• The Top 5 Web Browsers

  

  Written by bug 11 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 6, 2008

  The text your eyes are currently reading is being displayed to you via a digital medium commonly known as a Web Browser. Quite simply, a web browser is a piece of software that interfaces with an active internet connection to allow the user to display websites, transfer files and display media. Over the years web browsers have been upgraded, retooled and fancified to display websites faster, more securely, and with style. Here at Old-Wizard.com we’re obviously heavy users of the internet, often hogging bandwidth at our homes, friend’s houses and free wireless hot spots along the way. We have used several different types of web browsers and in the spirit of Old-Wizard, we decided it was time to post our top five web browsers list.

  5. Safari

  Originally bundled with Mac operating systems, this web browser was only in use by a small percentage of the computing world. As Mac has grown in popularity over the past few years, so has their web browser, Safari. A unique and fun name accompanied this quick browser yet for most of its life it has been available for only Mac operating systems. The release of Safari for Windows operating systems was long awaited and anticipated. Wrapped in a silver skin, this program offered a fresh look to traditional Windows programs, yet this was overshadowed by the tremendous lack of speed Safari offered. This dramatically affected the release of Safari for Windows, yet the traditional product has been working great with its home base Mac operating systems. Safari offered a nice feature of automatically resizing windows with ease when the user wanted a differently sized window. The zooming and resizing features in Safari were one of the first and have been enjoyed by its users. Development has continued on the Windows version of this product yet this is not their primary market. Conquering the Mac market was a breeze, as it was the default choice for all Mac computers in the world. Overall this product is gaining popularity and is nice enough to offer development for both Mac and Windows. Old-wizard.com enjoys sharing, so we are in agreement that this is one of the better web browsers, finding itself at five.

  4. Internet Explorer

  Ah yes, another fine product from the monopoly loving company Microsoft. This web browser is often ranked as the most popular web browser on the planet, yet this is largely to do with the fact that most people just settle for what is standard. This web browser is actually built into the operating system known as Windows XP, and is the standard bundled “option” found with all Microsoft operating systems. Until recently Internet Explorer has had huge security flaws, and lacked any sort of imaginative design. The newest product, still in beta testing, is Internet Explorer 7. The streamlined features with this new version made many people feel lost within a product that they use on a daily basis. The menus disappeared and were replaced with icons, and when you click on the icons they just bring up a menu where everything is hidden. This could be considered as an advancement, yet we consider it as just a cover-up and attempt to mock Firefox. Internet Explorer maybe preinstalled into most computers on the planet, yet the lack of cross platform usage makes them rank only fourth on our list. The backing and development of Microsoft Corporation makes this product stable and secure, but in no means number one.

  3. Flock

  What the Flock? Many may find themselves asking this question, as this word is popping up more and more in daily conversation, and on several websites, invading your computer. Flock is an up and coming web browser that is strongly based upon the feeling of community. A sleek looking product that resembles Firefox with more shapely outlines and curves. It is almost as if they tried to take the best features of Firefox and Internet Explorer, and meld myspace, facebook and youtube into the same window. Flock can pull statuses from your favorite social websites, such as updates from your friends status window in Facebook. It streamlines this data, from multiple sources, and puts it within your web browser for easy access. This is like using an upgraded version of Firefox, yet it lacks in some of its base features such as favorites organization and sharing. We can defiantly see this product getting more attention in a very short amount of time as the social network sites such as Facebook and Myspace are launching into super popular web applications. Flock also caters to the blogger community, offering the same sort of streamlined updates as for the other sites. Due to its young age, this browser does not have the popularity or user base of other browsers, but it is definitely something to keep an eye out for. Go ahead, install it and check it out, perhaps it will replace your copy of Internet Explorer.

  2. Opera

  Opera finds itself second in this list of competitors because of the massive amount of platforms, or operating systems, that it supports. In its dossier you can find versions supporting Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, BSD and several versions for cell phones and PDA based platforms. Sharing is caring, and Opera has shown us all how to do so. Another great advantage of this browser is that it is self sufficient for its security features, not dependent on the built in security measures of the platform it is being run on. Usability for this browser is very easy for users to get a hang of, and it actually displays pages with fewer errors than Internet Explorer. Opera also finds itself supporting widgets, which are small web applications, with ease. Users can customize their widgets to feed them different streaming information straight to their desktop. Although it is not as popular as the plugins for Firefox, these widgets go along with the same thought process and are enjoyed by many people every day. A clean looking and functional web browser finds itself in the shadows of Firefox and internet explorer, yet actually offer the user a much more engaging web experience than Internet Explorer. Keep up the good development Opera, as we enjoy how you share your fresh application with almost every possible computer platform on planet Earth.”

  1. Firefox

  The web browser that finds itself at the number one poll position of our list is Firefox. Taking the internet by storm as of late, many users have enjoyed this product because it was a fresh and interesting alternative to the boring and forced upon Internet Explorer. One of the main factors for this product’s popularity was its pure speed at which it could load pages. Zipping through different websites is of course most dependent on the speed of your connection, yet browsing with this superior browser can increase even the tiny sliver percentage of users still using dial up internet. Of course Firefox is secure, if not even more secure than its competitors and is offered for several operating systems. Tabbed browsing was one of the most amazing features introduced by Firefox; allowing users to have multiple web pages open within a single Firefox screen. Increasing productivity and allowing users to have several pages at their fingertips is another huge advantage to this product. Continuing with the list of great features included in Firefox is all of the optional plug-ins that it offers. StumbleUpon, one of the most popular plugins, allows users to select what topics they are interested it and “stumble” through pages that coincide with their likes. If the user enjoys the page, they give it a thumbs up, the program learns and shows more pages like that. If you give it a thumbs down, the opposite happens, and the viewer sees fewer pages with the same content. A community has been created with StumbleUpon users, where links can be shared and sent directly to other users instantly. The popularity of the plugins offered through Firefox, the speed and security of this product, and the cross platform support makes this our favorite web browser on the market. Old-Wizard.com fully supports the use of Firefox, and recommends it for viewing of our content. Enjoy the fox!

11 Comments

1. #1 Inet Fiend says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

   I can’t believe I stumbled upon this amazing list! So odd too because I had a dream last night, with the exact same 5 browers….in the same order! splendid!
2. #2 YUDO says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 5:09 pm

   Internet explorer should be on the worst browser list
3. #3 Famardy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

   Yeah Firefox FTW!
4. #4 Tristan says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 8:06 pm

   As hard as it was to leave the bandwagon, I now favor IE7 over Firefox. The main reason for this is that IE7 gives me a much more lightweight browsing experience. I work in tech support, and if I need to quickly open a browser to test a particular website or online feature, IE7 saves me time over Firefox.

   This is an argument from practicality, and I can’t see how a Firefox user can dismiss IE on these grounds. IE5/6 certainly sucked, so there was a massive gap in quality between those programs and Firefox. But now, with IE7, the direction and size of the gap is just a matter of preference.
5. #5 Bug says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:43 pm

   I too work in tech support for a living, firefox launches much quicker than IE7, on several computers for me. It is more secure and much more lightweight than IE7. Plus they pioneered the tabbed browsing, which IE7 just copied to keep up with the development of Firefox…
6. #6 Tristan says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

   I guess the “your mileage may vary” caveat applies.

   Then again, the “pioneering” criterion doesn’t matter to me, as what I am evaluating is the current piece of software, not the history of it. Why? Because claims about IE7 copying Firefox are irrelevant to the performance of the software. It’s shallow of me to base my decision to use Firefox on who did tabs first.
7. #7 toolboy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

   I like Firefox but i love Opera. I use them both for different purposes. But i must admit Opera has been a little buggy the last couple updates. I love the mouse gesture feature,session saving especially if you crash, widgets are kind of cool, skins are also nice if you want to change the look, the wand for passworded sites, truly customizable toolbar, and alot of other features but the speed for fast web surfing is the main reason i use it, and mouse gestures. I know the others have mouse gestures but its all built in to Operea. No looking for plugins.
8. #8 Monkeyboy says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 9:24 pm

   “Tabbed browsing was one of the most amazing features introduced by Firefox;”

   I believe this was present in Opera long before I ever heard of Firefox… but I might be mistaken.
9. #9 roberto says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:27 pm

   dear old-dong.com, what the flock indeed
10. #10 xolroc says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 12:40 am

    What about Chrome?