I'm just browsing, thanks...

Over the past several years I’ve been following the progress of several alternatives to Internet Explorer. Some very creative people have been working to enhance the browsing experience and I enjoy checking out the latest bells and whistles.

The biggest improvement over IE is the introduction of tabbed browsing, which allows you to open many pages within a single browser window and flip easily between them. This doesn’t sound like much of an improvement, but once I tried it, I wondered why someone hadn’t thought of this long ago. Most of the new generation browsers now offer tabbed browsing, but for some reason Microsoft hasn’t followed suit.

I’ve been very impressed with several of the browsers I’ve tried, but for one feature or another, I always ended up sticking with IE. That changed recently when I began using a browser called Maxthon. Maxthon uses the engine (the “guts”) of IE, so it does everything IE does, but it adds tabbed browsing and some other nice features. (For this reason, you don’t want to uninstall IE, because Maxthon needs it to work.) Think of it as the “next version” of IE.

Shortly after I started using Maxthon, Mozilla released its latest version of Firefox. I’d been impressed with previous versions of Firefox, so I downloaded it and gave it a try. I immediately liked it. It’s faster than IE (and Maxthon) and less vulnerable to viruses and other attacks. It lacked a couple of my favorite features, however, so I continued to use Maxthon.

But the thing about Firefox is that it’s not produced by a company. It’s an “open source” project, meaning that a large group of volunteers is constantly working to improve it. The principle behind Firefox is that not everyone browses the same way or needs the same features. So the basic version is very elegant, not cluttered with a lot of options and features. But it’s also highly expandable. There is a huge (and growing) library of add-ons called extensions which you can download to add specific features.

For example, I added a spell checker and a pop-up dictionary as well as some other handy features. By picking and choosing extensions, you can literally create a browser that does what you want it to the way you want it to. It really is quite amazing. I’ve been so impressed that, as of yesterday, Firefox is my browser of choice.

If you think you’d like an improved browser, I would recommend either Maxthon or Firefox. Both are free, so you have nothing to lose.

If you generally like IE, but would like a few extra options and features, Maxthon would be a good way to go. One big advantage to Maxthon is that it shares your Favorites with IE—if you update your Favorites in one program, they are updated in the other as well. This means if you don’t like Maxthon, you can simply uninstall it and go right back to IE.

If you are looking for a richer, more customizable browser, Firefox is definitely the way to go. Simply download it and import your Bookmarks (Favorites) from IE and you’re up and running. Then, when you’re ready, you can “go shopping” for those extra features you want to try out (extensions are very easy to install and uninstall). Give it a try. I think you’ll be as impressed as I am.