ExtremeTech; Browser Comparison: Firefox 2 Beta 1, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3, and Opera 9.0
For a long time, there was nothing to talk about in web browsers. You used Internet Explorer, and that was it. Oh, to be sure, some Mozilla/Netscape holdouts clung to their ways, as did a smattering of users of Opera, Konqueror, and other obscurities. Internet Explorer itself hasn’t had a major version change since the release of 6.0 in 2001, so there wasn’t much to talk about there, either for five long years.
That’s all changed, thanks to that phoenixlike incarnation of Netscape technology, Firefox. In one year, the open-source darling Firefox has pulled within a dead heat of browser the browser popularity crown, at least on the ExtremeTech site, where each browser claims just over 43 percent of our viewers. This spurred Microsoft to leave off its complacency, and serious development of the formerly dominant browser restarted in earnest.
Right at this moment, big changes have or are about to occur in three well-known browsers: Internet Explorer is finally being updated, with version 7 in its third beta and almost ready to roll out the door; Firefox is also ripening an upgrade beta for its Version 2.0—it’s in beta 1; and finally Opera, which has a devoted but smaller following, has recently come out with Version 9.0. [See how they stack up]