The browser race is on once again and the competition is starting to get heated. With each browser manufacturer trying to outdo the competition, the ultimate winners are the users. Browsers are undergoing rapid updates with new and innovative features being introduced every month. Keeping track of all the browsers can become quite a job. Here we take a look at the best browsers available in the market along with their strengths and weaknesses.
Firefox is the darling of the alternate source web browser crowd and with good reason. Beside the standard set of features including tabbed browsing, password manager, download manager, search bar, pop-up blocker and malicious website blocker, it also supports a few fancy features like Private Browsing which allows you to surf the web without leaving a trace. The other big strength of Firefox is it’s awesome bar which displays suggestions as you type – not only based on the URL of previously visited websites but also their content.
However, the biggest strength of Firefox is its extensions. Extensions are add-ons that make it possible to extend the functionality of Firefox. The extensions make it possible for everyone to customize Firefox according to their needs and are ultimately responsible for propelling Firefox to the first spot in our list.
Opera has been in the market for more than a decade and is known for being an innovator. Opera is the most feature packed browser out of the box, yet is a smaller download than most. It has all the basic features along with a large number of unique features you won’t find anywhere else. Opera includes a built in E-mail client and RSS Feed Reader as well as an IRC Chat Client and Torrent Downloader. A recently introduced feature called Opera Turbo compresses web pages before downloading them on your computer. This can speed up browsing dramatically (3-4 times faster) on slower connections.
Opera is a pioneer of tabbed browsing and features like Visual Tabs (tab thumbnails), Tab Preview (thumbnail preview), Trash Can (stores recently closed tabs) makes Opera’s implementation of Tabbed Browsing possibly the best.
Opera Unite allows you to instantly share files or stream music from your computer. Opera is also the fastest when it comes to rendering HTML/CSS however its current javascript rendering engine (soon to be replaced with a newer faster engine) is showing signs of age and is much slower than Firefox, Chrome or Safari’s engine.
Chrome is the new kid in the block that is already making its presence felt. Chrome has one of the fastest JavaScript rendering engines (v8) in the market. It runs each tab in its own separate process. While this does lead to a slightly higher resource usage, it also increases Chrome’s stability. In case something goes wrong while rendering a page, only the concerned tab will crash (sad tab) instead of the whole browser. Chrome displays a list of most frequently viewed websites along with the latest web pages visited and recently closed tabs at start up, which at first glance looks similar to Opera’s Speed Dial.
Unlike other browsers, Chrome utilities only one bar (instead of an address bar and a search bar) – called Omnibar, which can be used for both searching and browsing. Any search engine you have previously visited instantly becomes available in the Omnibar. Chrome also includes a Private Browsing mode, although it is a lot more basic that the Firefox’s Private Browsing feature.
While Google Chrome is a fascinating browser and holds a lot of promise, it still has a long way to go. It lacks much needed features like RSS Feed Reader.
Safari is definitely the prettiest browser around. Apple knows how to do things in style. Safari’s latest avatar bears startling resemblance with Chrome. Like Chrome, Safari’s start page displays your favorite (most visited) websites. Safari’s USP is its history search feature which looks stunning. Previously visited web pages are displayed using the Coverflow interface (found in iTunes). Safari also has a very cool Find in Page feature in addition to the standard set of features. Private browsing – a feature originally invented by Safari – is another plus point. Safari’s JavaScript rendering engine is among the fastest and the only one which is comparable to Chrome.