Site Map
Your Current Location is in Yellow
Browser Wars
Browser Wars
No contest. MicroSoft Internet Explorer is the best browser available overall. It renders HTML 4.0, stylesheets and JavaScript better than any other browser, and it's much quicker loading and navigating than Netscape. If you really don’t want to have anything to do with Bill Gate$’ outfit, try NeoPlanet. Functionally, NeoPlanet is just about as good as MSIE at rendering HTML 4.0 and CSS. I personally don’t care for the navigation bar setup, but that’s about my only complaint.The World Wide Web Consortium has it’s own browser, Amaya, which they supposedly use in developing and testing the HTML Recommendation (specs to most of us). Either I received a corrupted version or this browser is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Not only did it not do a very good job rendering official HTML, it made my pages just plain ugly. Colors were completely off (as in pus yellow in place of the dark red I specified) and the page layout was completely wacky.
Another touted browser, Opera, was pretty ho-hum. Just couldn’t handle most of the more exotic code. The really surprising thing was the hype versus the reality. Opera touts the stability of their browser. I downloaded and installed Opera. With much anticipation, I opened the browser — and it promptly crashed. I know this browser has ardent, almost sycophantic supporters, but from what I’ve heard from these people, this loyalty stems in large part from general disgust with Bill Gates and frustration with the foot-dragging Netscape. It is a leaner file, takes up less space on your hard drive . . . but it is just too light-weight; sort of like trying to use a Swiss army knife to build a house.
Ah yes, Netscape Navigator/Communicator. Well, the fact that AOL bought into Netscape about the time MSIE was finally getting a decent browser together should tell you something. AOL has been especially adroit at backing loser technology — like out-of-date MSIE browsers and the .art graphics format. Netscape, once the leader, the innovator, the genius that brought us frames and JavaScript, cannot or will not get its browser up to speed. I have had to rewrite pages on many occasions in an effort to accommodate Netscape. Sure, if you write your pages in HTML 3.2 without using any stylesheets or style declarations, Netscape does okay. But if you want to use any of the HTML techniques developed in the past two years, Netscape simply will not do. An example of a perfectly good page scrambled by Netscape.
People do still use Lynx and some of the other primitive browsers, but I don’t think those are worth considering except for purely academic use.
My recommendation: Get the latest version of MS Internet Explorer (if your computer can handle it) or NeoPlanet. If you want to do some swift academic surfing, just turn off graphics and JavaScript.
Downloads:
- Internet Explorer -- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/
- NeoPlanet -- http://www.neoplanet.com
Copyright © 1999 Carlton Higginbotham, Meade Street Productions.
No part of this site, including graphics and text, may be reproduced without
written permission. Please post questions and comments on the
Forum
Last updated GMT
