Homestead mailing list

[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

We have a number of compueniuses on this list. So how about recommendations 
to the rest of us who are tired of the pop-ups and other distracting and 
time-consuming features of Internet Explorer. What do you use?

Sampling a World of New Ways to Grapple With the Web
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: October 11, 2004

At the moment, at least eight different Web browsers reside in my computer. 
There's no earthly reason to have so many except for the slightly obsessive 
fun of it. And these are just the non-arcane browsers - the ones that 
didn't ask me to install supporting programs I don't understand. I've also 
resisted the temptation to build my own browser, which is the kind of 
project computer magazines like to publish. I know what my do-it-yourself 
browser would look like. The decals would be crooked and the paint would 
have fingerprints on it, just like the model airplanes I built as a kid.
The number and diversity of these browsers is, to me, a very hopeful sign. 
Not that long ago, Microsoft and Netscape were fighting for control of the 
computer desktop, a battle that still goes on in one form or another. 
Microsoft argued that only a browser tightly integrated with the rest of 
the operating system could deliver the seamless, gratifying Web-browsing 
experience most people hope for.
But Microsoft was wrong. These days, nobody wants to have anything tightly 
integrated with the Windows operating system, which has come to seem 
surprisingly troublesome. Windows takes a lot of care and feeding, more 
than most people want to give it. As for Internet Explorer, it has grown 
into a problem in its own right. Software developers complain about it. 
Ordinary users get sick of the pop-up fireworks. Even in corporate America 
- which finds its allegiance to Microsoft routinely tested - business users 
are being asked to switch from Explorer to the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox 
for security reasons.
What went wrong with Internet Explorer is a big subject. But one answer, 
apart from the mediocrity of the software itself, is that it sided with the 
commercial purposes of the Internet and not with the user. Explorer works 
like one of those magical doors in a horror movie: open it and the ghosts 
come flying in, swirling around your head, threatening to suck you into the 
maw of chaos. But users want control. They want to believe they have the 
power to explore the Web on their own terms. Explorer wants them to sit 
still and shut up.
A couple of years ago, I switched from Windows to Apple. The switch was, in 
many ways, a revelation. Apple's browser, Safari, seemed astonishingly 
polite, almost discreet, after the imperious behavior of Explorer. 
Switching to Safari was also a reminder of something that's obvious to 
computer geeks but not so obvious to ordinary users. A browser is just a 
way of putting a friendly face on code. Nothing more, nothing less. It 
doesn't have to become an institution. It doesn't have to metastasize.
I stuck with Safari for a time, largely on the assumption - as endemic in 
the Apple world as it is in Microsoft's - that somehow the browser built by 
the maker of the underlying operating system must be better than all the 
others. But switching from Windows to Apple prepared me to keep on 
switching. It taught me that market share means nothing in terms of 
quality. It made me wonder whether there was any inherent advantage in a 
browser that happened to be the same brand as the computer that was running 
it. The answer, it turns out, is no. These days, there is an array of 
agile, interesting browsers.
What's refreshing about these programs is their diversity. The best of them 
are astonishingly nimble. They are almost absurdly adaptable to the tastes 
and needs of the user. Most are free, and many are open source. They have 
none of the monolith about them, none of that feeling of being shackled to 
a leviathan.
For a time in the mid-90's, it looked as though the Internet, or at least 
the tools we used to view it, would be utterly co-opted by Microsoft and 
its essentially mercantile vision of the Web. Microsoft still has an 
enormous lead in market share when it comes to browsers. But we've come, in 
the browser world, to that memorable moment we came to long ago in the 
world of telephones. America woke up one day and discovered that you didn't 
need a Ma Bell telephone to use Ma Bell.