Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera are some of the most popular web browsers currently available. They each have different histories, features and market shares. This document provides an overview of the key details and differences between these major browsers.

1. PUNJAB COLLEGE OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION
LUDHIANA
REPORT
ON
BROWSER WAR
Submitted to Submitted by
Mrs. Amandeep Kaur Chintan Trikha
PCTE Jasmeen Kaur
Vajender Singh
MCA-3
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2. CONTENT
1. Introduction
2. History
3. Types of Browser
3.1 Opera
3.2 Internet Explorer
3.3 Mozilla Firefox
3.4 Safari
3.5 Google chrome
4. Advantages and Disadvantage
5. Comparison
6. Working
7. Future Scope
8. Conclusion
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3. Introduction
A Web browser is a software application which enables a user to display and interact with text,
images, videos, music, games and other information typically located on a Web page at a Web
site on the World Wide Web or a local area network. Text and images on a Web page can
contain hyperlinks to other Web pages at the same or different Web site. Web browsers allow a
user to quickly and easily access information provided on many Web pages at many Web sites
by traversing these links. Web browsers format HTML information for display, so the
appearance of a Web page may differ between browsers.
There are two types of web browsers
Textual web browsers: - in these types of web browsers we can only see the text, but not
graphics. E.g. Alynx, WebbIE , w3m
Graphical web browsers: - in this type of web browsers we can see text as well as graphics
also. Example- internet explorer, opera, safari etc
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4. History
The history of the Web browser dates back to late 1980s, when a variety of technologies laid the
foundation for the first Web browser, the WorldWideWeb, by Tim Berners-Lee in 1991. That
browser brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware technologies.
Over the following years, Web browsers were introduced by companies like Mozilla, Netscape,
Microsoft, Apple, and Opera. More recently, Google entered the browser market.
Current web browsers: - Some of the Web browsers currently available for personal computers
include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, Avant browser, Konqueror, Lynx,
Google Chrome, Maxthon, Flock, Arachne, Epiphany, K-Meleon and AOL Explorer.
Protocols and standards: - Web browsers communicate with Web servers primarily using
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to fetch Web pages. HTTP allows Web browsers to submit
information to Web servers as well as fetch Web pages from them. The most-commonly-used
version of HTTP is HTTP/1.1, which is fully defined in RFC 2616. HTTP/1.1 has its own
required standards that Internet Explorer does not fully support, but most other current-
generation Web browsers do.
Pages are located by means of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator, RFC 1738), which is treated
as an address, beginning with http: for HTTP transmission. Many browsers also support a variety
of other URL types and their corresponding protocols, such as gopher: for Gopher (a hierarchical
hyperlinking protocol), ftp: for File Transfer Protocol (FTP), rtsp: for Real-time Streaming
Protocol (RTSP), and https: for HTTPS (HTTP Secure, which is HTTP augmented by Secure
Sockets Layer or Transport Layer Security).
The file format for a Web page is usually HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and is
identified in the HTTP protocol using a MIME content type. Most browsers natively support a
variety of formats in addition to HTML, such as the JPEG, PNG and GIF image formats, and can
be extended to support more through the use of plugins. The combination of HTTP content type
and URL protocol specification allows Web-page designers to embed images, animations, video,
sound, and streaming media into a Web page, or to make them accessible through the Web page.
Early Web browsers supported only a very simple version of HTML. The rapid development of
proprietary Web browsers led to the development of non-standard dialects of HTML, leading to
problems with Web interoperability. Modern Web browsers support a combination of standards-
based and HTML and XHTML, which should be rendered in the same way by all browsers. No
browser fully supports HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.x or CSS 2.1 yet. Many sites are designed using
WYSIWYG HTML-generation programs such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.
Microsoft FrontPage often generates non-standard HTML by default, hindering the work of the
W3C in promulgating standards, specifically with XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS),
which are used for page layout. Dreamweaver and other more modern Microsoft HTML
4

5. development tools such as Microsoft Expression Web and Microsoft Visual Studio conform to
the W3C standards.
Some of the more popular browsers include additional components to support Usenet news,
Internet Relay Chat (IRC), and e-mail. Protocols supported may include Network News Transfer
Protocol (NNTP), Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), Internet Message Access Protocol
(IMAP), and Post Office Protocol (POP). These browsers are often referred to as "Internet
suites" or "application suites" rather than merely Web browsers.
Web protocols:-
file: read a file from disk
ftp: connect to a ftp site
gopher: connect to a gopher server
http: visit a web page
mailto: start a mail program
news: open a news reader
telnet: connect to a remote computer
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6. TYPES OF BROWSER
1) Opera
Opera is a web browser and Internet suite developed by the Opera Software company. Opera
handles common Internet-related tasks such as displaying web sites, sending and receiving e-
mail messages, managing contacts, IRC online chatting, downloading files via BitTorrent, and
reading web feeds. Opera is offered free of charge for personal computers and mobile phones.
Opera runs on a variety of personal computer operating systems, including Microsoft Windows,
Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. It is currently the fourth most widely used web
browser for personal computers, behind Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari.
Opera has a stronger market share, however, on mobile devices such as mobile phones,
smartphones, and personal digital assistants. Editions of Opera are available for devices using the
Symbian and Windows Mobile operating systems, as well as Java ME-enabled devices. In fact,
approximately 40 million mobile phones have shipped with Opera pre-installed. Furthermore,
Opera is the only commercial web browser available for the Nintendo DS and Wii gaming
systems
History
Opera began in 1994 as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications
company. In 1995, it branched out into a separate company named Opera Software ASA. Opera
was first released publicly with version 2.0 in 1996, which only ran on Microsoft Windows. In
an attempt to capitalize on the emerging market for Internet-connected handheld devices, a
project to port Opera to mobile device platforms was started in 1998. Opera 4.0, released in
2000, included a new cross-platform core that facilitated creation of editions of Opera for
multiple operating systems and platforms.
Up to this point, Opera was trialware and had to be purchased after the trial period ended. But
version 5.0 (released in 2000) saw the end of this requirement. Instead, Opera became ad-
sponsored, displaying advertisements to users who had not paid for it. Later versions of Opera
gave the user the choice of seeing banner ads or targeted text advertisements from Google. With
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7. version 8.5 (released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely and primary financial
support for the browser came through revenue from Google.
Among the new features introduced in version 9.1 (released in 2006) was fraud protection using
technology from GeoTrust, a digital certificate provider, and PhishTank, an organization that
tracks known phishing web sites. This feature was further improved and expanded in version 9.5,
when GeoTrust was replaced with Netcraft, and malware protection from Haute Secure was
added.
Features
Tabbed Browsing: It allows multiple documents to be contained within a single window,
Tabbed web browsers often allow users to save their browsing session and return to it later.
Page Zooming: It is the ability to zoom in and out at page level. Page zooming allows text,
images and other content such as Adobe Flash Player, Java platform and Scalable Vector
Graphics to be increased or decreased in size (20% to 1,000%) to help those with impaired
vision.
Download manager: It is a computer program dedicated to the task of downloading.its features
are
a pausing the downloading of large files.
resuming broken or paused downloads (especially for very large files).
downloading files on poor connections.
Opera Turbo: is a feature intended for slower internet connections; when enabled, Opera's
servers act as a proxy which compresses the requested web page by up to 80% before sending it
to the user. This process reduces the total size of the data being sent, and thus shortens the
amount of time necessary for the page to load.
Logo of Opera:-
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8. 2) Internet Explorer
Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer; abbreviated to MSIE or, more
commonly, IE), is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as
part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It has been the most
widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak of about 95% usage share during 2002 and
2003 with IE5 and IE6.
The latest release is Internet Explorer 8, which is available as a free update for Windows XP with
Service Pack 2 or later, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 or later, Windows Vista,
and Windows Server 2008.
History
The Internet Explorer project was started in the summer of 1994 by Thomas Reardon, and
subsequently led by Benjamin Slivka, leveraging source code from Spyglass, Inc. Mosaic, an
early commercial web browser with formal ties to the pioneering NCSA Mosaic browser. In late
1994, Microsoft licensed Spyglass Mosaic for a quarterly fee plus a percentage of Microsoft's
non-Windows revenues for the software. Although bearing a name similar to NCSA Mosaic,
Spyglass Mosaic had used the NCSA Mosaic source code sparingly.
Internet Explorer 1 debuted in August 1995. It was a reworked version of Spyglass Mosaic
which Microsoft had licensed, like many other companies initiating browser development, from
Spyglass Inc. It came with Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95 and OEM release of Windows
95.Internet Explorer 1.5 was released several months later for Windows NT and added support
for basic table rendering. However, by including it for free on their OS they did not have to pay
royalties to Spyglass Inc., which resulted in a lawsuit and multi-million USD settlements.
Internet Explorer 2 was released for Windows 95, Windows NT 3.5, and NT 4.0 in November
1995 (following a 2.0 beta in October). It featured support for SSL, cookies, VRML, RSA, and
Internet newsgroups. Version 2 was also the first release for Windows 3.1 and Macintosh System
7.0.1 (PPC or 68k), although the Mac version was not released until January 1996 for PPC, and
April for 68k.
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9. Internet Explorer 3, was released in August 1996, and went on to be much more popular than its
predecessors. It was developed without Spyglass source code, although still crediting Spyglass
"technology" in the program's documentation.
Internet Explorer 4, released in September 1997 deepened the level of integration between the
web browser and the underlying operating system. Installing version 4 on a Windows 95 or
Windows NT 4 machine and choosing Windows Desktop Update would result in the traditional
Windows Explorer being replaced by a version more akin to a web browser interface, as well as
the Windows desktop itself being web-enabled via Active Desktop.
Internet Explorer 5, launched on March 18, 1999, and subsequently included with Windows 98
Second Edition and bundled with Office 2000, was another significant release that supported bi-
directional text, ruby characters, XML, XSLT and the ability to save web pages in MHTML
format. IE5 was bundled with Outlook Express 5.
Internet Explorer 6 was released on August 27, 2001, a few months before Windows XP. This
version included DHTML enhancements, content restricted inline frames, and partial support of
CSS level 1, DOM level 1 and SMIL 2.0. The MSXML engine was also updated to version 3.0.
Other new features included a new version of the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK),
Media bar, Windows Messenger integration, fault collection, automatic image resizing, P3P, and
a new look-and-feel that was in line with the Luna visual style of Windows XP, when used in
Windows XP.
Internet Explorer 7 was released on October 18, 2006. It includes bug fixes, enhancements to its
support for web standards, tabbed browsing with tab preview and management, a multiple-
engine search box. With IE7, Internet Explorer has been decoupled from the Windows Shell -
unlike previous versions, the Internet Explorer ActiveX control is not hosted in the Windows
Explorer process.
Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of Internet Explorer and has been in development since
August 2007 at the latest. On March 5, 2008, the first public beta (Beta 1) was released to the
general public. On August 27, 2008, the second public beta (Beta 2) was released. It supports
Windows XP SP2 and SP3, Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Vista and Windows Server
2008 on both 32-bit as well as 64-bit architectures.
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10. On August 12, 2010, Microsoft announced that the Internet Explorer 9 Public Beta would launch
on September 15, 2010 at a special event in San Francisco linked to the idea of 'beauty of the
web. It was also confirmed that the browser would only function with Windows Vista and
Windows 7.
Features
Tabbed browsing: View multiple sites in a single browser window. Easily switch from one site
to another through tabs at the top of the browser frame.
Advanced Printing: Internet Explorer 7 automatically scales a webpage for printing, so the
entire webpage fits on your printed page. Print options also include adjustable margins,
customizable page layouts, removable headers and footers, and an option to print only selected
text.
Page Zoom: Enlarge individual webpage's, including both text and graphics, to either focus on
specific content or to make content more accessible to those with vision limitations.
Security status bar: Color-coded notifications appear next to the address bar to make you aware
of website security and privacy settings. The Address Bar changes to green for websites bearing
new High Assurance certificates, indicating the site owner has completed extensive identity
verification checks. Phishing Filter notifications, certificate names, and the gold padlock icon
also appear next to the address bar for better visibility. You can easily display certificate and
privacy detail information with a single click on the Security Status bar.
Logo of Internet Explorer:-
10

11. 3) Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application
Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. Firefox had 22.47% of the recorded usage share of
web browsers as of July 2009, making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use
worldwide, after Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
To display web pages, Firefox uses the Gecko layout engine, which implements most
current web standards in addition to several features which are intended to anticipate likely
additions to the standards.
Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find,live
bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka
"geolocation") based exclusively on a Google service and an integrated search system that uses
Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created
by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of
Firefox's users.
Firefox runs on various versions of Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and many
other Unix-like operating systems. Its current stable release is version 3.5.2, released on August
3, 2009.
History
The Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project by Dave
Hyatt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial requirements of Netscape's sponsorship
and developer-driven feature creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat
what they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone browser, with
which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April 3, 2003, the Mozilla
Organization announced that they planned to change their focus from the Mozilla Suite to
Firefox and Thunderbird.
The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally titled Phoenix, it was
renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix Technologies. The replacement
name, Firebird, provoked an intense response from the Firebird free database software project. In
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12. response, the Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the name Mozilla
Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software. Continuing pressure from the database
server's development community forced another change; on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird
became Mozilla Firefox, often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla prefers that Firefox be
abbreviated as Fx or fx, though it is often abbreviated as FF. The Firefox project went through
many versions before 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004. After a series of stability and
security fixes, the Mozilla Foundation released its first major update, Firefox version 1.5, on
November 29, 2005.
Features
1. Video superpowers with HTML 5- If you're viewing a page coded in HTML 5 with video
in an open-source format like Ogg Vorbis or Theora, Firefox 3.5 treats that video like it's
just part of the page, not a separate little island of Flash content.
2. Geo location- if you type post office into a maps site, you probably don't want the
headquarters of the U.S. Post Office, or post office listings from two towns over.
3. Color profiles that pop- Firefox 3.5 introduces dynamic color profiles for each
picture, meaning that whatever the graphic designer or photographer saw when
they were doing their work, you'll see it on their web page.
4. Smarter session restore- Firefox's developers took a cue from the users and turned
the session restore feature into more of a crash recovery tool, allowing users to select
which tabs should come back. If you don't know who the culprit is, here's a hint: It's
probably the one with Flash on it.
5. Undo closed window- Firefox 3.5 implements a restore feature for both tabs and
windows from the History menu, which would (hopefully) also restore any text
you've typed into them.
Features included with Firefox are tabbed browsing, spell checker, incremental find, live
bookmarking, an integrated manager, keyboard, and an integrated search system that uses the
user's desired search engine.
Users can customize Firefox with browser "add-ons". Mozilla maintains a repository of these
developed extensions and themes ataddons.mozilla.org with nearly 6,500 available as of
December 2008
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13. Logo of Mozila firefox:-
4) Safari
Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. First released as a public beta on 7 January
2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser
beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Apple has also made Safari the native browser for
the iPhone OS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating system first released on
11 June 2007 supports both Windows XP and Windows Vista. The current stable release of the
browser is 4.0.3 for Mac OS X and Windows. Safari had a 4.07% market share in July 2009.
History
On January 7, 2003, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed their own web browser
based on KHTML rendering engine, called Safari. They released the first beta version that day
and a number of official and unofficial beta versions followed, until version 1.0 was released on
June 23, 2003. Available as a separate download initially, it was included with the Mac OS X
v10.3 release on October 24, 2003, as the default browser, with Internet Explorer for Mac
included only as an alternative browser. Since the release of Mac OS X v10.4 on April 29, 2005,
Safari is the only web browser included with the operating system.
Features
1. Improved Web Inspector
1.1 CSS Inspector
In Safari 5, the web inspector has an improved CSS inspector panel, which lets you jump directly
to a rule definition in the source file.
1.2 DOM Inspector
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14. The DOM inspector is much improved, now allowing you to add attributes to DOM nodes in
your document, remove nodes, and edit nodes as HTML, which lets you edit the entire tag as if it
was a source file.
2. Better HTML5 Support
Apple touts seventeen new HTML5 features in Safari 5, and you might have heard of
their showcase that they launched last week (it really contains more CSS3 than anything else, but
that seems to be getting lumped under HTML5 as well!). Apple really seems to be pushing
HTML5, and Safari 5 now has a score of 136 on html5test.com which is up from 113 in the
previous release.
3. Extension Support
There is now extension support in Safari, and, thanks to a new tool called Extension Builder
in the already useful Develop menu, you can write your own. The extensions are written using
standard web technologies, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and the Extensions
API provided by Apple. Because it is written using these technologies, it will be possible for
someone to write a cross platform extension development library that works across Firefox
(Jetpack), Chrome, and Safari 5
4. Faster JavaScript Engine
It wouldn’t be a complete browser upgrade if Apple didn’t tout their 30% faster JavaScript
Engine. In the SunSpider JavaScript performance test, Safari ranks similarly to Google Chrome,
and is still far ahead of the latest version of Firefox. While JavaScript performance is important,
the real performance bottlenecks for web applications do not lie in the raw JavaScript language
performance, but in the DOM API, which is notoriously slow in all browsers.
Logo of Safari:-
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15. 5) Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a web browser released by Google which uses the WebKit layout engine and
application framework. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2
September 2008, and the public stable release was on 11 December 2008. The name is derived
from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers. In August 2009, Chrome
was the fourth most widely used browser, with 2.59% of worldwide usage share of web
browsers. Development versions of Chrome for Linux and Mac OS X were released in June 2009
Features
1. Multiple Processes
Each tab is treated as a single process within Chrome, much like programs within an
operating system. Hence you can continue working at full capacity while a busy website in
one tab recovers. Should the tab freeze or crash, it’s an isolated event that doesn’t affect any
of the other tabs, or the browser as a whole.
2. Task Manager
Chrome has its own Task manager accessible via >Control >Developer or [Shift] + [Esc].
The Task manager reveals which tabs or plugins are running and what they’re doing. If a
process is taking up too much memory, you can close it via that Task manager.
3. Omnibox
When you start typing into the box, it will suggest links based on what sites you have visited
before or what’s popular on Google. You can enter both URLs and search terms, the latter
will launch a Google search per default. You can select another search engine under
>Customize and control >Options >Basics.
4. Phishing Protection
With its computing power Google collects lists of harmful websites, so it can warn its users
as soon as possible in case they’re about to access such a page.
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16. Logo of Google Chrome:-
Comparisons of Web browsers
Net Applications
Google Chrome (51.15%)
Opera (31.03%)
Safari (8.3%)
Mozilla Firefox (4.9%)
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17. Internet Explorer (2.01%)
Working of web browser: - Web browser is software application that enables a user to
display and interact with text, images, and other information typically located on a Web page at a
website on the World Wide Web or a local area network.
Structure of a web page is actually not the way it is displayed in a Web browser. A web page is
written in a coded form in HTML, PHP or any other language. Web browser gets this
information and formats into the display which we usually see when we visit a webpage.
Because of inherent differences in browsers the displayed page might appear slightly different in
different browsers.
If you wish to see how a webpage is actually written, do a right click and choose ‘view source’.
You will see a clutter commands and text which do not make any sense at all. The browser
converts this clutter into understandable display.
Like most of people, you might have used one or two web browsers. But there are many of them
available. Internet Explorer is the most common browser used by most of the people. Other web
browsers are Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Netscape.
Although browsers are typically used to access the World Wide Web, they can also be used to
access information provided by Web servers in private networks. They can also be used to access
content in file systems like ebooks etc.
Web browsers communicate with Web servers primarily using HTTP (hypertext transfer
protocol) to fetch webpages. HTTP allows Web browsers to submit information to Web servers
as well as fetch Web pages from them.
Web pages are located by means of a URL (uniform resource locator) which is treated as an
address, beginning with http: for HTTP access. Many browsers also support a variety of other
protocols, such as ftp: for FTP (file transfer protocol), rtsp: for RTSP (real-time streaming
protocol- A protocol for use in streaming media systems), and https: for HTTPS (an SSL
encrypted version of HTTP- used to indicate a secure HTTP connection).
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18. In addition to HTML, PHP and other languages, the Web browser also supports various image
formats like JPEG, PNG and GIF. The combination of HTTP content type and URL protocol
specification allows Web page designers to embed images, animations, video, sound, and
streaming media into a Web page, or to make them accessible through the Web page.
URL (Universal Resource Locator) :-
The address of a web page consisting of its
protocol, domain and path. For example,
http://www.parnasse.com/net.in.arcadia.html
Advantages of web browsers:-
1. As it was stated in the introductory item, "Personal security and privacy", security has
several defense lines. Besides those stated there, another interesting weakness worth
examining is local inspection of cache and history files.
2. In fact, one of the common browser "subproducts" is an extensive cache record, that takes
the form of a directory structure with local files, and another that keeps track of the
visited URLs (or at least the most recent ones).
3. As personal computers are seldom used by a single person, peer inspection of those files
can tap a huge load of information about browsing habits, visited places, images viewed
etc.
4. Worse yet, if those files are inspected by a "trojan program", the whole contents can be
sent outside and recorded in an external server that accurately profiles personal interests.
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19. Disadvantages of web browsers:-
1. It does not provide rich-content or dynamic functionality to Netscape 4 or Internet
Explorer 4, they can still see the plain links, but they won't have styling or dynamic
behaviors.
2. Some browsers are only partially-supported, Opera 5 and 6, and Konqueror 3.1 or earlier,
can only see the main navigation bar, because they don't support enough scripting to have
stable dynamic menus.
3. It cannot be used inside a WYSIWYG editor, If you open your menu in the "Design
View" mode of an editor such as Dreamweaver or FrontPage, it probably won't work; the
editor may even re-write its code destructively.
4. An HTML structure may create more maintenance work for you, Compared with having
all the menu data in a single javascript file.
FUTURE SCOPE
Microsoft’s 300-billion-dollar empire was built primarily through Windows and Office. Its
online division MSN lost money during the initial seven years till it finally managed to break the
jinx in 2004. It was the same year Google went public and Wall Street found its mojo after
sustaining a battering at the hands of the dot-com bubble in 2001. This was also around the time
Mozilla Firefox made its debut, threatening Internet Explorer’s (IE) dominance for the first time
since the demise of Netscape.
The Web development community contributed to the growth of the IT sector by fighting for a
standard implementation across all browsers — an ongoing struggle that has levelled the playing
field for all browsers to a large extent. This growth spiked up with the adoption of AJAX, nearly
overnight. AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) technology put the Web on steroids and
Web applications became highly responsive. Gmail became the first commercial service to
harness this technology and to offer a lightning quick e-mail service. This new direction in Web
applications marked the birth of Web 2.0 and suddenly users were expecting a lot more from the
Web than vanilla webpages. There is plenty of room to grow and this era only marks the
beginning.
19

20. Looking at e-mail applications on the Web, they have evolved sufficiently to do away with the
need to adhere to desktop e-mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook. The average netizen can
enjoy more mobility by using a Web-based e-mail service from any computer without having to
worry about backups, spam filtering or viruses in the mail. This trend is likely to persist into
other domains and it won’t be long before applications like Microsoft Word end up migrating to
the Web or competing with Web-based counterparts.
The next generation browsers (and future Web standards) will likely expand the set of available
controls beyond simple buttons and drop down lists found on today’s browsers. Moreover, since
these UIs will be a part of browser library or extensions, they will not have to be downloaded
each time from every page and they will not have to be run through the rendering engine. Instead
they will run natively (at the Operating System level just like the browser itself or even
dropdown menus which are part of the browser’s core) which will ensure the interface is much
faster.
Then there are online multimedia integration issues. Currently, sending a voice clip over e-mail
entails recording it on the desktop, saving it and then uploading it as an attachment to an e-mail.
The same goes for graphics and animation files. Future browsers will likely have integrated
controls to allow for at least these two aspects (voice and graphics) to be seamlessly integrated
in a way that a voice clip can be directly streamed as part of an e-mail attachment, which also
displays your personal signature at the message. Basic as they may seem, these two features
alone are quite powerful as they enhance communication considerably.
Another cool feature of future browsers would be drag-n-drop capabilities. Users wishing to send
pictures through Hotmail could simply drag it from their desktop and on to the browser window
and that would be all there is to it.
Future browsers will ultimately blur the line between Web and desktop applications, thus
combining the best of both worlds. This would translate into not just sophisticated Web
applications running in browsers, but browsers running desktop applications. In fact, Microsoft
made similar investments in mid 1995 in Active Desktop. Although the project was abandoned,
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21. the back and forward buttons in the Windows explorer folder stayed on as reminders of that
endeavour. Having browsers integrated into desktop applications would mean that the Windows
Start menu for example could be a Web-based control and change themes or a new quote
everyday based on some website. The Windows calculator could calculate currency conversions
based on real time currency exchange rates through a browser control. The latter though a bit
sneaky, is already possible through Web services and internet applications and has nothing to do
with browsers.
There are other critical and more technical directions required to rev up the browser engines. One
of these will hopefully be intelligent caching and pre-fetching webpages. Instead of loading a
website and browsing through its pages one by one, future browsers will intelligently download
all pages based on the user’s browsing tendencies and preferences. What this basically implies is
that users will not have to wait for each page to download and the experience will be
instantaneous.
Finally, virtuality imitates reality. Online, the browser represents the user and speaks for the user.
MSN Autos may not know that a user’s social network is established on Yahoo! Groups but a
browser can poll the Yahoo! Groups Web service asynchronously (in parallel) and inquire if any
friends are on MSN Autos at the time and link them together.
Other interesting features browsers will likely add on will be to allow users to keep track of all
sorts of interesting data and summaries it, thus facilitating self evaluation and learning. The
browser is the only application that knows exactly which sites were visited throughout the day,
how often and for how long and at the end of a day, month or year can let the user know that
they read 80 per cent of the investment articles on a particular news website and spent 1.6
minutes on average per article which is a 10 per cent gain compared to last month and so on
There are no guarantees where the Web will lead us and there are many directions to pursue not
only in terms of browser features but across different mediums (browsers for phones, PDAs have
different needs), platforms (Windows and Apple have different desktop interfaces; Linux does
not have one) and vendors (Mozilla, Safari, IE will try to differentiate on their own attractive
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22. features). Hopefully the power of the Web will cause some convergence and competition will
drive innovation. And with a few more imaginative minds and dedicated developers and Wall
Street putting faith and money in IPO’s, the Web will continue to push the envelope.
CONCLUSION
Some of our findings weren't that shocking, such as Internet Explorer's failure to adhere to Web
standards (Acid3). But there were also a ton of interesting notes along the way, like Opera's
gluttony for RAM and Safari's strong performance versus much newer versions of the other
browsers. Safari didn't live up to its boast of being "the world's fastest web browser." Apple's
product was beaten by Opera, and owned by Chrome. While Opera came close to living up to its
claim of being "the fastest browser on Earth," close just isn't good enough. Google Chrome is the
real speed king. The table below tallies the placing of each browser throughout testing.
Chrome was counted as the first-place finisher for the Acid3 test, while Opera and Safari were
both tallied as second. Firefox was counted as third. Fourth place was skipped, and Internet
Explorer was counted as fifth, due to it's utterly terrible score on that test. The SilverLight test
was also a tie. This time, IE and Firefox were both counted as first place finishers. Second was
given to Opera and third was skipped. Since Safari received a score almost half that of Opera, it
was counted as a fourth-place finish. Chrome was given fifth. We also counted Opera's sketchy
first-place finish in the Mozilla Dromaeo JavaScript Test, despite having experienced errors
causing it to not complete a portion of the test. If we did not, Chrome would have had an even
greater victory.
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