Web 2.0: Firefox, IE offer new and improved browsers
Matt Hewitt,
Grand Central Magazine
Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta
1
Internet Explorer is Web browser
of choice for about 80 percent of Internet users. Many agree it’s
not because it is the best browser per se; rather because it has been
pre-installed on every single Windows machine since Windows 98 was released,
it’s all that they know. Plus IE is good enough for most businesses
and individuals, and is compatible with almost every Web site on the
Internet.
A beta of the next version
of IE – version 8.0 – is being considered to be a game-changer in
the Web browser market. One of Microsoft’s main goals for this
release is to make IE more compliant with Internet standards.
Internet standards dictate
how a Web page should be designed according to rules outlined by the
World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.
Unfortunately this will make
it less compatible with Web pages specifically designed for the previous
version of Internet Explorer, IE 7. This problem should be solved
over time as more and more pages are redesigned with 8.0 in mind.
However this could make browsing with IE 8 a bit difficult when it is
first launched.
Since Internet Explorer 8.0
is still in beta, only a few new features are known to the general public.
One of the new features of
8.0 is a new twist on RSS feeds called Web Slices. Users can subscribe
to a specially formatted Web page and receive updated content regularly
without constantly visiting the Web site.
Instead of visiting the MSN
homepage to see if new content have been added, you can click on your
Web Slice button in your “favorite’s” folder and view the newest
featured headline and picture. It also works on Facebook by displaying
a user’s news feed without needing to see the entire Web site.
The only benefit to Web Slices over a traditional RSS feed so far is
the addition of photos. But as the Web Slice standard is further developed,
additional uses should be added.
The second main feature in
IE 8 is the “Activity” feature. Activities are a new way of
interacting with a Web site. If a Web site has an address on it,
you can easily highlight the address, click the Activities button, and
have it look up the address on Microsoft’s mapping service without
copying and pasting the information into the service.
In addition to mapping, Activities
can be customized to do many different things – from defining a selected
word on Encarta to finding a selected product on eBay and sharing a
Web site on Facebook.
Currently most options have
to do with Microsoft’s MSN and Live.com Web services. But over time
other companies’ services will be added. If you prefer Google
or Yahoo as a content provider, the activity function will eventually
support the use of those services.
IE 8 also features a slew of
new security features built into it. Along with the standard phishing
filter that prevents malicious Web sites from being displayed, the address
bar also grays out all but the domain of the website. With a focus
on the domain of the site, users can more easily tell the difference
between an official website and a clone site that is trying to steal
personal information.
Internet Explorer 8.0 Beta
2 is due by the end of summer, and will be aimed towards consumers with
a greater focus on new features and a redesigned user interface.
Firefox 3.0
Mozilla’s Firefox browser
is the main alternative to Internet Explorer. Firefox is an open
source browser, meaning developers are free to add new programs to the
browser for users to download freely. The browser is cross-platform
browser that can be installed on a Windows, Mac or Linux machine.
The newest Firefox browser,
Firefox 3.0, was released June 17 and has many new features.
Firefox has many draws, including
a customizable and themed user interface and an extensive extensions
system. Extensions can integrate with a system’s media player
or various web services to add functionality to the browser.
The most noticeable feature
is the new user interface. The UI has been updated to display
differently based on what type of system it is installed on.
This was done to give the program a more native look and feel on the
different operating systems.
Firefox 3.0 also features an
overhauled location bar. Firefox tracks all of the Web sites that
a user visits and will use this information when you begin to type a
URL or keyword into the location bar. This is useful for people
who may not bookmark every website they find interesting, but would
like to revisit previously visited sites on occasion. Gone are
the days of digging through the history entries in the browser.
The book marking system has
been completely reworked as well. Adding a site to your bookmarks
is very easy: a star icon has been added to the right of the location
bar, and once clicked, will add the site to an “unfiled” section
in your bookmarks folder.
Power users are now able to
tag different bookmarks. For instance, I could add a “blogs”
tag to all of my bookmarked blogs and when I entered “blogs” into
the location bar, all of my bookmarked blogs will appear.
Other changes are minor but
useful. For instance, the prompt for Firefox to remember a password
is non-interruptive and appears below the location bar. You can
tell Firefox to remember that password after it has logged into the
site, to ensure that you are telling it to remember the correct username
and password. Firefox 3.0 also has many memory leak fixes in addition
to considerable improvements in the speed at which Web page loads.
Stay tuned next week for breakdowns
of popular browsing alternatives Safari, Flock and Opera.
Internet Explorer 8.0 can be
downloaded for free at www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/getitnow.mspx
(Note: Be careful, it isn’t quite ready to be used regularly.)
Firefox 3.0 can be downloaded
for free at www.getfirefox.com.
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