If you're not an Internet Explorer and/or not a Windows user, you can simply skip to the section with the reviews of the browsers.
We're going to present some of the major (and minor) flaws of various Internet Explorer versions and also come up with a few alternatives. We will be talking about more than just one alternative browser so you can decide which you like better and make the choice.
We will use the short name IE when talking about Internet Explorer in this article.
The flaws of Internet Explorer
Slowness
IE seems to be a rather slow web browser. It downloads page elements (images, flash films and the page itself) slower than other browser. Even if you bought a computer recently and it's a pretty powerful machine and you have a decent connection to the Internet, it makes your browsing experience slower. Not only does it download those elements slower than other browsers, it also renders them slower on the screen.
Another problem related to slow page rendering is the fact that it's not displaying all the images and everything which has been downloaded until the page has been completely downloaded.
This problem alone should make people want to use something else right away. Although some aren't aware of how fast a browser should load and render pages, it should be 2 to 10 times better with another browser, provided the Internet connection isn't a dialup one (even dialup users should benefit from using an alternative browser).
Another slowness problem is the lack of smooth scrolling and being even slower on some web pages.
IE's trash problems
You browse the Internet for a while, let's say 4-8 months, with IE6 and then you notice your PC has gone from relatively fast to slower and slower. IE6 does a very bad thing: it doesn't clean up the files it has stored, it simply keeps creating new files in its Temporary Internet Files folder.
This is an issue we have discussed about in two parts of a recent article, part 1 here and part 2 here . In those two parts, the problem is described and a solution on how to fix this is given.
Note that the solution doesn't fix IE6's problem, it just cleans up the files that exist at one point in time on the HDD.
IE doesn't speak HTML, CSS and Javascript well
While the alternative browsers have no problems rendering 99.9999% web pages, IE needs hacks to make pages look almost (or exactly) the same way they do on other browsers.
Those who create websites have to use specific hacks for IE to counter the differences in the behavior of IE when compard to other browsers. This includes, but is not limited to, CSS, HTML.
Javascript is another thing IE doesn't implement just as well as the modern browsers, the alternatives, do. If you try to create a page yourself and use some more advanced Javascript code, you might find out it simply doesn't work on IE6.
More recent versions of IE, like IE7 and IE8 have fixed some of these issues, but IE is still IE and it still has big problems in this area and many others.
IE and its feet - unstable
Use IE heavily and you will, most likely, encounter crashes, lots of them. Web pages which have lots of images, scripts and all kinds of page elements will crash IE.
Not only do you get constant crashes when opening some web pages, you can also encounter issues like IE not starting up at all.
In this screenshot, you can see 4 IE6 processes with similar memory usage. These processes have not spawned windows, they simply froze like that. This happens sometimes when using IE6.IE's pop up and pop under blocking system
While the pop up/pop under blocking system in IE7/8 may be better, IE6 has serious problems in this area. Those people who really want to get that "you won 99999 billion dollars" (or any other kind of pop up) on your screen keep finding new ways to go around pop up blocking.
You really want to have good pop up blocking in your browser. Good pop up blocking means being able to tell if a pop up is legit or not, if it was spawned by an user action when using a form (or something else initiated by the user) or by a page script which opens up something else.
Memory usage
IE seems to be using more RAM memory when compared to other browsers. IE6 needs about 65MB of RAM memory in order to present you the msn.com homepage.
While this may not seem a big deal, keep in mind the fact that other browsers display 10-15 tabs with a page in each and need about 200-250MB of RAM or even less.
ActiveX & plugins drama
Some sites try to install all sorts of ActiveX controls and about 70-90% of them are simply trojans/adware/spyware. With alternative browsers, you get rid of all this.
While we're at it, the only plugins you should be installing for your browser are: adobe flash, adobe PDF support, adobe shockwave, microsoft silverlight, divx web player.
Please note these aren't browser addons/extensions, they simply provide support for multimedia playback, web games, pdf documents, highly interactive websites, sites which stream sound and video via flash/silverlight, etc.
Simply changing the browser will kill most of the websites which ask you to "download this free application to download FREE music/videos/etc". It's obvious most websites use that to download spyware/adware/trojans/viruses/etc on your PC.
We'll talk more about what you should be installing for your browser in another article.
Weak security and "protection from downloads"
IE is a rather insecure web browser. It is the target of a lot of exploits and phishing. It is also a browser which has bad security measures. Among those bad security measures is the blocking of downloads.
Microsoft decided it was simply easier to block downloads and display a message below IE's toolbar which says "In order to protect ......IE has blocked a download". In order to download your files, you have to click that and the download starts.
If you ask me, this isn't very good as a default setting and not a very good security measure.
Why did Microsoft do this? Are they really afraid IE could download files in other ways, in the background? Then again, if that's what Microsoft thought of, you shouldn't be trusting IE if Microsoft didn't.
Bad download system
As we have already mentioned, Microsoft blocks downloads by default and you have to click on the message it displays to go on with your download. You might say "hey, you could change the setting for that", but the other issues these IE browsers don't justify the time spent looking for that setting.
IE keeps putting its downloads in its temporary files location first and only after finishing the download where you wanted it to be. Basically, IE downloads the file to its temporary files location ( and also keeps a copy of it there, if it's IE6) and then copies it to the target folder. While that may be ok for files which are 1-50MB large, you might not want a 2.5GB download to be copied from drive to drive.
A behavior like the following would be more suitable: create a .tmp file which is the real download, create the file without the extra .tmp extension and when the download is finished, move the .tmp file to the end file, without the extra .tmp extension.
Moreover, there is no way to list the recent downloads, nor resume a paused downloaded.
Badly designed menus and settings system
The way the settings system is designed is bad. There are lots of settings but they're not exposed to the user in a nice way. That means it's more difficult to tweak things around and you actually need to look well for some setting.
Another thing which makes IE, Windows and Microsoft look bad is the fact that you control various system wide settings from IE's settings. Why should I open IE to change some settings which affect the entire OS? In my opinion, that's poor design and not thought of thouroughly.
Bad support
Microsoft has added the "send error report" to Windows XP and that has solved pretty much nothing for most people. When an application crashes, XP asks you to send an error report to Microsoft.
While Microsoft may have fixed some problems using those reports, I suspect they turn those error reports into cereals and eat them with milk for breakfast.
Enter the world of IE. You will get crashes over crashes, pages will look bad, things will go down the drain while you're checking your mail or have almost finished writing an email and you need to start again from scratch. Don't expect Microsoft to care about your problem or even fix it.
Open browsers and non-Microsoft browsers have better communities. There is bug tracking and there are also forums where you can post and people will listen. You can talk on a forum about the issue, have a few persons tell you if that issue is caused by the software you have or your hardware. If you don't get to fix it that way, you can submit a bug and someone will, at least, take a look at that bug report.
IE isn't patched right away
Microsoft doesn't seem to be updating IE so often and its updates are closely tied to the Windows updates. That means you will not be getting any updates automatically if you install updates for Windows manually. While some may argue that Microsoft wants you to use Windows update and that's the way to go, that's unacceptable in some environments.
Microsoft does release updates as soon as possible, but your browsers isn't updated when you open it up again, but when you update your Windows again. That's bad bad bad.
The alternatives
Mozilla Firefox
It only made sense we presented the best browser and best open source browser first.
The current version of Firefox is 3.5. It was recently released and it's a good improvement over 3.0. It is fast, it supports extensions, it updates as soon as an update is available and is a lot more secure than IE.
Firefox is the best open source browser. Some people say it's also the best browser and the most reliable in terms of security and stability. The addons/extensions provide a lot more functionality which goes even beyond what a browser does.
Getting used to Firefox is a good idea if you plan to try out Linux some day. It is the default browser on most Linux distributions.
In the following version of Firefox, a one process/tab scheme will be introduced. That will bring better stability, security and performance to the already good browser. This will be similar to what Google Chrome has.
Reviewed version: 3.5
Bundled software: none, 100% clean
Updates: updated automatically on Windows and Mac OS X, Linux/others via the respective update system of the OS
Themes: it supports skins
Addons: it supports extensions, there are lots of useful extensions. make sure to install only the extensions which are listed on addons.mozilla.org
Browsing speed: very good
Page rendering: vey good
Temporary files: managed via a cache size, doesn't fill the filesystem with its files
Security: very good, since updates are deployed as soon as they're available, prompting for a browser restart
Download manager: good, could have better resume support
Platforms: Windows/Linux/Mac OS X/*BSD and other UNIX-like OSes
License: GPL, open source
Official download site: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/
NOTE: do not download Firefox from any other site than the official one (because some third party might add viruses, trojans, rootkits, adware, phishing tools, etc to the installer)
Opera
Opera used to be a commercial product. After Firefox has showed up, Opera became freeware.
It supports widgets, has a nice default look, has inbuilt bittorrent transfer support. Opera also has an inbuilt nice email client. Like Firefox, it is being actively developed and new features are being added all the time to new versions.
Opera had some minor problems when it came to rendering some web pages on the screen, but nothing major. It was just a matter of not displaying something exactly as it was being displayed in Firefox and/or Chrome.
Opera has a very nice graphical user interface. All the features of this applications are nicely integrated and overall, it's great.
Reviewed version: 9.64
Bundled software: none, 100% clean
Updates: you are prompted if you want to install the new version when it is available
Themes: it supports skins
Addons: it supports desktop widgets, no extensions like Firefox has
Browsing speed: very good
Page rendering: vey good
Temporary files: managed via a cache size, doesn't fill the filesystem with its files
Security: very good
Download manager: very good, bittorrent downloads are integrated into the manager
Platforms: Windows / Linux / Mac OS X / FreeBSD / Solaris / QNX / OS/2 / BeOS
License: freeware
Official download site: http://www.opera.com/browser/
NOTE: do not download Opera from any other site than the official one (because some third party might add viruses, trojans, rootkits, adware, phishing tools, etc to the installer)
Google Chrome
This is a relatively new player. Google chrome seems to be lacking the features Firefox and Opera are praised for. Those features are extensions, widgets, an inbuilt email client and many other features.
However, Chrome is meant to be used together with Google's suite of online apps and make up for that lack of inbuilt features this way.
Chrome has one process per tab. That means: if one tab locks up, only that tab goes down, not the whole browser.
Chrome seems to be having some stability issues with Adobe Flash content and some online video sites do not work properly (as in the video doesn't play, whereas Firefox, Opera and even Safari have no problems in playing the content).
Chrome also comes with Google Update. GU runs in the background and it starts once your PC starts. It updates Chrome without asking you if you want to do this or not. Some people might not like this, but unless you have some very sensitive data you want to protect, it's ok. GU only updates Chrome, it doesn't act like and is not malware/adware/spyware/ a trojan/etc
Reviewed version: 2.0.172.33
Updates: updates are installed automatically via Google Update
Themes: none
Addons: none
Browsing speed: very good
Page rendering: vey good
Temporary files: managed via a cache size, the history tends to get huge (tens to hundreds of megabytes)
Security: very good
Download manager: average, it has some bugs related to starting downloads initiated by the user via javascript (e.g.: clicking a button, loading another page where you expect the downloading to take place, like sourceforge.net download pages)
Platforms: Windows / Mac OS X - work in progress / Linux - planned
License: open source - Chromium is open source and Chromium/Chrome is based on Webkit
Official download site: http://www.google.com/chrome/?hl=en
NOTE: do not download Chrome from any other site than the official one (because some third party might add viruses, trojans, rootkits, adware, phishing tools, etc to the installer)
Apple Safari
This browser was Mac only until recently. Apple decided they want to increase their user base by including some Windows users as well. However, the goal of this browser is unclear.
The recently released Safari 4.0 seems to be copying Google Chrome's layout. It has pretty much the same button layout and placement.
This browser has a few issues. Macs and PCs with slower HDDs will run Safari a bit slower when browsing websites which have a lot of images and graphical elements. Firefox, Opera and Chrome do not have this problem at all.
Safari 4.0 has another two problems. The first problem is that of having a high CPU usage when using an old slow display adapter due to its home screen. The second is that the home screen uses up resources to present you the most recently/most often visited pages with some eye candy.
Laptop owners might want to change the default content of newly opened tabs to be a blank page, thus sparing you of seeing the home screen and save some power while on battery.
It also scrolls with hiccups when you have opened a page with a lot of images.
Reviewed version: 4.02
Bundled software: none, if you choose the version without Quicktime
make sure to deselect "Install Bonjour for Windows" as it's useless
Updates: updates are installed via Software Update on Macs and via the optional Apple Software Update on Windows
Themes: none
Addons: none
Browsing speed: good
Page rendering: average, hiccups while scrolling pages with tons of images
Temporary files: managed via a cache size, some stray files may show up on Windows - they have to be cleaned up manually
Security: average - Apple has refused to fix some security flaws in the past
Download manager: average
Platforms: Windows / Mac OS X
License: closed source, the HTML rendering engine is open source, Webkit
Official download site: http://www.apple.com/safari <- make sure you download the version without Quicktime, if you plan to use Safari on Windows NOTE: do not download Chrome from any other site than the official one (because some third party might add viruses, trojans, rootkits, adware, phishing tools, etc to the installer) The alternative browsers should be compatible with XP/Vista/Windows 7. However, they might need some minor fixes for Windows 7, if they haven't been done already by now. Keep in mind that the browser you use is important. A lot of Windows computers are compromised due to security breaches in Internet Explorer. The user's actions can also lead to infections with viruses/adware/spyware/trojans/malware ( you pick the name for it). If you want a good secure browser, give Firefox, Opera and Chrome a shot and see which works best for your needs. If you want to choose between two browsers, choose between Firefox and Opera.
