. If you don't need it, why show it? If you don't like
the UI gadgetry, you can turn it off. If you don't like cookies or
referrer logging, frames or multimedia, or if it's just Javascript, one
click turns them off. If you'd like to customize the look and feel of
your toolbar, Opera is customization friendly
Installation is easy, taking merely a minute. Opera does not hog
your hard disk space. Opera for Mac is a mere 2.2 MB download, so
updating to the latest version is always fast and easy.
Opera is the most different Mac browser interface and functionality
wise, and when they get it finished (the Mac port is still a fairly
early beta yet), it could become the Volvo or Saab of browsers.
