Tools For Boosting (or Ditching) IE
Posted by Max Green | Tuesday, November 16, 2004 7:00 AM PT
On the heels of Mozilla's release of
Firefox last week, I've been looking at some tools that you might consider if you're looking for an alternative to Internet Explorer.
Opera is always a good place to start. All along the good folks at Opera have made it their mission to develop a browser that uses significantly less memory than IE, yet doesn't sacrifice any of its important features. They've done a great job, in my view, and their latest version is well worth using. Opera works well with pages that uses lots of Javascript, and you can listen to streaming audio and watch streaming video--basically, you won't feel like you're sacrificing any of IE's features, yet because of its streamlined build you'll have a better browsing experience.
If you're not ready to get rid of IE completely, but want to improve it, you'd have to look for a long time before coming up with something better than
Maxthon. We've written about this a fair amount in the past, when it was named
MyIE2. The MyIE2 team is still on version 0.9.27--they say they're intending to release the full version in the near future--but I've used the program a lot on my XP system, and it's been quite stable. It has an ironclad popup blocker, and a "Mouse Gesture" feature that allows you to cut back on clicking while you're surfing the Web.
Next week I'm going to post a full list of IE Killers in the downloads section, with four to five more files--so stay tuned.
I've been using Maxthon for a couple of months now. I've also been using Firefox on and off for the past year or more. As hard as some may find this to believe, I prefer Maxthon over Firefox. For one, the tabs feature works much better. (An extra extension is required to unleash Firefox's tabs to the extent they match those inherent in Maxthon. And that's from a browser that openly brags about its tabs?) And, its toolbars are more easily customized without the need to "open the hood" as one must do with Firefox. That's just for starters. Believe me, it gets even better.
You might consider Maxthon a rethought and vastly improved (by only one guy) version of I.E. Quite frankly, why Microsoft is not openly supporting this guy is beyond me. He's done a far better job with their browser than they ever did--and knowing Microsoft, likely ever will.
I too must agree with ZW. Maxthon is great, it makes IE a much much better browser. The tab windows blow away any one elses I have seen. I too use Firefox every once and a while, but I seem to always go back to Maxthon
I've been using Flashpeak's SlimBrowser addition to IE for over a year now and have been very happy with it. IT does tabbed browsing, pop-up killing, mouse gestures, and much more.