Bits & Bytes |
A Decade of Surfing the WWW by Ms. Lin MacDoss |
It's hard to believe that for most of us the Internet is only ten years old. Although the World Wide Web has actually been around since 1969, it wasn't until 1993 that the regular person could effectively use it. Before that, you needed to be some kind of Einstein just to navigate the web. It was, of course, the birth of the modern browser that made the Internet accessible to us all. The first user friendly browser, Mosaic, was born in '93 when a handful of students at the University of Illinois released the code for an easy way to access the Internet. By 1994, Mosaic Communications (later renamed Netscape Communications) was born and the World Wide Web as an outlet for the masses was off and running. Within a year, the Internet was to become synonymous with the desktop computing experience.
In those days, Netscape was by far the dominant browser, commanding a whopping 80% plus market share, hardly surprising since they had practically no competition. That was to soon change, however, when in late 1995 Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer as a component of Windows.
Microsoft was actually pretty late getting in the browser business and nearly missed the train. In early '95, Bill Gates had been quoted as saying that Microsoft wasn't interested in the Internet, and that his company would continue to focus on desktop computing. Within months, however, the company was singing a different tune and Internet Explorer was born.
The fact that the Microsoft browser was free, already installed as part of Windows, pretty much doomed Netscape's dominance as the defacto browser of choice. By 1999, Internet Explorer replaced Netscape as the most popular browser and by 2001 Netscape's market share had fallen to well under 5%. The mighty Microsoft had won the browser wars.
Since effectively wiping-out the competition, Microsoft has all but abandoned further development of Internet Explorer, and the browser used by the overwhelming majority of Web surfers is now an obsolete and featureless application. It remains dominant only because it's easy and free. User's don't have to do anything to get it, there's nothing to download, it's already installed on a computer when it's brought home from the store.
But browser development has continued, and there are many browsers available that are feature rich and greatly enhance the Internet experience:
Mozilla: As far as Ms. MacDoss is concerned, Mozilla is absolutely the best browser on the market and, as an open source application, it's free. This is actually the same browser as the most current version of Netscape, but without the spyware and other malicious code that AOL (who now owns Netscape) thinks you need. Features include tabbed browsing (meaning that you can open several web sites at once in the same window and tab back and forth between them) and built-in web searching, both essential features for those who do a lot of Web based research. Mozilla will also block all pop-up and pop-under ads and comes with an excellent email client. The browser is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS X and can be downloaded at http://mozilla.org.
Opera: This commercial release is another great browser that puts Internet Explorer to shame. Like Mozilla, Opera offers tabbed browsing, ad blocking, and an email client. It also has a reputation for displaying pages faster than any other browser on the market. This is a very good browser for older computers, since the program size is extremely small. You can either get a copy for free, with a banner ad tucked-away in the menu section, or can purchase an ad-free copy for $39. Opera is available for Windows, Linux, MacOS X and many other platforms and can be downloaded at http://www.opera.com.
Safari: This new web browser was developed by Apple as the default browser for MacOS X. I haven't had a chance to test drive this one (Ms. MacDoss doesn't have access to a Mac), but it's quickly gaining a reputation as one of the hottest browsers going. This is somewhat surprising since it's based on Konqueror, a pretty mediocre browser that's included with all Linux distributions. However, the folks at Apple have evidently done a great job of tweaking Safari to produce a turbo-charged lightening quick browser, with all of the features you would expect. Unfortunately, this one is only available for Mac OS X, but Apple is giving their enhancements back to the open source community, which should mean that Linux users will see a new and improved Konqueror soon.
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2003 by AlternativeApproaches.com
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