News on the browser front
There is quite a lot going on right now in the area of Internet browsers. After running Netscape out of business (AOL bought what was left) and making Internet Explorer virtually the only browser on the PC (even AOL was using IE under its proprietary interface) , Microsoft sat on its laurels. With a monopoly and little threat of competition, Microsoft did little to upgrade IE except patch some security holes after the release of IE6 in 2001. Opera was a good alternative but you had to pay or accept ads and it was no threat to IE. Neither was what remained of Netscape after AOL abandoned it. Then Firefox came along and made IE look stodgy. After Firefox took around a 10% share of browsers in use, Microsoft finally stirred and is developing IE 7. Also, Opera changed its business model and is now free. Firefox is not waiting around, however, and version 1.5 will be released any day. Some results of all the activity in browsers can be read about in PC World, which reviews Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1, Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1, and Opera 9 Preview 1. They conclude
With version 7 of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s developers have seriously overhauled the browser, giving it popular features such as tabbed browsing, as well as improved security, thus closing the gap between it and its rivals. But even though the new iterations of both Firefox and Opera bring mostly incremental changes, that’s still enough to keep them ahead of IE.
PC Magazine has reviewed the latest version of Firefox and they say
In the space of a roughly a year, Firefox has gone from relative obscurity to being the second most popular browser in the world. It’s got only about 9 percent of the Internet browsing market, but that’s incredible for a version 1.0 product, especially since the top browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, comes bundled with new PCs. The release of Firefox 1.5, the first major upgrade since Firefox 1.0 came out in November 2004, is almost certain to drive adoption rates even higher.