I've been thinking about trying a different web browser. Right now,I'm using the canned IE6.Here's some of the choices I've heard about. Anyone use any of these, and if so, is it better than than IE6 ? Avant Netscape myIE2 Mozilla Opera Ghostzilla Dominica Neoplanet CipherNet
Opera-by far, I've looked at all the others and by far Opera is the most customizable, it even allows you to have your POP e-mail in the same window. Try it!
Opera in its current incarnation at least works: previous versions were not very good ...... The Netscape / open source browsers are another choice. This is nice because at least the source is available and there is no hanky panky going on with default spying tied to the operating systems. One word of warning: Microsoft IMHO is moving to eliminate free upgrades to IE. That is I believe that it will move to only let registered users upgrade/patch its products in the near future. There are also problems with the software IMHO with respect to privacy issues. This leaves a dilemma: IE has about 95% of the current browser market - 95% of the people using the internet use IE. But, MS is stopping support for MAC version of IE, older versions of IE, and UNIX version. Thus we have the problem that a monopoly is moving to exert control over its monopoly by squeezing customers and dropping support for competitors. The dilemma is that more people will move from IE as a client in the future and Internet Facing Application developers will need to once again consider compatibility issues with several browsers if they want to capture the 5 %- or perhaps 10 percent in future - of potential customers .....
For those using browsers other than IE, in your opinion what's the killer feature (or features) in any of them that makes bothering to move from IE worthwhile (BTW, email features aren't important - I use MS Outlook (not Outlook Express) for email). Thanks.
Tabbed interface (multiple pages in the same parent window), built-in pop-up control and an improvement to that infernal Win95 favorites menu structure whereby you have to navigate the mouse through an X-Y coordinate to drill down.
Operas interface is nice and the alternative organization of links is useful: however a browser is a browser: all it really needs to do is provide a decent user interface to process standard HTML/CSS/XML and graphics features. For most people the most important thing is that they can go from site to site and not have the browser crash, and have content displayed consistently. This last issue is really dependent upon the site developers: If they are lead by a software vendor to believe that certain features should be included in their sites but are not compatibile with other browsers then users will have a problem. Many sites on the internet are only tested with IE browsers so that as people switch to other platforms there will be more , not less, incompatibility.
I've used Opera for about 2 years and prefer it to IE. However, some sites and links do not respond to Opera, thereby making it necessary to keep IE on the machine for such occasions. Opera is quite good and still getting better. Worth a look.