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Opera is like that cute Lexus coupe, svelte
and cool, exciting to drive and full of little touches that
spell luxury and good design.
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technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and
commentaries, continuously available online since
1983
T e c h n o f i l e
Internet Explorer falling behind two other Windows
browsers, Mozilla and Opera
August 17, 2003
By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard
Internet Explorer is turning into a
has-been. It could be time to switch to a more modern Web
browser if you're a Windows user who's never tried
(or even known about) an alternative browser.
Internet Explorer hasn't kept
up-to-date with its competition, and Microsoft says
it's going to downgrade Internet Explorer from a
standalone browser to an integrated part of MSN, the
Microsoft Network online service.
This sounds crazy to me, but Bill Gates
is rich and I'm not, so I have to assume that he's
got good reasons for orphaning the standalone version of
Internet Explorer -- especially if Microsoft sees gold in
them thar hills of MSN. The idea, as far as I can tell, is
for Microsoft to exert greater control over the online
activities of MSN users by directing them through a
customized version of Internet Explorer.
This sounds too much like Big Brother to
me. I like Internet Explorer, although I can't
recommend version 6, the current incarnation -- it's
ripe with security problems, and that's just one of my
complaints -- but I consider version 5.5 reliable and
invitingly easy to use.
But both version 5.5 and 6.0 of Internet
Explorer are inexcusably old fashioned in a couple of
important ways.
Both Mozilla and Opera, IE's two
modern competitors, can block popup windows automatically;
Microsoft has yet to provide its users with such an
essential function. Mozilla and Opera also offer tabbed
windows as an option. Microsoft appears to be asleep in
this area of design, too.
Popup blockers can be added as extra,
user-installed programs on any Windows PC, but they should
not have to be. Mozilla and Opera treat unwanted popup
windows at the source, where they can be controlled or
eliminated quickly, without risking software conflicts.
Mozilla, the free Web browser developed
by hundreds of programmers working cooperatively for years,
is so well designed that it's become the standard of
reference for many Web sites. Mozilla is the browser
equivalent of a Mercedes-Benz sedan, easy to drive,
reliable as the sun and utterly boring to anyone under the
age of 25.
But Opera is like that cute Lexus coupe,
svelte and cool, exciting to drive and full of little
touches that spell luxury and good design. Opera is my
choice among Windows browsers, but I enjoy using both.
Opera is readily skinnable, too.
Although I'm tempted to be a smart aleck and tell you
that if you need to ask what "skinnable" means,
you're probably over 30 and hopelessly lost in the sea
of computerspeak, I'll resist and explain that a
skinnable program is one that can change its looks totally
with a quick makeover using a "skin." In the
Windows version of Opera, you click an icon to change the
skin. It's that easy. The Mac version is disappointing
in this area, requiring some manual futzing to get the new
skin to work.
Both Mozilla and Opera handle tabbed
windows well. In a tabbed-view browser, clicking a link
that would normally open a new window tells the browser to
create a new tab behind the current window. That tab
displays its contents only when you click the tab to bring
it to the foreground.
All tabs are part of the main browser
window. Once you get used to the way this works, you might
find that regular browsers such as Internet Explorer seem
implausibly clunky and old fashioned. Try it and see what
you think.
Mozilla is available from www.mozilla.org. Read the
notices on the site, because a new version of Mozilla
called Firebird will be available soon, and Firebird's
optional companion e-mail software is already being praised
for its design and safety. (I haven't tried it.)
Mozilla is free in the Open Source manner, in which
software is treated as a community resource.
Opera is available from www.opera.com. It's not free
(it costs $39) but you can use an ad-laden version of Opera
without paying if you prefer. (But buy it if you can afford
it. You'll be supporting the only major browser for
Windows that tries to pay its own way.)
Both Mozilla and Opera are available in
non-Windows versions, too. I use Opera (along with two
other browsers, OmniWeb and Safari) on my OS X Macintosh
and have used both Mozilla and Opera on one of my Linux
PCs. Differences between the Windows version of either
browser and the Mac and Linux versions are minor.
To Opera's credit, it still offers a
version for the Be operating system (the most advanced of
all operating systems in the mid-1990s) and for QNX,
another advanced PC operating system. It also specializes
in making all its browsers workable strictly from the
keyboard. If you've been hoping to find a browser that
can be used by someone with limited coordination or
mobility, go to Opera's Web site and you'll
probably find what you need.
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