Yes, i know there are already a gazillion sites with titles like Browser Wars, How do you Browse the web, etc spitting out all kinds of details, technicalities, performance and Acid Tests. Each having different processes and results, and you begin to wonder as to which company is paying who to write a better review of their product or skew the test results their way. Each site tells you more than you can possibly stomach in one lifetime.

But the fact of the matter is that it HAS become a major issue these days with so many browsers popping up all around. The main cause being  so many new uses of the web. eg. Social Networking, Interactive pages, Web based Applications… etc. with all kinds of technological platforms like Joomla, Ajax, SilverLight et al…. and even HTML, CSS, XML standards are changing everyday ! Software developers are being pushed to the edge to make sure their Browser can handle all the latest rage. They have to be prepared for everything including the kitchen sink being thrown at them.

If you are reading this you probably have gone through these kind of articles and wish no more to be smacked in the face with yet another hour long read that ranks Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome ( and IE ) in some order. So, Im going to handle this a little differently. I will not be putting them through any test or analysis. I think the best way to judge a product, browser or other is to by its performance in its actual place of use and not some special condition designed to torture it to the fullest. I think using an Acid Test for rating a browser is like using a 0-120KM/H time for rating a household car. If you’re going to drive the car in the city you are hardly ever going to reach that speed and even if you do, a second here or there would hardly determine the comfort or overall ride quality that the car has. Thus, I will only give concisely my unbiased thoughts on them after having used them in my day to day ( and infact night to night and day to night ;-p) browsing. I should tell you that i surf all the time and come accross all sorts websites from static university professor’s pages to the heavier ones like image gallerys, gmail and gaiaonline. Hre are my thoughts…..

I would have to say that i can’t really decide on one favourite or manage with having just one browser open at a time ( multiple logins into the same site ). The ones i use most are Firefox, Opera and K-meleon.

Firefox is the most well known Open Source project today, its also the most customizable browser … it has very good addons for almost any functionality and appearance…. and this is the reason that this is such a wonderful browser… i am using these addons: AdBlock Plus, Customize Google, Greasemonkey, Download Them All, RDown-Rapidshare Downloader… Does begin to leak memory after some time browsing… easily solved by restarting the browser evry hour or so

Opera was once widely accepted as the fastest browser out there… It still is really fast and very standards compliant… It has its own ‘Presto’ rendering engine that is licensed by Adobe and Macromedia for their products…It is the only browser with this engine which is supposed to be very fast and secure… It was the first to introduce the tab feature… it has a great layout and interface… it comes complete with a mail client, chat server and even BitTorrent downloader integrated into it. It is also customisable with ‘widgets’ but they are not nearly as powerful and flexible as firefox extensions…. It also comes in a non official but heavily supported portable version called Opera@USB

K-Meleon is another Open Source Project and uses the same ‘Gecko’ rendering engine as Firefox… It is designed to be faster and lighter than firefox and it IS… Downside is that very few extensions are available for it… I have been using AdBlock plus on it though… It is low on resource hogging and comes with an official portable version as well…

Google Chrome, i am not particularly comfortable with its layout and options… add to that minimal customisation…. Also it has a lot of tracking and privacy invading ‘features’ that i dont like eg. Unique ID, URL Tracker etc…. I think if you like the layout of Chrome, using Iron is a better option. Iron is based on the same Open Source browser ‘Chromium’ that Chrome came out of, and it uses the same ‘webkit’ rendering engine. I have an article with more details on Chrome and Iron here : http://guptavis.wordpress.com/2009/08/17/iron-web-browser-based-on-chromium-predecessor-of-google-chrome/

Safari is Apple’s browser offfering which was ported from MAC to Windows… Somehow ive always faced problems with it coming to a hang or not displaying pages properly…. It has no customisations whatsoever… It is also a big memory hog like most Apple applications… I think its more popular because of its ‘Apple Image’ than its actual functionality….

IE is all i will call this one. The lesser it is used the better… It still continues to be the most used web browser in the world…. The problem starts right with the installation… I have done a lot of work with computers and software but for some reason IE might or might not be available for a particular version of operating system or even different service packs of a particular OS. It is also for some reason a 16MB download while the others are typically ~6MB… It is also believed to be very insecure and is generally advised that it be removed from your system.

I also have used some other browsers but i either didnt like them or i have’nt used them enough  to recommend here….  Qtweb is one that i am beginning to like though… its really fast and light.

Special Mention: OB1 ( Off By One ) browser is a browser contained in a single EXE file . It is therefore very fast but does not have support for helping technologies such as flash, javascript, etc. So it does not display interactive pages well but it is great for viewing plain old Html pages and such

PS:  I pledge that i am (yet or in the near future) not linked to any of these browsers or their developers except of course I use them.

I personally have tried many Web Browsers over the years and constantly try out new ones but i have found firefox, opera, k-meleon, to be best for the most part. Each of these has its own speciality, but them i might cover in another article. This one is about one that i recent found called Iron (SRWare Iron).

I thought to start off my blog with this software article about a web browser that is related to Google Chrome.
For those of you who do not know the now popular Google Chrome browser was earlier an open source browser called chromium. After finalising the rendering capabilities of Chromium Google decided to use and code and release its own Closed source Browser Chrome.
As with most things that Google releases the Google Brand ensured that Chrome became a huge success immidiately and is estimated to have market share of 2.6% (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers).
But what most people dont know is that Google Chrome by default comes with a lot of tracking and privacy invading options all in the name of better serving you according to your preferences. These include but are not limited to creating a unique user ID (Chrome creates a unique ID through which a user can be theoretically identified) and the submission of entries to Google to generate suggestions.
These make it somewhat a spyware application that accesses the net without your permission. Hence its advisable to use another browser.

But, if you really want to use Google Chrome for its features and design just use the open source alternative Iron (http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php) which is based on the same chromium code, only optimised and without privacy invasion.
The site also has info about all privacy threats that Google Chrome poses including URL-Tracker and google updater. Check it out for more info.

Direct download : http://www.srware.net/downloads/srware_iron.exe
Works with Windows XP, Vista

Portable vesion : http://www.srware.net/downloads/IronPortable.zip
Without Installer, runs off one folder, ideal for putting on your USB drive.

PS: I have no links with Iron, i just use it myself and do not benefit by your using it ;-p