Is It Time for a New Browser?
CSS, HTML5, Web Design
When it comes to the topic of web browsers one phrase comes to mind, oh how the mighty have fallen. In the 23 years since the release of Mosaic, “the world’s first popular browser”, we have seen several major contenders rise to the top.
In 1994 the same people that developed Mosaic started a company named Netscape and released Netscape Navigator. Its growth was phenomenal as the popularity of the web was just taking off. Microsoft jumped on the band wagon in 1995 with Internet Explorer. During these early years Netscape dominated with as much as 90% of the market. Then and before you knew it the first browser war was being waged.
Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with their Windows 98 operating system and said it was free which forced Netscape to stop charging for their browser. Within a matter of a couple of years the numbers were completely reversed and Internet Explorer had a 90+% market share.
Meanwhile in Norway a small browser named Opera was released in 1996. You’ve heard of it…right?
The two major players continued to battle it out when Apple decided it was time to introduce their own browser for their operating system. Safari made its debut in 2003 and was available for both Apple and Windows computers from 2007 until support for Windows was dropped in 2012.
Unfortunately neither Opera nor Safari seemed to be offering much competition to the now reigning browser, Internet Explorer. Quietly behind the scenes, Netscape had launched the Mozilla Foundation in order to introduce the open-source model to the world of browsers. It resulted in the release of Firefox in 2004. From the time of its release until its peak at about 28% in 2011 Firefox chipped away at Internet Explorer’s dominance.
Google, I assume you’ve heard of it, released Chrome in September of 2008. With chinks in its armor already showing from battling Firefox, Chrome piled on Internet Explorer as well. It probably didn’t help that Internet Explorer had been sitting on its browser duff and most web developers considered it to be a pain to work with. Oh yeah, and there were at least 4 different versions still being used.
Somewhere along in May of 2012 Chrome passed Internet Explorer as the top dog browser and as it continues to rise…Internet Explorer continues to fall.
So, the title of this article said something about a new browser. Truth be told we have several new choices.
If you have moved over to Windows 10 Internet Explorer is no longer installed by default. Microsoft’s new browser is called Edge and is a light-weight standards compliant application built on a new engine that has removed support for legacy technologies like ActiveX.
Pale Moon is an open source browser for usage on a Windows or Linux operating system.
“Pale Moon offers you a browsing experience in a browser completely built from its own, independently developed source that has been forked off from Firefox/Mozilla code, with carefully selected features and optimizations to improve the browser’s speed*, resource use, stability and user experience, while offering full customization and a growing collection of extensions and themes to make the browser truly your own.”
The newest of the new would be Vivaldi, released on April 6, 2016. Started by former Opera CEO Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, it exists due to dissatisfaction with the direction Opera has chosen to move.
“Fast forward to 2015. The browser we once loved has changed its direction. Sadly, it is no longer serving its community of users and contributors — who helped build the browser in the first place.
So we came to a natural conclusion: we must make a new browser. A browser for ourselves and for our friends. A browser that is fast, but also a browser that is rich in functionality, highly flexible and puts the user first. A browser that is made for you.” – Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner
Exciting times are upon us again. Change is something we fight yet we fail to remember that change in inevitable. It was Netscape. It was Internet Explorer. It is Chrome. What’s next?