NEWSLETTER AND A QUESTION

NEWSLETTER

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WHAT INTERNET BROWSER DO YOU USE ?

When we teach the Email and Internet Course at SeniorNet we only teach Internet Explorer as it is the one used by most people. However there are alternatives – Firefox – Chrome or even Opera

What you want to use depends - personal preferences, the browser wars, your computer's security and even global anti-trust lawsuits.

The browser debate began back when the web consisted of not much more than bulletin boards. Microsoft created IE to view these webpages. When Microsoft tightly integrated the browser into Windows, making it a critical part of the operating system, industry pundits (correctly as it turned out) lamented this as a disaster waiting to happen.

It wasn't long before the baddies targeted IE, exploiting its many security holes. So many viruses were created to exploit IE that the browser became by proxy the most efficient virus propagation software never written. Because IE is still integrated tightly into Windows, there is no feasible way for the average user to remove it.

Parallel to IE's development several other browsers were also on the boil, the most popular of which was Netscape Navigator. Navigator was far ahead of its time, but like many its bubble burst and the browser evaporated.

IE thus became the most popular browser not because it was the best, but because it was there.

A while back, Mozilla, the coding team behind the original Netscape suite, resurrected their code and split things up. We now know its programs as Firefox, Thunderbird, Sea Monkey, Lightning, Camino, Nvu and Kompozer.

The language used to build web pages is not standardised, so many pages built for IE do not look right in any other browser. This remains a huge headache for web developers who must test sites using multiple browsers. This is also the biggest complaint from people changing from IE to another browser - their favourite sites may not look the same and in extreme cases not render at all.

Most of us using alternative browsers reluctantly resort to IE when we absolutely must view such pages. Try them all and stick with the one you like best.