Browser Wars

Safari is Apple's own entry into the browser market. Originally it was restricted to the Mac, but has recently released for Windows, as well. Safari offers native RSS support, rather than requiring another application to manage feeds. It supports tabbed browsing. It comes free on every Mac sold. However, the current version for Mac, Safari 3 still in beta and is available for free download on both Mac and Windows. It can also import bookmarks from any other browser.

Firefox is another free web browser provided by Mozilla. Firefox is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It is open-source software, meaning not only is it free, anyone can mess with the browser's code, tweak it, upgrade it, and enhance it. There is a community surrounding this browser and they help to keep it updated. It works well with its companion email program, Thunderbird. It can show RSS headlines, but requires Thunderbird for email and the ability to read RSS articles in full. It has a phishing filter, which can help a user from inadvertently revealing sensitive information online. It is also "skinnable," meaning its appearance can be easily changed with third-party skins. It can import settings from Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, and Opera. It can also import bookmarks in the form of an HTML file.

Camino is a browser offered exclusively for the Mac. It is a free download and is open source. It does not offer native RSS support. However, it can detect feeds and will allow you to set up an external RSS feed reader. Like the other two browsers mentioned here, it supports tabbed browsing. It includes a built-in spell checker and it can save your last session for when you decide to reopen Camino. This will store all the windows and tabs you had open as well as data for the Forward and Back buttons. From a technical standpoint, there really is not much of a difference between Camino and Firefox, other than the organizations that maintain them.

In the wake of Internet Explorer 7, it looks like Mozilla will take a big bite out of Microsoft's browser market share with Firefox. It could go either way on the Mac with Safari and Firefox. IE is not a factor on the Mac anymore as Microsoft has long since stopped developing its web browser for the Mac platform. Microsoft Windows users will not have a hard time finding a free browser with IE7, Firefox, and a whole host of others. WIth more and more people, malware authors and hackers will have a more difficult time damaging people's systems. When a single browser, Internet Explorer, has 80% to 90% browser market share, it makes them a very large target for the jerks out on the internet. Also, Internet Explorer is directly linked to its operating system, Windows, and is used as the file browser on the computer's internal hard drive. The others listed are not so closely entwined with the systems that they are on.

Personally, I prefer Safari and Firefox. I use Safari primarily for reading my many RSS feeds and Firefox for tabbed browsing and broadcasting. As long as I keep both of them up to date, they rarely fail me. Also, I downloaded and tried out Camino. I thought it looked very clean and elegant. Its specs were pretty good. However, I did not think it was compelling enough to adopt permanently.