Flock 2.5.2

Flock is designed to streamline and emphasize how you interface with social networking sites, RSS and media feeds, and blogs. Because it's built on Firefox 3, its behavior will feel familiar and it supports most--but not all--Firefox extensions. And yes, the "awesome bar" is part of the latest version.

Flock's social network savvy sidebar is the reason to get this browser. Buttons at the top of the collapsible sidebar make accessing any of your social networking or frequently used Web sites easier than Twittering what you had for breakfast. Feature-focused, each button either helps you get your message out faster, like dragging and dropping photos into Flickr, or helps you read your friends' messages quicker, like the integrated RSS reader. The People button turns the sidebar into a nifty way to track all your social networking accounts. Your avatar is displayed on the left, while the right contains links for new messages and new comments. The bottom holds the links to upload new media when applicable and a hot link to open or close your media stream.

There are also hot links to most major blogging sites, and if you choose to configure it for your own self-published blog, Flock guides you through the process. New users will likely find it overwhelming at first, but it really does give you a more comprehensive and real-time view into your social network than you can get otherwise.

Apple Safari 4.0.3

Initially met with some skepticism, the Windows version of Apple's Safari browser has developed into a strong Web-surfing candidate. Previous versions felt unfinished, but Safari 4 can stand should to shoulder with the other major Windows Web browsers--depending on what kind of experience you want.

Safari lacks most customization features. Skins and other aesthetic tweaks exist in the Mac version, but not here. Just about the only thing you can alter is the font. However, the new version represents a radical departure in look and feel, and the changes are for the better. Safari now looks much more like Google Chrome, although the tabs are placed below the navigation bar, not above it. The status bar and menu bar do exist, but they're hidden by default. You can make toolbar changes and customizations by clicking on the gear icon--another similarity to Chrome.

Both browsers are built on the open-source Webkit rendering engine, although they use different JavaScript engines. Safari's Nitro is definitely fast, although Apple's claims that it's the fastest browser on the market might depend more on your hardware than anything else. In our testing, it ran a bit slowly after heavy tab and video playback, and still consumed more RAM in general than Firefox. You can also opt out of automatic updates when you install Safari.

Features unique to Safari 4 include Cover Flow, for visually searching your history and bookmarks, and Top Sites. This presents a "speed dial"-style list of favorites on blank tabs, melded with the visual flair of Cover Flow. There's a decent built-in roboform, too. Overall, this Safari is the best one yet, and graduates from mere Windows-based developers' tool to a reasonable choice for average users.

Avant Browser 11.7 build 36

For those who like their customization in-house, the Avant Browser's latest update might appeal to you. Built on an IE-rendering engine, Avant takes off in a different direction--IE if it were being produced by a small firm instead of Microsoft.

The browser is sufficiently fast, preloaded with two dozen similar skins as well as tabbed browsing and modular toolbars that let you move around and hide the Status bar, Toolbar, Search window, and navigation controls. The Menu bar, though, is counterintuitively pinned to the upper-right corner, and icons for proprietary functions, such as an in-page search term highlighting toggle, aren't instantly comprehensible.

Avant can save personalized data online, making bookmarks and form content accessible from any machine. Around the same size as Firefox, Avant includes many features that are available to Firefox users only through plug-ins--such as automatic form fillers. The Full Screen view autohides all menu bars, a nice touch, but certain plug-ins--notably Flash--didn't work on Windows Vista.

Avant is a good browser with some nice built-in features and interface-customization options, but the lack of extensibility and Vista problems don't help. We recommend it to users who want a Microsoft-based engine but think that Internet Explorer 7 is a pain.

Top Rated Features of Avant Browser

Online Profile Storage:

Avant Browser can save users' bookmarks, RSS Feeds, configurations or web passwords etc, in Avant Online Storage. In this way, users can access their personal data from anywhere, office, home or an Internet cafe, and don't need to worry about losing those data when re-installing Windows.

AutoFills:

Help users to memorize web passwords, and fill passwords for users with one click.

Flash Animation Filter:

More than 85% of all flash animations on web pages are advertising. These flash files are pretty large, and normally take up to 90% of the size of the page you're visiting. With Avant Browser you can save the bandwidth by blocking the download of these flash files with just one easy click. Avant Browser also provides options to block downloads of pictures, videos, sounds and ActiveX components. With these options users can control their bandwidth and speed up page loading.

Built-in AD/Pop-up Blocker:

Easily eliminate unwanted AD banners and pop-up pages automatically with just one click.

Built-in RSS/ATOM Reader:

Avant Browser has a built-in RSS/ATOM Reader, which allows you to read RSS/ATOM feeds just like browsing web pages. And you can also keep your favorite feeds as bookmarks.

Additional Mouse Functions:

If you click a link in the web page with the middle mouse button, the link will be opened in a new window in the background. This feature is extremely useful for opening posts in forums. Avant Browser also comes with customizable Mouse Gestures, with which you can easily navigate the browser by moving the mouse.

Multi-Window Browsing:

Browse multiple web pages simultaneously. All opened pages can be easily stopped, refreshed, closed or arranged with one click.

Real Full Screen Mode and Alternative Full Desktop mode:

When you enable Full Screen Mode, all you see is the webspace, with no toolbars or other clutter. They are simply autohidden! Move your mouse over the top or bottom and find the toolbar and tab bar respectively. Avant Browser also provides Full Desktop Mode, which is the same as Full screen mode, but differs in that your windows task bar stays visible.

Built-in Search Engine:

Avant Browser provides a built-in search engines. Built-in search engines enable user to search for web pages, images, groups, directories, news, lyrics and software in Internet.

Full IE Compatibility:

Avant Browser comes with all Internet Explorer functions, including Cookies, ActiveX Controls, Java Script, Real player and Macromedia Flash. IE bookmarks are automatically imported into Avant Browser.

Control Your Privacy:

With Avant Browser, you can easily keep your privacy by deleting all browsing traces such as: Typed Addresses, Auto-Complete Passwords, Cookies, History of Visited Web Sites, Temporary Internet Files and Search Keywords.

Safe Recovery:

If Avant Browser is closed improperly, all open web pages are saved and will be automatically reopened at next startup.

Customizable Skins:

Express your creativity by making a skin for Avant using a custom, easy to use program called Avant Browser Skin Maker, or use any of the many and varied skins made by other users.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5.3

No longer a fledgling upstart, Firefox 3 is full-featured, lightning fast, and an able foe for both the big-dog competitor Internet Explorer and competitors nipping at its heels. Firefox's killer add-ons remain strong, and the latest update makes version 3.5 about two times faster than version 3. However, competition is strong and it can no longer be said that Firefox is the fastest browser available.

Several notable improvements in the latest revamp keep Firefox abreast of current browsing tech. Along with Mozilla's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine that renders Web applications faster on Firefox than ever before, there have also been improvements to the layout engine Gecko for faster page rendering. The new Private Browsing brings a feature to Firefox that competitors have had for a while: the capability to turn off cookie and history logs. Users also have more granular control over cookies, history, and bookmarks in version 3.5 via the redone Clear Recent History option under Tools. Geolocation courtesy of Google has been activated by default in Firefox, so that generic searches such as "city hall" will come closer to pegging the government offices nearest you.

Web developers should be excited about expanded support for HTML5 local storage, downloadable fonts, and native support for OGG-formatted embedded video. ICC profiles, SVG transforms, CSS media queries, native JSON support, and Web worker threads also get lots of love from v3.5. There's no doubt that Firefox 3.5 is a must-have, but it's an update that's more about keeping the browser current rather that blazing new trails.

Publisher's description

From Mozilla :

Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured Web browser. Firefox includes pop-up blocking, tab-browsing, integrated Google search, simplified privacy controls, a streamlined browser window that shows you more of the page than any other browser and a number of additional features that work with you to help you get the most out of your time online.

Firefox 3.5 is based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past year. Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use, and adding new features for users: It is now available in more than 70 languages, includes a Private Browsing mode, better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, the ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation, support for native JSON, and web worker threads, support for new web technologies such as: HTML5 <> and <> elements, downloadable fonts and other new CSS properties, JavaScript query selectors, HTML5 offline data storage for applications, and SVG transforms.

Turbo Browser 1.1.1

Product Description:

Turbo Browser is designed to browse folders with large number of files and images such as those on network file servers that contain tens of thousands of files or even hundreds of thousands of files. Most file browsers and file managers would choke or even die when navigating across these folders. I decided to develop Turbo Browser after evaluating many different file browsers but found none of them could be capable of displaying files in one of my network folders that had more than 120,000 files in a reasonable amount of time, including the Windows Explorer.

Version 1.1.1 improves on file loading speed and fixes minor bugs.

What's new in this version:

Version 1.1.1 improves on file loading speed and fixes minor bugs.

Operating System Requirements:

This product is designed to run on the following operating systems:

• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Vista
• Windows XP
• Windows 2000
• Windows ME
• Windows NT
• Windows 98

Click here to download

Avant Browser 11.7 Build 36

Seth Rosenblatt on November 07, 2008

For those who like their customization in-house, the Avant Browser's latest update might appeal to you. Built on an IE-rendering engine, Avant takes off in a different direction--IE if it were being produced by a small firm instead of Microsoft.

The browser is sufficiently fast, preloaded with two dozen similar skins as well as tabbed browsing and modular toolbars that let you move around and hide the Status bar, Toolbar, Search window, and navigation controls. The Menu bar, though, is counterintuitively pinned to the upper-right corner, and icons for proprietary functions, such as an in-page search term highlighting toggle, aren't instantly comprehensible.

Avant can save personalized data online, making bookmarks and form content accessible from any machine. Around the same size as Firefox, Avant includes many features that are available to Firefox users only through plug-ins--such as automatic form fillers. The Full Screen view autohides all menu bars, a nice touch, but certain plug-ins--notably Flash--didn't work on Windows Vista.

Avant is a good browser with some nice built-in features and interface-customization options, but the lack of extensibility and Vista problems don't help. We recommend it to users who want a Microsoft-based engine but think that Internet Explorer 7 is a pain.

Click here to download

Google croma

Chrome is Google's attempt to make the browser disappear and to focus on the applications and pages users are viewing, rather than on the border with its tools. Some of Chrome's basic underpinnings are quite novel, but people will recognize other features as they exist in other, open-source browsers on the market today.

Chrome lacks plug-ins, and there's the potential for high memory usage given that each tab is its own process. If you're addicted to Web apps and a need for speed, though, Chrome just might be the shine your browsing experience has been looking for.


Click here to download

Opera 9.64 for Mac

Opera 9.62 maintains the program's tradition of striving for the fastest, smallest, and most full-featured browser available. Opera covers the basics with tabbed browsing, mouse-over previews, a customizable search bar, advanced bookmarking tools, and simple integration with e-mail and chat clients. Mouse-gesture support, keyboard shortcuts, and drag-and-drop functionality round out the essentials.

Opera's extras push it to the top of the class. Integrated theme support previews themes from within the interface, and the new version sports a default redo that's an attractive balance between "dark" and "light" themes. Opera's desktop widgets can appear anywhere while Opera is running. The Wand utility combines autofill with saved passwords, and it's hard to ignore the addition of torrent support and real-time fraud protection. The latest version includes reasonable anti-malware protection courtesy Haute Secure.

The expanded features in 9.62 should make any non-believer do a double-take. Opera Link enables Bookmarks, the Personal bar, Speed Dial, and Notes synchronization across all other Opera instances. Quick Find improves the search tool, allowing for full text searching from the address field, the history panel, and opera:historysearch. The Status bar has been restored as a default, the Wand now lets users confirm a successful login before saving credentials, and spatial navigation--similar to Opera Mini and the Wii browser--has been introduced.

The new version is faster, has multiple back-end changes to handle code better, and expands Opera Link synchronization. We think Opera has what it takes to unseat even the biggest-name browsers. You just need to hear it sing.

Click here to download

Internet Explorer 8.0 (XP)

Internet Explorer is the world's most popular Web browser. Security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, CSS, and Ajax support are Microsoft's priorities for Internet Explorer. This version of IE runs on Windows XP.

The latest version of the browser includes support for:

• Accelerators - which allow supported web applications to be invoked without explicitly navigating to them.
• WebSlices - which allows portions of page to be subscribed to and monitored from a redesigned Favorites Bar.
• InPrivate privacy features.
• SmartScreen phishing filter.

Click here to download