Virtually Positive Blog

For most computer users, the web browser is one of the programs people use the most. After all, it is the program that you use to do most things on the internet.

There are quite a few web browsers to choose from. If you are on a windows computer, chances are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer came preinstalled on your computer. Mac users get a browser called Safari. And then there is Firefox, Seamonkey, Opera, and Google Chrome, just to name a few.

While all web browsers have some similarities, each browser brings something slightly different to the table. Something that set its apart from all the other browsers.

Bookmarks or Favorites – no matter what they’re called, do pretty much the same thing. You use them to keep track of websites or web pages you want to visit. Most web browsers also allow you to organize (or sort) them. Each browser uses a slightly different way to do this, but for the most part, the concepts are the same.

History – your history list or sidebar keeps track of all the websites you have visited, at least within a specific period of time. This can be useful if you forgot to bookmark that website you visited yesterday … or, if you want to check out which websites your children are viewing. (Although, there are ways some kids can bypass this whole thing – so it isn’t perfect.)

Tabbed Browsing is a feature most web browsers now offer. In the old days of the internet, every time you opened a new browser window, you would get exactly that. It wouldn’t take long for your taskbar to fill up with browser windows – which makes it impossible to find what you’re looking for.

For example, let’s say you were looking for a recipe. You use a search engine to look up recipes. Every time you click on a search result, you open a new window (so you can easily go back to your search). Over the next few minutes, you end up opening quite a few windows. Of course, when you’re done, you’ve also got quite a few windows to close. URGH!

Tabbed browsing is a great solution to this problem. Opening a second webpage in a new tab (rather than a new window) allows you to not only more easily switch between windows to find what you are looking for … when you are done, you’ve only got one window to close.

Mouse Gestures is a feature associated with several popular web browsers. While it may sound complicated, it’s actually pretty simple once you get used to them.

Using mouse gestures, you can use your mouse to tell your web browser to do certain tasks. For example, holding the mouse button down and moving it quickly to the left will tell the browser to go back one page. (Of course, you could also use the mouse to click on the Back button.)

Privacy Mode is a relatively new feature many web browsers are starting to adopt. It works different ways in every other browser, but the end result is the same. Private Mode in Internet Explorer 8 stops the browser from keeping track of which websites you view and stops allowing websites from keeping your information (personal info, cookies, passwords, etc).

Firefox allows users to delete their private data (including cookies, cache, history) and gives you the option to delete all data, or only data from the past day or week.

Download managers allows you a little more control over how you download files. Each browser (that offers download managers) does this differently. However, most will allow you to see a list of all the files you’ve recently downloaded, and should also hopefully help you find them too. Unless you’ve moved them after you downloaded them.

Themes or Skins allow users to change the way the browser looks or feels. If you don’t like the standard blue or green color of your browser window, or if you want bigger or smaller toolbar buttons, themes or skins can be an interesting way of making your browser look better.

Extensions were originally only offered by Firefox, but now other browsers are starting to use them as well. Installing extensions will give your web browser new features or functions it wouldn’t have had otherwise. Firefox has thousands of extensions – some very useful, others not so much. It all depends on what you want your web browser to do.

Spell-check is quickly becoming one of (in my opinion) the best features a browser can have. When filling out online forms, posting to message boards, or typing anything – well … bad spelling can make you look like a fool. And Spell-check is here to help!

Another thing which has been gaining popularity lately are Portable Applications. Portable, meaning you can install them on (or to) a thumb drive (or portable hard drive) or memory stick and use the program (hopefully) on any computer you use. For example, if you are a fan of Firefox and want to use Firefox at work (hoepfully when you’re on break, if your company allows it) you can use the Portable Firefox program from a USB Stick. Not all browsers come in a portable version, however many do.

Speed Tests

If you are researching web browsers online, I’m sure you’ve noticed people doing speed tests. Usually, phrases like “Browser A loads 18% faster than Browser B”. What does all this mean?

Many novice computer users thinks this means that they can browse the web quicker with Program A than they can with Program B. Which, technically, I guess, is ture, but… Others are under the misconception that it allows them to download files quicker, which isn’t the case at all. (Your download speed is dictated by your Internet Service Provider. Switching browsers isn’t likely to make any difference.)

Those speed tests merely test how long it takes your browser to display a webpage once it’s been downloaded. And just to show you how much this matters, let me comment on one test I had recently seen. Browser A loaded the test webpage at 223 milliseconds. Browser B at 237 milliseconds. Browser C at 327 milliseconds. Browser D at 575 milliseconds. Now, just looking at those numbers – the fastest loaded the test webpage at 223. The slowest at 575. That’s a difference of 352 … Browser A loaded the website over twice as fast as Browser D. Right?

Well, kind of. Remember, we’re talking milliseconds here and a millisecond is a thousandth of a second. Is anyone going to notice the difference between a quarter of a second and a half a second? Probably not.

There are actually a number of factors that influence how quickly a page loads – and how quickly the browser loads the page is among the smallest. (But, it makes for impressive statistics, which is why these tests are cited so often.) Much also depends on your connection speed. A person with dial-up access will find pages load much slower than someone with broadband access. Also, a web page that is only text will load a lot faster than one with lots of graphics. Also, web pages that feature applications (such as web based e-mail sites or interactive websites) will load slower than that. A final thing to consider is that some browsers start to display websites as soon as they start to download while others wait for the page to completely finish (graphics and all). Therefore, it may appear that some browsers are quicker than others. (Just because you don’t see the last graphic on the page being loaded because it’s at the bottom of the page and you haven’t read that far down yet – doesn’t mean its loading any faster or slower.)