Which is the best? It all depends on what you need from a browser.įor example, Camino is for those who want a simple, basic browser, while Maxthon is overflowing with every power feature in the book.
They chose 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). We asked three of our writers to take some lesser-known browsers out for a spin and see how they do. In fact, with the exception of Google's Chrome (which made a big splash, mostly because it came from Google), most of the alternative browsers out there tend to get lost in the shuffle.Īnd it's too bad, because some of these relatively unknown browsers are good - and could be better for some users than the ones they're using now. Virtual machine shootout: Virtual PC vs.When Microsoft, Mozilla, or Apple comes out with a new version of Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, it makes news - mainly because most of us use one or more of these three Web browsers. PowerPC on Apple: An Architectural History, Part I Multicore, dual-core, and the future of Intel Next: Safari, Camino, Mozilla, and the final draw OmniGroup promises version 5.0 will support "multiple page browsing in a single window." If they can continue to keep pace with Safari in terms of development and rendering speed, improve standards compliance, and add tab-like functionality with version 5.0 (slated to ship by year-end), this could be the best browser for OS X. Also, OmniWeb makes use of "drawers," where the browser history and bookmarks slide out from the right-hand side of the browser. Additionally the preference pane is very well organized and allows a high degree of customization with regard to user preferences. On the other hand, OmniWeb has a number of nice touches that make it a pleasure to use. Interestingly enough, despite using the same WebCore engine as Safari, it didn't fare quite as well on CSS1 test and its page rendering is slower. For instance, as I write this, OmniWeb has been sitting idle for about 8 hours with MacNN loaded and it's using 18.1% of my CPU cycles according to top. OmniWeb crashed each time I tried to load the W3C CSS1 test site and also takes up excessive CPU cycles when idling in the background. There is really no good reason to use this anymore. I cannot remember the last time I had to launch it to access a web site. Internet Explorer: This was the application that everyone would keep a copy of in their Applications folder for those peculiar web sites that OmniWeb and Mozilla couldn't quite get properly. Perhaps iCab would be better served to concentrate on supporting older, pre-OS X machines. ICab: What's the point? It's support for CSS is utterly lacking and it absolutely butchers complex pages, both compliant and noncompliant. Bookmark importing didn't go smoothly as it couldn't read the bookmarks.html file used by OmniWeb and it also didn't know the default location for its bookmarks to be stored. It also takes getting used to, as the placement of some browser elements is different from what Mac users are probably used to. When loading the CSS tests, I often had to hit "Reload" in order to get the page to render. Given the test results, more attention should be paid to standards compliance and basic functionality. Opera: Opera intends to get feature parity between all platforms for version 7.0. In addition to the tests outlined above, each of the browsers were used as the "default" browser for a period of time to see what kind of issues came up in the course of everyday use. They can all run Java applets and handle Flash and other media-intensive websites.
With the exception of Internet Explorer, they all offer pop-up blocking. The Mozilla and WebCore-based browsers consistently perform the best, but Mozilla, Firebird, and Camino work with most sites. Needs to improve standards supportĪll of the browsers tested offer tabbed browsing, if that's your thing, with the exception of OmniWeb and Internet Explorer. Should only get better as it progresses past version 1.0. Safari is now my default browser, and I rarely have to switch to another browser for specific sites. Very poor contextual menu implementation.Renders most sites quickly and properly.Rapid adoption � new browser of choice for many Apple users and web developers are beginning to account for it in development.