Too Good To Ignore — 6 Alternative Browsers

bsk_cw writes "With the exception of Google's Chrome (which got attention because it was, after all, Google), most of the alternative browsers out there tend to get lost in the shuffle. Computerworld asked three of their writers to take some lesser-known browsers out for a spin and see how they do. They looked at six candidates: Camino (for the Mac), Maxthon (for the PC), OmniWeb (for the Mac), Opera (both the Mac and the PC versions) and Shiira (for the Mac)." It would have been more interesting if they included some popular open source, Linux-friendly browsers like Konqueror or Epiphany, as well.

Comments

Re:aren't there only 4 engines?

[m0nkyman]

am i missing any (competitive, comprehensive) engines?

Don't forget Lynx and Amaya.

Re:Mac over represented?

[AKAImBatman]

I think part of it is that building browsers on Trident has fallen out of favor. There used to be quite a few such browsers out there, but most of them have disappeared. Probably because they are unable to compete against the IE == The Internet mentality. Mac users seem to have less of that Safari == The Internet association, so they're more open to alternative browsers.

Personally, I'm not really sure this article adds much. You still have four major browser engines: Trident (IE/Microsoft), Gecko (Mozilla), Webkit (Apple), and Presto (Opera). Nearly all web browsers are based on one of those four engines. Which limits the choice based of better web experience to primarily the user interface. Since the major browser makers are already tussling over the best interface to wrap around their engine, there's not much to differentiate the third party browsers.

a useful bit of research for you on TEXTAREA:

[circletimessquare]

recently i was tasked with upgrading a bit of inhouse web 2.0 data entry software, and i had to add spellcheck, which of course is extremely easy: just use firefox. which floored longtime msie users

but then, upon further research, i found out about dynamic textarea resizing, a useful little feature for lots of data entry, while using chrome. you just click and drag the corner of the textarea to make it bigger (or smaller). very nifty

and upon even more research, i found out safari supports both dynamic resizing and spellchecking, AND a grammar checking feature (underlines green, as well as red for misspelt words like in firefox)

all of the mac users in my office were all smiles when i proposed we switch to safari company wide

so, for data entry with lots of textareas on the webpage, i summarize the following for you:

firefox: spellchecking
chrome: dynamic resize
safari: spellchecking, dynamic resize AND grammar checking