Oct 10 2006
Web Browsers
rev. 3 September 2008
Mozilla Firefox- License: Open Source
- Description: If you get only one piece of software on this page, this needs to be it. With Internet Explorer, your computer is privy to a legion of malicious scripts and programs that will install without your knowing. Firefox is a standalone version of the Mozilla suite, blazingly fast, with a whole host of skins and “extentions” to add functionality that you might miss in the default installation. Best of all, Firefox is available for damn near any OS: Solaris, Linux, Windows, OS X, FreeBSD. In short, this is easily the best web browser available.
Google Chrome- License: Open Source
- Description: The long-rumored browser from Google is here! The marriage of the Webkit rendering engine, a new javascript VM called “V8,” and a simple, skinned UI, Chrome is still early in development, but show an incredible amount of potential.
K-Meleon- License: Open Source
- Description: Another open-source browser based on the Gecko layout engine. To be honest, I can’t see why one would pick K-Meleon over Firefox, but the performance and behavior is going to be largely the same. The only possibility is if you have some aversion to the XUL language as a GUI. K-Meleon supposedly uses macros, not XUL.
SeaMonkey- License: Open Source
- Description: When the Mozilla Foundation officially stopped development of the monolithic Mozilla suite in favor of its separated children—Firefox, Thunderbird, and Sunbird—developers were quick to reform under a different name and continue work on the suite unofficially, sharing development of the engine and doing their own work on the UI. SeaMonkey is basically Mozilla. Good if you want all the components and don’t mind the overhead of a monolithic application.
Flock- License: Open Source
- Description: Another open-source browser based on the Gecko layout engine. This new browser gained a lot of press initially, but has gotten ho-hum reviews. It’s basically Firefox with added features for social browsing (blogs, bookmarking, &c.). If that interests you, give it a try.
Opera- License: Freeware
- Description: Formerly only available in a paid or ad-supported version, Opera 8.5 is now free for the using, without ads. Opera is well-known for its speed, and has pretty good standards support (the engine is Opera’s homegrown renderer).
Safari- License: Freeware/Open Source
- Description: While I happen to think that the proprietary interface is extraordinarily crappy (as well as not blending it at all with Windows’ native widgets), Safari’s “WebKit” rendering engine is open source and also excellent. A good alternative for testing, if nothing else.
Arora- License: Open Source
- Description: Arora is a new, early-life browser written in Qt and using the Webkit engine. It’s very simple now, and lacks a lot of features, but it’s fast, and if nothing else an excellent way to test the WebKit engine on Windows without having to use Apple’s Safari browser.
K-Meleon is significantly faster than Firefox. On a 64 MB RAM machine, there is a pretty difference between them.
Oh, I don’t doubt it. K-Meleon is the Gecko engine and not nearly as much front-end as Firefox. It’s also not nearly as slick.
v1.1 just came out yesterday, if I recall correctly. Probably worth looking into.