Freeloader Friday Download of the Week

Apr 27 2009

Surfing without IE

By: Brian Burnham

MacMerc knows there’s a cheapskate in all of us. In celebration of our miserly ways, MacMerc is introducing a new weekly feature – Free-loader Fridays.

This week we continue our fight to purify our Macs from That Guy from Redmond*.
Sure Internet Explorer is free, but for some of us, one Microsoft application on our system is one too many. So today, let’s take a look into the world of alternate browsers.

*See also Bill, Billy, Dark Lord

Well, first there’s the old, new but can’t-get-it-quite-right Netscape. Although I’ve given the old tank many chances (every time a new version comes out), I have been disappointed by the speed and stability of the miraculous Gecko rendering engine. And the lack of support for Palm and vCards in the address book are do in this one-time great.
For the die-hard Netscape fan (there are about two of you now, right?), this might do. Fortunately for us, there are other choices.

Opera

Opera seems to be the only “alternative” browser you see regular reference to on the ‘net. Now in version 5 and Mac compatible back to 7.5 (dust off your old SE!) as well as X, Opera lives up to it’s claim as the “fastest browser on Earth.” You won’t be waiting long for the fat lady to sing – it is quick and full-featured. Plug-ins? They work.

The rub? You can use version 5 for 30 days for free, then come the banners. To ditch the banners, you have to buy it for $39.

OmniWeb

The first alternate browser to come out for OS X, Omni quickly stole the spotlight. and how is it? Great. Plug-ins? They work. Speed? Well, it’s much faster than Netscape, but not quite the speed of IE. It’s greatest advantage is also it’s greatest weakness. It is the only browser to take full advantage of OS X’s bells and whistles. As you might have guessed, it only supports OS X, which is fine by me, but might annoy some luddite OS 9 users.

What’s annoying? I’m glad you asked. OmniWeb is free, er, share-sort-of-ware. What does that mean? Who knows. It seems the folks at Omni can’t seem to decide. They let you use OmniWeb “unlicensed”, occasionally annoying you by scrawling “unlicensed” across your window or prompting you to buy it for $29.

Chimera

I was a little concerned with this one – not knowing what a “chimera” was, but when the installer created an application named Navigator, I felt right at home.
Chimera, or Navigator (or Chimerigator, as I like to call it) is an open source project, which means that rather than worrying about how much it costs, you’ll worry about how often it crashes.

To be fair, Chimerigator (or “the Gator” as I like to call it) munches down pages just fine. It’s shortcomings are in it’s promised but unimplemented features (search, preferences). But, for the adventurous spirit ready to navigate the high seas without help files (not yet implemented), this may be the browser for you. For the rest of us land-lovers, perhaps it’s better to watch this new browsers development safely from the shore.

When it’s all said and done…
There are plenty of browsers competitive with Internet Explorer that come in various flavors of free. For the OS 9ers, there’s Opera. For mainstream OS X users, there’s OmniWeb. For the all-out early-adopter, there’s Chimera. One thing’s for sure, there’s no reason to stay chained to Internet Explorer.

See you next week with another freebie!

By admin • Articles, Freeloader Friday Download of the Week • 0 • Tags: alternate browser, bells and whistles, browser, cheapskate, Chimera, Chimerigator, Explorer, feature, fight, greatest weakness, internet explorer, macmerc, microsoft application, Netscape, netscape fan, old tank, plug ins, Surfing, vcards, version