. . . continued from Hot News Over the next four years, AOL absorbed Netscape and laid off a lot of programmers, open source developers haggled over Mozilla, and, well, basically nothing happened. No new releases of any big splashy browsers. A few small companies, a bunch of open source gangs and a couple of shareware developers got into the act: Opera, Konqueror, Avant Browser and MyIE (now called Maxthon) to name the most prominent ones. From 1999 until September 2004, Microsoft vaulted IE so far ahead of everything else by virtue of its unassailable association with Windows, that all comers (Netscape, Mozilla et al) were left to fight over a ridiculously tiny market share—not more than 5%. While everybody was preoccupied with navel gazing, lawsuits designed to bust up Microsoft, bursting high-tech bubbles and other nascent trivia, Microsoft itself was busy spinning Internet Explorer into a behemoth legitimately claiming ownership of 95% of the browser market. Good on ya' Bill. During the '99-'04 surge, a couple of truly awful versions of Netscape and Mozilla were also released. That they were available free of charge did not in any way obscure the fact that each successive release seemed worse than the previous one. Crashes? Incompatibilities with many web sites? Horrible installation problems? You bet. These browsers had it all. Pass the Maalox. Scroll back a couple of years though and look at a couple of browser contenders. Opera, which started out as a research project in Norway's telecom company, Telenor, in 1994, spun out into an independent development company named Opera Software ASA in 1995. The Norwegians eventually released two versions of the Opera browser: a) an ad-supported version that was and is very well designed, and b) a $40 pro version which appears to indicate that the otherwise brilliant Norwegians don't have a clue about all the free browser versions dominating the market for the past ten years. Initially, Opera was a breath of fresh air with its tabbed browsing. Too bad it had trouble rendering so many web sites. Meanwhile, IE's prevalence and Microsoft's own rules for rendering web pages was actually having the net effect of moving web site code in use around the world away from some of the HTML and World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. By 2000, the purists (Linux, Unix and Mac fanatics all) were screaming bloody murder.

Capitalist bastard that I am now, I never thought I'd say this: maybe it is time to break up Microsoft, if only to foster at least the potential for truly productive competition?

Another funny thing happened. A few talented developer/programmer types got fed up with Internet Explorer's limitations. That's right. Envy of the failures set in. You see, despite Netscape's goofy, stuttering development and Opera's frustrating lack of compatibility with IE-optimized web sites, both browsers still possessed some fundamentally smart features such as tabbed pages and powerful bookmarking which were the envy of the rutted (albeit fabulously gigantic) Internet Explorer 'crowd'. What do you do in such a situation? Microsoft seemed intractably mired in its single-minded desire to jam everything into IE except the kitchen sink (and tabbed browsing and better bookmarking, the more obvious and conspicuous ongoing absences). So some intrepid developers took advantage of Microsoft's software development kit (SDK) and created shell programs to run on top of Internet Explorer's browsing engine. It's a rather smart idea really. Microsoft allows programmers to call everything but the Internet Explorer user interface into another shell which provides its own user interface to all the internal Internet Explorer controls. Voila, and say hello to Avant Browser (no relation to AvantGo the Palm OS and Pocket PC browser) and bonjour to Maxthon (formerly MyIE). A mere bag of shells, but with the power to add to Internet Explorer most of the superb usability of the faltering competition.

"AH-HAH!" you say, "there goes the neighborhood. After all, who could compete with the enormous Microsoft hydra when it's benefited by the additional features provided by custom shells?" Ah-hah indeed. We didn't think it could happen.

There was and remains another problem too. Internet Explorer, in its capacity as the biggest, fattest, strongest bull in the herd, is also the biggest, fattest target on the shooting range. A few years ago, the word got out that Microsoft's vast army of programmers were never tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that strict and absolute adherence to the best possible coding practices were employed in every facet of development. Accordingly, some crafty, bright and mischievous youths assembled their talents and proceeded to locate innumerable holes in Internet Explorer through which all manner of poisonous code could be shoved in an attempt to compromise and vandalize vulnerable business and personal computers. The dark time ensued. It is still with us.

But in late 2004, the Mozilla group had a baby. You remember those Mozilla guys, don't you? I mentioned them earlier. The Lost Boys might be a better name. There they were all along, wandering about in the mucilaginous haze known otherwise as open source development. One can only imagine the endless e-mail code discussion threads, the gallons of bile expectorated in Microsoft's direction, the struggles to move widely dispersed contributors along the tracks of a plan that had some reasonable chance of completion. Veiled insults aside, the boys finally did it. They released an Internet Explorer Killer called Firefox.

But as good as Firefox is, the damn thing still won't render many IE-optimized pages properly.

The capsule history of browsers is brought to you by me, a person who would like to be able to settle on one very secure browser that is inherently faster than Internet Explorer, as compatible as Internet Explorer but with the great navigation features and greater security of Opera, Mozilla and Firefox.

So many browser choices, but so little time to spend experimenting with all of them. So the 'defeated' among us simply retire back to Internet Explorer and a cool shell such as Maxthon or Avant Browser and a prayer that no new security breaches will arise to spoil all the fun.

Another factor pops its fuzzy little head up for a look: Microsoft's long-awaited new operating system, code named Longhorn. Reputedly vastly more secure, Microsoft is about to start doing its usual thing in the long run up to a new operating system or office product release. Bits and pieces of the new operating system are going to start appearing as standalone programs. On February 15, 2005, Bill Gates announced that Internet Explorer 7 would be released this year. Expect the first public beta versions this summer. Expect also that IE7 will in many ways preview something which closely resembles the next version of Windows (or whatever the final version of Longhorn will be called). Believe it also when I tell you here and now that the secure connection between the operating system, the browser and the Internet will be stronger than ever. The new version of IE will also likely sport some nifty tabbed browsing.

It's clearly evident to anyone who cares to investigate the matter that Microsoft is clearly the company with the largest number of development partners. In fact, there isn't any competition for Microsoft when it comes to strategic partnerships, except possible for Intel. The browser choices of today therefore, are liable to be nothing more than garbage for the delete bin tomorrow. With more and more companies integrating Windows into everyday operations, with Linux gaining no desktop ground at all since mid-2004, and with Mac OS X creeping up (again) only on its former glorious 5% or 6% market share, we're left in a quandary. Where's the competition that will put pressure on Microsoft to improve the quality and standards of its products?

Where indeed?

Despite the promise of serious pressure on Windows, Linux languishes in a complex netherworld yearning for desktop positioning all the while servers are beckoning. The sea change required for Windows desktop users to switch to Linux or, better still, Mac OS X, is thwarted by two things (none of which have anything to do with web browsing you may note): a) Linux is great for advanced computer users only, and b) Mac OS X does not now and may never enjoy the massively varied pile of software available for Windows. Where the operating system goes, so go the web browsers (you and me that is). Ergo, unless there's a giant killer lurking in the wings as we speak, Microsoft is slated to dominate for the foreseeable future. Yes indeed.

Capitalist bastard that I am now, I never thought I'd say this: maybe it is time to break up Microsoft, if only to foster at least the potential for truly productive competition? In the fact of all the legal challenges met and defeated by Microsoft, is it technologically heretical to utter such a thing? Can we at least get a direct assault on the Microsoft choke hold?

R-i-i-i-i-ng!

"Ya. Hallo?"

"Is this the Opera Software office?"

"Ya. Dis iz us."

"Would you guys please bugger up your code just a wee bit so that your browser renders IE-optimized pages properly? Please?"

"Aiiiieeee! Vy vould ve do zuch a ting?"

"Vy? I mean . . . um, why? Because I can't stand looking at IE and IE shells anymore. I'm worried sick that some slick operator will crack IE yet again and eat all my data. Opera looks different, works really well and, well, I just like it better. Please, if you have a ounce of sympathy, make Opera more compatible with IE-optimized pages! Please!"

"Nah - ve can't do dat. It vould be wrong. Ze nize peeples at W3C give us good back massages if ve stick to ze proper code rules. If ve make Opera more compatible with IE stuff, who vill rub our backs?"

On and on we go. So many web browsers - so little time.

Back to Hot News!