Web Browser
Introduction
A good web browser should have not only great functionality, but also support for WebStandards. See also The Glorious People's Myth of Standards Compliance (Joe Clark) for an in-depth study of "standard compliance" issue of various browsers. The author criticizes the inablility of these browsers to support some tags that improve accessibility, e.g. LONGDESC attribute in IMG, SUMMARY in TABLE, and CITE.
It is interesting to see Firefox drawing fans away from Microsoft IE, especially web developers. Please read The Pros And Cons Of Firefox, despite the usage rate of dropping of Microsoft browser is about 2% every 3 months.
While an article in CNET suggests that one should think again before planning to dump IE, at least 5 articles in CNET also suggest that IE is headed for extinction:
- IE--embraced, extended, extinct?
- Why I dumped Internet Explorer
- The gaps in IE
- Back to the browser wars
- Looking at the competition
While occasionally flaws are found in Mozilla products, they are often fixed within days, or even hours. After the announcement of security bug bountry program at August 2, 2004, the first security bug bountry payment was given out at September 14, 2004 (500 USD for each critical security issue identified
). But How can I trust Firefox?A study shows that Firefox is still gaining on IE. In the first day of release of Firefox 1.0, there was already one million downloads.
Standard Compliance Browsers
- Netscape, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox (previously Mozilla Firebird), Camino
- Internet Explorer, NetCaptor
- Opera
- Omniweb, Safari
- iCab
- X-Smiles
- Emacspeak - the complete audio desktop
Browser Collection
Browser Tools
- Open Digital Evidence Search and Seizure Architecture
- Web Historian
- NirSoft Internet Related Utilities
- IECacheViewer