Firefox 4 - It's the best Firefox yet. Is it better than its rivals, too?

The longer something's in beta, the less interesting it becomes. Beta 1 is greeted with oohs of excitement, beta 2 with hums of interest, beta 6 has everyone stifling yawns and beta 12 wonders where everybody's gone.

So it's nice to see that Mozilla has finally decided to stop faffing and release Firefox 4 as a final version. There's a new user interface, dramatically improved tab management, excellent sync and, of course, promises of vastly improved performance.

With Microsoft back in business and Google chucking out new builds of Chrome every ten seconds, the two-year-old Firefox 3.x was beginning to look rather long in the tooth, and there's no doubt that Firefox 4 puts Mozilla right back in the game. However, it's a different game than before. Firefox is no longer targeting a sitting duck; it's battling eagles.

Is Firefox 4 an eagle?

Firefox 4 looks very different. Tabs are on top of the screen now, and you can pin tabs to the Tab Bar as "app tabs", little icons that you can use to tuck always-open sites such as your webmail out of the way. In a nice touch, any pinned App Tabs glow when there's new content.

APP TABS: A genuinely brilliant idea, App Tabs can reduce running web apps such as mail or RSS to little icons

The orange Firefox button on the toolbar provides quick access to menu items, and there are Home and Bookmarks buttons over on the right. One of the best features is Tab Groups, a useful idea that enables you to organise open tabs into groups.

What's great about that is you can then view just one group at a time, so if you've got a whole bunch of tabs open for work stuff and another bunch for fun, you can easily and quickly switch between the two.

TAB GROUPS: These make it easy to break tabs into different kinds, for example by separating business and pleasure

If you're running Windows 7 on a touchscreen device you can pinch, zoom and rotate things with your fingers.

Add-ons, themes, stability and standards

The Add-ons manager makes it easy to find new extensions and themes, and its bright interface makes it clear what's running and what's been disabled. It includes a nifty introduction page, which recommends interesting Add-ons that you might not know about, and it's perfectly user-friendly.

Browsing for Add-ons is rather like browsing the iTunes App Store, which we mean in a nice way, and no browser's extensions library can compete with the range of goodies available for Mozilla's browser. Quantity doesn't necessarily mean quality, of course, but the reviews and ratings make it easy to avoid the duffers and find the gems.

ADD-ONS: The redesigned add-ons manager is very beginner-friendly. It's more like iTunes than an options screen

Firefox 4 also boasts some excellent synchronisation features. It doesn't just sync your bookmarks across devices; it takes your history and even your currently open tabs. If you're constantly moving from machine to machine you'll love this feature.

SYNC: Firefox's sync features are excellent, transferring bookmarks and even open tabs between devices

Firefox achieves an impressive 97/100 Acid3 score, supports CSS3 features such as transitions for CSS-based animation and uses OpenType for web typography, and the new HTML5 parser supports crucial features for web apps such as dragging and dropping in and out of apps.

HTML 5: Firefox's HTML video favours Google's WebM and the open source Ogg Theora. Rivals Safari and IE plumped for H.264

New crash protection should finally stop errant Flash Players from bringing down your browser, but everything runs in a single session – Chrome and IE give tabs individual processes.

Performance and benchmarks

Every browser maker promises that their latest version is the fastest version yet, and Mozilla is no exception. There's substance to the claims, however: the final release is significantly faster than the earlier betas, and dramatically faster than Firefox 3.6.

That's partly due to a new JavaScript engine, JägerMonkey, which promises faster performance, and it's partly due to the hardware acceleration on Windows and OS X.

So how fast is it? In Mozilla's own favoured benchmarks, Kraken, Firefox took 9,224ms compared to IE9's 19,136ms. Chrome was slightly faster at 8,794ms.

In the SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks Firefox was slower than IE but faster than Chrome – the browsers achieved 308.5ms, 288.8ms and 346.0ms respectively – while in Google's V8 benchmarks, where bigger numbers are better, Firefox was in the middle with a score of 3,269 compared to Chrome's 7,101 and IE's 2,053.

BENCHMARK: This is the fastest Firefox yet, but IE is slightly faster in the SunSpider benchmarks

I liked

In the real world, Firefox loaded pages, YouTube clips and so on as quickly as Chrome and more quickly than IE9.

Firefox 4 is noticeably prettier and considerably faster than its predecessors. Long startup times have been banished, and the clunky interface has been swapped for something much more subtle. The tab management is fantastic.

I disliked

The interface isn't quite as polished as rivals, and the Mac version just doesn't look right. Where other browsers split tabs into multiple processes, on Windows Firefox is a single-process application.

Verdict

Firefox 4 is a vast improvement, and if you're a power user there's lots here to tempt you: App Tabs are superb, Tab Groups are useful and the enormous add-ons library covers every conceivable eventuality.

Being able to sync open tabs is handy, and encryption keeps your synchronised data safe. However, for everyday browsing there's not much to differentiate Firefox from its rivals.

The best Firefox yet? Undoubtedly. Good enough that other browser users will rush to switch? Perhaps not.

My Rating

4

/5

FOR

• The fastest Firefox yet
• Peerless tab management
• Excellent sync
• Improved add-on management
• Protects against failing plugins

AGAINST

• Not the prettiest
• No faster than rivals
• Tabs don't get separate processes
• Rivals are evolving faster
• The Mac UI doesn't quite work

Internet explorer- is really in the race of being no.1?

  INTERNET EXPLORER

Download: http://www.filehippo.com/download_internet_explorer_vista/
                      http://www.filehippo.com/download_internet_explorer_windows_7/
                      http://www.filehippo.com/download_internet_explorer_xp/

Feature Set    

Click to Enlarge

Internet Explorer has several features for better browsing. The browser uses tabs and when you open a new one, it suggests links based on your previous browsing history. We like this feature but it’s one that a few competitors have had for awhile. The browser also has a single box for both searching and website addresses and full integration with Windows 7. For instance, you can create what the browser calls a jump list, or a list of your most frequently visited websites pinned to your taskbar. Similarly, you can select an individual tab and pin it to your toolbar. For ultimate privacy, Internet Explorer provides private browsing. You can surf the web without the browser retaining a history, cookies or temporary internet files.

Internet Explorer also provides a variety of add-ons for a fully customized browsing experience. There are four different categories of add-ons: security, time savers, browsers and entertainment. In each category you’ll find a number of downloads, each with a description. Most are free, but some you’ll have to purchase.

We were surprised to find the internet browser does not have spell check or an integrated download manager; downloads still appear in a pop-up window. And unlike some of the other internet browsers we reviewed, Internet Explorer is not open-source. Open source software is built and maintained by a network of users. The coding is made available to everyone, and volunteer programmers and testers are encouraged to improve it. Security fixes and updates are more frequent and often more reliable on open source browsers, mainly because the coding is public domain.

Security    

One thing Internet Explorer boasts that many competing browsers lack is parental controls. You can control the content your kids can access online and use integrated reporting tools 

Click to Enlarge

to monitor their activity.

The internet browser also does a good job of defending your computer against spyware, viruses and phishing schemes. A cross site scripting filter is used to prevent attacks from fraudulent websites attempting to steal personal and financial information. Internet Explorer also utilizes sandboxing, a security technique in which all the browser tabs function as independent processes. This prevents a crashed tab from taking down the entire browser.

Despite these efforts, Internet Explorer has been marred by security vulnerabilities. Since it is the most common internet browser, hackers and malicious websites target Internet Explorer more than other browsers and often take advantage of its security loopholes.

Speed & Compatibility    

Click to Enlarge

Internet Explorer’s speed is highly competitive. It isn’t quite the fastest internet browser we reviewed, but launching the application and navigating between pages took under five seconds. We also did not experience any compatibility issues, as the browser supports all current and emerging web standards.

Ease of Use    

Similar to our other top-notch internet browsers, this one is clean and easy to use. Basic web navigation is intuitive, and the browser’s navigation controls are simplified and 

Click to Enlarge

seamless. One thing we liked about Internet Explorer was its Notification Bar. Instead of dialog boxes opening in separate windows, all notification messages are consolidated in the Notification Bar, placed at the very bottom of the window. You don’t have to act on the notifications immediately; they remain in the bar until you choose to take action.

Help & Support    

Click to Enlarge

Internet Explorer has by far the best help and support we came across while reviewing internet browsers. On its website you’ll find in-depth documentation, tutorials and FAQs. You can conveniently search the online resources by keyword. Internet Explorer is also one of the only internet browsers we tested that is supplemented with direct technical support; Microsoft provides personal assistance via email and telephone.

Summary

There’s no denying that Internet Explorer has been plagued with more security vulnerabilities than most of its competitors; its large percentage of usage share makes it a lucrative target for hackers and cyber thieves. However, the latest version of the internet browser includes effective updates designed to tighten security loopholes, and its utilization of sandboxing and other methods greatly reduces security threats. Additionally,Internet Explorer is fast and highly usable, providing rich, pragmatic features and a user-friendly interface. The world’s most popular internet browser may not change the way we interact online but it sure makes it more convenient.

Pros 
Internet Explorer is the only browser that offers every help option we looked for, including direct support via email and telephone.

Cons 
Its vast popularity makes it a target for cyberthieves and hackers.

The Verdict

With competitive speed and functionality, Internet Explorer proves to be a viable competitor.

Google Crome- Real Good or Hyped?

Google Chrome

Download: 

http://www.filehippo.com/download_google_chrome/

The bottom line: Competitiveness, thy name is Chrome. Google's browser is one of the fastest and most standards-compliant browsers available. It lacks some of the fine-tuning you'll find in Firefox, but from the minimalist interface to support for future-Web tech like Native Client and HTML5, the browser is a must.

Review:
Google Chrome has matured from a lightweight and fast browsing alternative into an innovative, standard-bearing browser that people love. It's powerful enough to drive its own operating system, Chrome OS. The browser that people can use today, Chrome 17, offers highly competitive features, including synchronization, autofill, and standards compliance, and maintains Google's reputation for building one of the fastest browsers available.

Chrome 17 represents a major milestone for the browser, but those expecting to see dramatic changes in major-point updates will be disappointed. For a while now, Google has been pushing features over what it calls milestone numbers in a rapid-release cycle, which means that as soon as new features are usable in the beta version of Chrome, Google will likely push them to all users in the stable edition.

First Look: Chrome still shines, 10 versions later

Chrome 17 debuts two new features. It extends the browser's malware scanning on Web pages to include downloads, and the pre-caching tool for loading sites in your search results early now works with the Omnibox location bar.

Please note that there are at least four versions of Chrome available at the moment, and this review only addresses the "stable" branch, intended for general use.

Interface
Google's Chrome interface has changed remarkably little since its surprise debut in September 2008. Tabs are still on top, the location bar (aka Omnibox) dominates the minimalist design, and the browser has few visible control buttons besides Back, Forward, and a combined Stop/Reload button.


Security
Google crome indeed is a benchmark in web browser's cateogry.But it has some loop holes which should be improved.This browser can hang up anytime while loading heavier contents and it can be affected easily by any virus and shows a funny message "Whoa the crome has crashed".In comparison with Mozilla firefox,chrome couldnt really stand up with security and they will have to work on it seriously.


Conclusion
It's hard to tell which is faster, user adoption of Chrome or its development. Certainly the two are linked, and due in no small part to Google's ability to lay claim to the "fastest browser" title, even when it may not be strictly justified. The rest of Chrome's appeal lies in its clean, minimalist look, and competitive features that justify its still-increasing market share. Chrome is a serious option for anybody who wants a browser that gets out of the way of browsing the Web.