Introduction: A Substantial Review of the Top 4 Web Browsers in the Planet Today – Part 1 of 5
We’ve been hearing, seeing and reading lots of reviews, reports and news about web browsers over the past years. Review sites like 10TopTenReviews and Download.com have been very consistent in publishing information that can guide shoppers on their purchasing decisions as well as influence marketers on their search for more effective and measureable ways to drive brand awareness and sales. Online magazines like PCMag and PCWorld are also known for publishing great reviews and benchmarks of various products including gadgets, hardware components and software.
In this series of posts, I will talk about four of the most reviewed, purchased and talked about web browser products in the planet today. These are the Google Chrome, Opera (by Opera Software), Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer web browsers.
While review sites can be good sources of information, I also think that consolidating those reviews, fresh updates from the company behind the web browser itself, and statistical reports published by most trusted companies in this line of business today can also help in providing better insights to the consumers.
In my brief but detailed review of those four web browsers, these are the main categories that I am going to cover.
Apps
While there are thousands of cool apps these web browser companies have on their stores, what’s more interesting to talk about with web apps is their market performance. How many uses these apps, to which browser are they using them, and what does the company do to their apps with respect to the consumer market’s behaviour; I think these are all good points to explore. An excellent source of these kinds of information is Flurry Analytics.
Reviews
I’ve mentioned earlier a few companies that can provide us with insightful ideas about web browsers. SoftwareInsider is another well-trusted review site that can share us numbers to crunch, ratings to think about, and stats to analyze. Other sources will be shared as we move on to our review.
User Interface
Yes. It’s the UI that brings the first and last impression – the time when we finally decide to switch to another web browser and leave the old one with the number of stars it deserves. While I honestly have no hands-on experience with Opera, I will download the desktop version - the Opera for Computers – to try it myself and then share my assessment.
And speaking of UI, it’s really the features that count. Accessibility features like access keys, mouse gesture, tab browsing, voice control, and page zooming will be checked, if they’re good or not.
Privacy and Security
Setting your browser to “Incognito mode” may allow you to surf the net leaving no trace behind. But there are more than fifteen other checkboxes under the Settings menu that you have to really look into if you want to maintain your online privacy and internet security. If you’re a serious observer during app installations on your devices, you could have noticed that there are various terms and conditions that you have to accept before clicking the “install” button. Or if you’ve noticed statements like “This app has access to”, then I think you’re completely with me on matters about privacy and security. We will check how web browser companies handle these stuffs for us.
Standards Support
Does it support HTML5, XSLT and SVG? A little bit technical to grasp for non-developers but we will go over with these standards and translate it to the language average consumers can understand, if really necessary.
I also want to check the Help Desks these web browser companies have built for us. Mozilla, for example, has a dedicated support site. Even before you compose that complaint report, Mozilla may request you to read first their Help Topics. One of the support topics on their support page is about how to fix slowness, crashing, error messages and other problems.
Extensibility
If you’re thinking of “Extensions” which you can add to your browser for extra features and services, then you almost got it right. Extensibility is actually a systemic measure of the ability to extend a system and the level of effort required to implement the extension. Extensibility enables developers to expand or add to the software’s capabilities. In other words, both users and developers can benefit from a web browser with wide-ranging extensibility.
How secure are those extensions? Will they slow down your browser? We will find out.
Critics, analysts, technologists, and marketers have been used to the adage of “browser wars”. Usage share, market share, desktop share, mobile share; are they really in war for money and popularity? If Internet Explorer reigns supreme on market share and Google Chrome continues to lead on usage share, then what’s the impact of that to consumers like you?
The answers to your questions, doubts and concerns, I’ll try to resonate them on my reviews.
The next post is my review of Google Chrome.
