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What Choice of Web Browsers?
Everywhere you turn in the computer world or on the Internet, people are talking about the important choice of web browsers. I constantly see nice three-dimensional pie graphs showing Netscape owning a certain amount of the browser market, Microsoft owning another percentage of the browser market, and other browsers like Opera and Lynx fighting it out for the rest. Of course, these statistics differ depending on which magazine you read, which month it is, who is doing the survey, is the moon a full moon, is the butter placed on the top or bottom piece of toast, etc.
These statistics are provided because people want to know what web browser the majority of users choose to use. That's right, choose to use. There's a choice of web browsers on the market, and people decide to use one or the other to access cyberspace ...
Get real.
Since when was there an actual 'choice' in what web browser to use? Maybe this was so when Netscape was still at version 2.0 and Microsoft was at version 1.0. Some people liked Microsoft's view of the web, and some people liked Netscape's view, tags and all.
Now, though, how can you choose a browser to use? If you 'choose' Netscape, you get supposedly 100% compliant JAVA, some dynamic HTML, JavaScript, and other miscellaneous features. If you 'choose' Microsoft, you get semi-compliant JAVA, semi-compliant JavaScript, ActiveX controls, some dynamic HTML, and other features. Each web browser renders web pages differently. If you choose one web browser, you get one view of the web; choose another, and the web becomes completely different.
So, I ask - can you really choose one web browser over another, or do you have to have both web browsers? I certainly can not choose one browser over another. Some pages render perfectly in Internet Explorer 4.0. I also use Netscape Navigator 4.0, but some scripts don't work quite right, so I keep Netscape Navigator 3.0 on my system for those webpages. Yes, that's three different web browsers on my system, and that's only because I decided to uninstall Internet Explorer 3.0.
And that's nothing. One website I work for has the following set of browsers set up on their network. Netscape Navigator 2.x, 3.x 4.x, Internet Explorer 1.x, 2.x, 3.x, 4.x. Seven web browsers are set up on the network because when websites are being designed, one must see how webpages are going to be rendered in every possible way. Oh yeah, I forgot - we have Un*x shell account access so we can look at certain webpages in text-based LYNX.
Windows 98 has made the 'choice' of browsers one step crazier by integrating Internet Explorer 4.0 into the operating system. Now, you almost really don't have a choice of web browsers. If you like using Netscape Navigator, you can still use it to surf the web - but you still have Internet Explorer for Windows Update and other tasks. And lets be honest - even die-hard Netscape fans find the Windows-Internet Explorer integration intriguing and useful for certain tasks.
Let's give up this idea of 'choosing' a web browser. Both browsers perform certain tasks well, so use both. I think this world is big enough for both web browsers, like it or not.
Article copyright 1998 Andrew Malek - All Rights Reserved. This article may not be redistributed without permission of Andrew Malek. All trademarks mentioned in this article are owned by their respective companies.
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