Alternative Browsers: Why Use Only One?
June 27th, 2008 (4:00pm) Samuel Dean 21 Comments
When it comes to browsers, most web workers rely on the usual suspects: Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera. There are many alternative browsers, though, and some of them are useful for targeted types of tasks. Here are six examples that I like.
Camino is a favorite with many users in the Mac community. It’s based on the Gecko rendering engine, which Firefox is also based on, and many users favor it for its lightning-fast speed, which includes opening and closing itself very quickly.
Flock is an extremely popular browser for people who do social networking. It has many social networking features built right in, and its whole interface caters to media you share with others, the channels they are on, and more. In its new version, it also integrates tightly with Gmail, letting you instantly access your Gmail messages and sending all messages in Flock through Gmail, if you wish.
K-Meleon is an open source browser which, like Camino, is known for its fast speeds. It load and unloads very quickly, and is based on the Gecko rendering engine used by Camino and Firefox. There are many third-party plug-ins available for it.
OmniWeb is based on Apple’s WebCore technology, which also drives Safari. Handy feature: You can save your sessions as workspaces and then come back to them.
Konqueror is an open source browser that functions as both the browser and file manager for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). If you haven’t gotten into KDE, there’s a new version in beta now, and free.
The OffByOne browser is an extremely small and fast application, with a footprint of about a megabyte. I wouldn’t it use it for every task, but I keep it on a USB thumb drive I carry and occasionally use it for quick-and-dirty tasks.
Do you use any alternative browsers?
21 Comments Post your own comment
Ramesh | The Geek Stuff says: June 27th, 2008 4:35pm
Why Use Only One? Because the one (firefox) is the best of all browsers and no other browser even comes close to it.
Ramesh
The Geek Stuff
Ken says: June 27th, 2008 4:45pm
If you do data analysis with data from local files, external databases, web data and/or web APIs, Kirix Strata (http://www.kirix.com/) is a specialty “data browser” for this sort of thing. It incorporates Gecko for the web rendering.
There are some other specialty browsers out there besides Flock too — like Spacetime (3D browsing), Wyzo (media browser). For general browsing though, it’s hard to beat Firefox and, in particular, their cadre of extensions.
marjorie5 says: June 27th, 2008 5:35pm
I recently started using the Colorful Tabs add-on for Firefox and now it is my favorite. I try to use Flock, but like my grandma would say, it is a little too busy. I’d rather have 2 monitors than everything all going on at once.
Ryan says: June 27th, 2008 5:40pm
Sunrise for sure –
http://sunrisebrowser.com/en/index.html
Open source, mac, based on WebKit.
I use the “print web page as one-page pdf” very often. Creates a pdf with a page size the length of the website.
Visual bookmarks, download by url, a few other cool features.
Good developer browser.
Edward Kovarski says: June 27th, 2008 8:08pm
Shiira (http://shiira.jp/en) is a decent browser as well but unfortunately it has not been updated in a while.
FireWolf says: June 27th, 2008 8:55pm
Samuel,
I truly love Firefox for plenty of reasons (plugins, configurability, ad blocking, woot plugins, etc) but Offby1 really intrigued me as I use portableapps on a 6gb usb drive and wanted a faster browser that the 2.x FF that was included.
OB1 was truly a wonderful program and I see the usefulness of programs like these at places where people work and don’t want to make it obvious that they’re killing time on the corporate dime.
But, because I like the speed at which it runs and loads websites I will likely recommend it to friends, colleagues, and fam for their use. Thanks!
Anshul says: June 28th, 2008 1:04am
didn’t know tequila makers make web browsers too.
camino…
Sheri Larsen says: June 28th, 2008 6:42am
I just switched from Firefox 3 to the new Flock Beta and I love it! It makes keeping up with my various online profiles so much easier.
Justin Cresswell says: June 28th, 2008 7:29am
Ugh. As long as we don’t have to check compatibility on all of these pieces of fringe freeware, I guess it’s fine. Otherwise, this proliferation makes the design and development staff fume. Can you say “No!” to IE8?
Memo says: June 28th, 2008 3:51pm
I’ve been a fan of both The World Browser 2.0 and Avant, and run them off my thumb drive. They’re fast and come with lots of customizable features, skins, and of course, tabbed browsing.
Samuel says: June 28th, 2008 4:52pm
I hadn’t heard of several of these, thanks!
@Firewolf, that Offby1 browser is really cool in its own way. Glad you like it. It’s good to have on a USB key.
Samuel
iLibrarian » Six Alternative Browsers says: June 29th, 2008 9:43am
[...] Opera and want to test drive an alternative, the latest article from Web Worker Daily presents an annotated list of six that you might [...]
Eric Boehnisch-Volkmann says: June 30th, 2008 12:44am
Of course I need to add DEVONagent here which is first a powerful Internet research tool but also a fast and simple web browser.
(Disclaimer: I am the President of DEVONtechnologies)
Edward says: June 30th, 2008 9:37am
As a developer, I love testing new software tools. But the web isn’t as nice a place as it once was. My web browser needs to be secure enough to handle it.
I use Firefox almost exclusively because of the availability of the “Web of Trust” and “NoScript” add-ons that make Firefox much safer.
- Edward
(Programmer and Security Geek)
Tips Supremo says: July 1st, 2008 7:10am
Firefox has a Portable Edition (on USB drive) as well.
Zara says: July 2nd, 2008 2:33am
The Opera browser is a fantastic browser to try, and most of the add-ons in Firefox have a built-in equivalent in Opera.
(Disclaimer: I work for Opera.)
Cathy says: July 2nd, 2008 1:51pm
I’ve rediscovered SeaMonkey (Mozilla product) and I couldn’t be happier. I encountered a few bugs with Firefox 3 so switched over to SM and havn’t gone back. Built-in HTML editor, email, chat all in the browser window. I think I’m in love.
Lisa M. says: July 2nd, 2008 4:35pm
Like others who have commented, I’ve used some of these other browsers and found that you just can’t beat Firefox for security, ease of use, compatibility, and extensibility.
Browsersphere » Blog Archive » Around the Browsersphere #11 says: July 11th, 2008 8:00pm
[...] Web Worker Daily points to the Off By One Browser, which has “a footprint of about a megabyte.” I think I may have mentioned it here before because I recognize the website, but it doesn’t hurt to drop its name here again. [...]
the one says: July 26th, 2008 7:19pm
I think I’ll stay with my safari browser…
Blog.WSG.net » Blog Archive » Make it stop! No more alternative browsers! says: March 17th, 2009 11:47am
[...] make it stop, the growth in browsers, that is. Web Worker Daily felt the need to push some of the fringe browsers in a post today. Most design and development people will check for usability on Firefox (2.0 or 3.0), IE6 and 7, [...]