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| Choosing A Web Browser |
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What You Need January 2000 • Vol.6 Issue 1 |
Choosing A Web Browser Internet Explorer & Netscape Communicator Lead The Way | ||
 Before 1994, a Web browser was merely a user-friendly navigation tool for exploring content on the World Wide Web. Today, however, browsers do much more than just display Web pages. The most popular browsers (Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Communicator) include tools to manage e-mail, read and post messages in topic-specific newsgroups, access File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites, facilitate group conferencing, and create content-rich Web pages. In addition, helper applications and plug-ins (utilities that add to a browser's functionality without changing the program's base code) enable users to watch movies, listen to high-quality sound and music clips, and much more without exiting the browser. Most new computers today come with Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE), but others include Communicator. If your computer didn't include a browser, both applications are free to download from the Web. To download a copy of Communicator 4.7, visit http://home.netscape.com. and click the Download link at the top of the page. Select Full Download Of Communicator 4.7, then follow the on-screen prompts. Be aware, however, that Communicator is a very large file; it will take about two hours to download the entire suite with a 28.8 kilobits per second (Kbps) modem. To download a copy of IE 5.0, visit the Microsoft Web site (http://www.microsoft.com), click the Downloads link at the top of the screen, select Download Center, and select Internet Explorer 5 from the Product Name drop-down list. Next, choose your operating system from the Operating System drop-down list. Then, click the Find It! button. Scroll the list of download options in the table, click the entry for IE5, choose a language, and click Next. Choose a download site, click Next, then follow the on-screen prompts to save the file to your hard drive. The IE5 Setup program will copy to your hard drive. When you run it, you can choose the options you want to install. Installing either one of these feature-rich browsers is probably all the software you need to explore the Internet. If you have enough hard drive space, install them both because some Web sites are optimized for use with one browser or the other. When viewed by the "wrong" browser, typefaces may not display correctly, spacing or type size may be slightly off, and content may take longer to download or may not download at all. If you run into a problem while using one browser, you can always try using the other.
 Internet Explorer. Thanks to the friendly point-and-click graphical interface of both IE and Communicator, you can customize your Web exploration. When you visit a Web page, it typically downloads text first so you can read content without waiting for the images to load. Preference settings allow you to customize the font size, the background colors that appear, and if images appear at all. With both browsers, you can bookmark pages and return to them at a later time without having to remember Web site addresses. IE5 comes with several Web-related tools, including the Outlook Express 5 e-mail client, Windows Media Player 6, NetMeeting 2.11 conferencing software, and FrontPage Express 2.0 Web-authoring software. With Outlook Express 5, you can send and receive e-mail, read and post messages to Internet newsgroups, and create stationery for your e-mail messages. Media Player 6 handles several formats of multimedia content, including RealAudio/RealVideo, Apple QuickTime (video and sound), audiovisual interleaving (.AVI; a video format), .WAV (the standard sound file format for PCs), and Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG; a video compression standard). With a Web-ready video camera and IE's Internet telephony application, NetMeeting 2.11, you're ready to conduct videoconferences in real-time. You can also use NetMeeting to share an application you're running with other NetMeeting users, exchange files, and chat.
After creating your Web document, you can use the bundled Web Publishing Wizard 1.6 to publish your Web pages, support files, and other Web content to your office intranet or your Internet service provider's (ISP) server. The wizard will ask you for the directory path and name of the file/folder you want to publish, the name of your Web server, the universal resource locator (URL; a Web address) you use to access your Web pages, and other details. It will then upload the files to the server automatically. Another nice feature is IE's built-in IntelliSense technology, which works to speed up your surfing. For example, if you begin entering a URL for a Web site you've already visited, AutoComplete will finish the typing. If you make a common typing mistake, such as typing a backslash (\) instead of a slash (/), AutoCorrect will fix the error. If you enter part of a Web address (such as Amazon) and press ENTER, AutoSearch kicks in to find http://www.amazon.com. Finally, if you try to access a Web site with an IE feature you haven't installed yet, IE will attempt to install it for you. One feature that differentiates IE from Communicator is support for offline browsing. With IE, you can browse your favorite Web pages without connecting to the Internet. IE makes this possible by downloading a copy of the Web page to your hard drive. When you're ready to view the site, IE will retrieve the page from there instead of the Web. To configure a Web page for offline browsing, open IE and navigate to the site you want to view offline. Open the Favorites menu and select Add To Favorites. In the window that opens, click the box next to Make Available Offline to add a check mark. Click Customize to determine how much content to make available offline, then follow the on-screen prompts. You can also tell IE to download the pages that are linked to the main page. By doing so, you can follow the page's hyperlinks as if you were online. Decide how many linked pages you want IE to download, then click OK. The next time you want to view pages offline, launch IE, click the Work Offline button in the Dial Up Connection window, then select the page from your Favorites menu.
Communicator. Just like IE, Communicator provides a full suite of options. Communicator 4.7 includes the Navigator browser, Messenger (e-mail), Composer (graphical HTML editor), and AOL Instant Messenger 3.0 (real-time messaging). For your multimedia pleasure, you'll find Netscape Radio (music on demand), RealPlayer G2, Winamp MP3 player technology, Macromedia Flash Player 4.0 (for compatibility with Web sites that have animation and MP3 streaming audio), and other plug-ins. In addition, the Windows version of Communicator includes PalmPilot Synch tools for synchronizing your electronic calendar, to-do list, e-mail messages, and address books with a 3Com PalmPilot. The Enterprise edition (Communicator 4.7 with Enterprise Calendar) bundles the full complement of Communicator tools with calendaring GroupWare. You and your co-workers can schedule meetings, manage daily schedules and tasks, and share work with this version. You can use Calendar without group sharing or in GroupWare mode-sharing calendars with others in your organization. That way you can check their schedules to see where they are before you try to schedule a meeting. To enable group calendars, you must also install Netscape's Calendar Server The package includes several useful features that make browsing easier. For example, click the What's Related button on the Navigator toolbar and the program will suggest sites and information related to the Web page you're viewing. If you type a keyword in the Location (often referred to as the "address") field, Communicator's Smart Browsing kicks in to find URLs that match it. New to version 4.7 is the Shop button, which you'll find on Communicator's main toolbar. Click Shop to visit Shop@Netscape for links to merchants, commerce centers, and shopping categories such as Apparel, Arts & Collectibles, Computing, Food & Wine, Home Office & Business, and many more. Communicator 4.7 also comes with Netscape Radio, which you'll find in the Communicator menu. Netscape Radio features push-button access to 10 channels of music programming, including rock, jazz, and classical. Radio also links to singers and music groups, as well as news and information about the music industry. You'll need the RealPlayer G2 plug-in if you want Netscape Radio to make any noise for you. You also should be aware that if you have a slow connection to the Internet (33.6Kbps or slower), the music will waft in an out as you listen to it.
If you don't have room for IE or Communicator, or you feel you wouldn't use many of their additional features, you do have other options. A few less popular browsers offer most of the browsing features supported by IE and Communicator but without the overhead. Opera 3.6. Opera (http://www.opera.com) is a graphical browser that requires only 1.7MB of hard drive space. It's compact enough to run on a computer with a 386SX processor with only 6MB of RAM, yet sufficiently full-featured to handle most any browsing task. There's a 16-bit version available for Win3.x and a 32-bit version available for Win9x and WinNT. With no support for video conferencing or instant messaging and no built-in Virtual Reality Modeling Language, you'll find it is much faster at loading Web pages than either IE or Communicator. Download a free 30-day trial version at http://www.opera.com/download.html, then revisit the Web site to register your copy and pay the $35 fee if you want to save Opera as your default browser. Among other features, Opera supports various kinds of multimedia content (including AVI video clips, MPEG video, background sounds, and Musical Instrument Digital Interface [MIDI] sound clips). You can configure presentation parameters, such as the typeface and color preferences for headers, normal and preformatted text, form buttons, and form fields. You also can customize the color and appearance of hyperlinks. The program renders multiple graphic formats, including JPEG, Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), animated GIF, and bitmap (BMP). It lets you view several Web pages simultaneously in separate windows that you can tile (have all the browser windows open and not overlapping) or cascade (stacked in an overlapping pattern with the open window on top) for display. You also can configure unique presentation settings for each window and zoom in and out. Opera supports full keyboard navigation, so you don't have to use your mouse. However, the browser is equipped to work with Microsoft's IntelliMouse; if you press CTRL while moving the mouse wheel forward or backward, you can zoom in or out. Pressing SHIFT while moving the wheel forward and backward allows you to navigate forward or backward through Web page history. The browser works with several plug-ins that also work with Communicator, including Adobe Acrobat Reader, Cosmo Player, Sun Java plug-in, Macromedia Shockwave Flash, QuickTime, and RealPlayer G2. In addition, Opera will import bookmarks from IE and Communicator 3.x and merge them with the existing Opera Hot List. Opera lacks an e-mail client, but by opening the Preferences menu and selecting Mail, you can configure the program to use an external mail application such as Eudora. To get in on a newsgroup, open the Preferences menu and click News. After you configure the name of your News Server in the News Settings window, Opera's built-in newsreader lets you read, subscribe to, or reply to newsgroups. Mosaic. NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Mosaic is a graphical browser produced by the Software Development Group at the University of Illinois. Version 3.0 works well on Win95 and WinNT, but we ran into trouble when running it under Win98 (several times during testing, images did not load correctly). Version 3.0 will not work under Win3.x. To download a free copy, visit the NCSA site at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/mosaic-w/index.html. Mosaic makes navigation a breeze. Simply enter a URL in the Location bar field and click the check mark. You can use Mosaic to access data from Web pages, FTP servers, and Usenet newsgroups. The Status bar at the bottom of the screen provides information about the file being retrieved. For example, it lets you know how many images have yet to download and whether Mosaic is actually connected to a Web server. You can view Web pages in full screen or turn on Manager View to display a document's source, current Hotlists (bookmarks), and your session history. You can also use the Manager view to delete, save, or load particular items. A simple e-mail client allows you to send, but not receive, messages. Just open the View menu, select Options, click Preferences, and then configure the mail settings (username, e-mail address, and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol [SMTP] server address) on the Services tab of the Preferences window. After you set all this up, clicking the Send Internet Mail button brings up a simple mail form enabling you to compose and send an e-mail message. HotJava. The HotJava graphical browser (http://java.sun.com/products/hotjava/3.0) is a free download from Sun Microsystems that includes a send-only e-mail client. HotJava supports Web pages that have text, images, audio clips, movies, animation, and interactive Java applets. To visit a site, simply enter the site's URL in the Address box at the top of the HotJava screen.
The program bundles a no-frills e-mail client that lacks a mail reader. Clicking Send Mail from the File menu opens up an e-mail form that enables you to enter the recipient's address. However, HotJava lacks Address Book capabilities so you can't keep a list of your contacts. It offers no support for e-mail attachments (adding a file from your local drive or even a Web page to your message that the recipient can open up and view), but clicking the Attach HTML button directs HotJava to add the HTML source of the current page as an attachment to the message being sent. Like IE and Communicator, HotJava has built-in IntelliSense. For example, type a word in the Address field, such as Yahoo, and the browser loads http://www.yahoo.com. Toolbar navigation buttons allow you to move backward or forward through the pages you've already visited, reload pages, stop a page from loading, and search the Internet. Display Preferences enable you to configure program settings for your home page and startup page, the location of HotJava Browser buttons and fields, and whether the browser automatically displays images, animations, and Java applets. A Text Preferences option lets you adjust the text font and size used for page display or printing. An Underline Links option specifies whether hyperlinks display with or without an underline. Finally, the Security Preferences option sets your preferences for how the browser handles cookies (small files Web servers place on your hard drive to identify you and your preferences). Lynx. Individuals who prefer to explore the Internet with a text-based rather than graphical browser should consider Lynx version 2.8.2. You can access Lynx from any Telnet-equipped terminal or through the HyperTerminal communications applet bundled with Win9x. The text-based browser doesn't support JavaScript, frames, or graphics, and it won't let you work with a mouse. You use your keyboard Left and Right arrow keys to page backward or forward, and the Up and Down arrow keys to cycle through links on a page. When the cursor rests on a link, press ENTER to follow it; press G to enter a URL. Pressing O takes you to the Options menu where you can change your e-mail or Bookmarks settings. To activate the Print menu, press P. The browser allows you to mail a copy of the document currently in view to the owner of the document, but it does not include an e-mail client that lets you send or receive conventional e-mail. You can download Lynx from http://lynx.Browser.org, but you would typically use it by connecting to your Internet service provider through a terminal program such as HyperTerminal, then typing Lynx or Lynx [URL] (where URL is the Web address for the page you want to view) to direct the browser to download a page for viewing. There is no doubt that surfing the Internet with Lynx is fast, but because you wont get to see any of the graphics, you'll find it dramatically uneventful. Picking A Browser. The browser that is best for new users is typically the one that came installed on your computer. If you purchased a system with Internet Explorer, go ahead and start it up. It has a very intuitive graphical interface with clearly labeled buttons to click that will guide your surfing experience. Of course, we can say the same for Netscape Communicator. Feature-rich and user-friendly, Communicator has just about everything you could ask for in a Web browser. Our browser recommendation for experienced users would be the same. You can't go wrong with either, but if you plan on doing a lot of offline page viewing, go with either Internet Explorer. However, if you have an older computer or one you've already filled up with programs you don't want to part with, this popular browser may require more resources than you have. Budget-strapped users who want to conserve system resources and are willing to make do simply with browsing basics should download Sun Microsystems' HotJava. It's compact, free, and user-friendly, and it has enough power to get the job done. Regardless of which browser you choose, take the time to customize it so it fits your needs. After all, with as much time as you're going to spend on the Web, you might as well be comfortable. by Carol S. Holzberg, Ph.D. |
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