Wednesday, September 05, 2007

A little bit of technology

The big browser fight IE7 , FIREFOX and OPERA

IE7
Strengths :
It still has the highest number of sites that are IE compatible and may not be compatible with firefox and opera, thus giving a bad experience with the site .
It comes bundled with windows and is free.
It now has tabbed browsing, bridging the wide gap between tabbed and untabbed browsing.
Some Microsoft technologies like Silverlight are IE and firefox compatible.
Clean look.

Drawbacks:
It has a lot of ground to cover even in tabbed browsing features offered in comparison to firefox and opera.
Has no plugin features nor a scope of an active user base who can create new customised addons for it as with firefox (extensions) and opera (widgets) .
Its not a "new" software someone would download to test , its the "default" browser that microsoft so the value associated with is generally thought to be low.

Opera
Strengths:
Is the granddaddy of Tabbed browsing. Was one of the first to implement tabbed browsing way back in 2000.
Has a group of very active and dedicated loyalists who swear by the browser.
Has a neat and clean interface
Is now free as compared to around 2 years back till when it was a paid or ad supported browser.
Has inbuilt fraud protection.
Has the option of loading a webpage without images.
Has a notes feature to save text documents in an integrated notepad in the browser.
Integrated torrent download facility.
Now allows user to build extensions (not previously supported), but has a variety of "widgets" to choose from.
Has a Trash can option for retrieving closed tabs.
Session saver and ad-block feature.
Speed Dial feature to choose from an user defined choice of homepages to open a new page in (very helpful).
Hot keys and mouse gestures are very helpful for people who like working fast.

Drawbacks:
Firefox has been supporting extensions for quite a while and has a larger collection.
Has compatibility issues with some sites.
Does not support some of the latest microsoft technologies available like silverlight.
Generally Firefox user miss their favorite extensions while using opera.

Firefox
Strengths:
The king of tabbed browsing.
A wide array of extensions, plugins and the likes for a better personalised browsing experience.
Is compatible with most IE only compatible sites and most microsoft technologies in view of its significant share of the browser pie.
Spell checker with the integrated dictionary.
Live bookmarking feature.
Has the common features of opera like session saver ( introduced recently), password manager and the option of retrieving recently closed tabs.
Allows its increasingly growing user base to customise and make its own addons, and for the free riders, a huge collection of regularly updated addons to choose from.

Drawbacks:
Is a memory consuming application. For the non geeky people, There is a thing called a RAM, which is the total amount of memory available for the different applications to use. Firefox takes a lot of it for itself and leaves little for the other applications to use, thus it may result in slower computers.
None other ( That I know of )

For the Non-geeky people out there, I would recommend going for either opera or IE because it comes with a lot of inbuilt options and features which would have to be installed as extensions in firefox.

For the geeks , well I would suggest going for either firefox or opera because both now support extensions. For computers with larger RAM, i would personally recommend firefox because it somehow (I feel) offers more freedom in designing extensions than opera. But Opera on a whole provides a better and faster browsing experience than its counterparts if you leave alone the extensions in firefox or widgets in opera.

So cheerios .. Have a great browsing experience



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Now playing: Colin Hay - Overkill

3 rambles:

Paras Shah said...

front the day when I first used Mozzila , I m have not used IE for a single time. :D

Utsav Mamoria said...

I would still go for Mozilla, having used all the three. It works fine on my RAM challeneged PC (256 MB only :()

But one thing is for sure, IE is definetly the worst !!

Gypsy Couple said...

True True .. I use firefox too .. but before i used firefox i was using opera .. and i still always make it a point to have it installed on my comp . The mouse gestures and the note feature is simply awesume , you have to use to to know it .

btw mozilla is my first choice nevertheless, too many extensions that i can't live without !!

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