‘Epic’ Browser Wars

Bangalore-based startup, Hidden Reflex, has developed a browser for the Indian audience called Epic, thanks to Mozilla’s popular open-source platform. Though made on lines of the Firefox browser, it has many firsts.

It’s the only browser that has an in-built anti-virus scanner and other unique privacy features like the flash cookie deletion.

Epic also has a side-bar with shortcut icons for frequently used applications and websites – all of which are a part of the 1500+ apps that ‘Epic’ boasts of.

My favourite, however, is the ‘type in Indian languages’ widget that can be done using the English script, which the browser instantly converts into the regional language chosen.

Even as ‘Epic’ hogs the limelight, other browser developers, especially the more popular ones like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome are on an overdrive to come up with advanced versions. We have entered the era of browser wars.

Here’s a look at some of the features that these browsers brag about:

Firefox 3.6

Released in January 2010, this Firefox version is unique, as it has over 6000 add-ons and other browser personalization features like themes.

Other features include live bookmarks, tabbed browsing, a full-screen video option, notification of outdated plugins as well as aids for web-designers and web application developers.

The next major release, Firefox 4 has been scheduled for November 2010.

Internet Explorer 8

It seems like ages ago when this browser was released by Microsoft – which was back in March 2009. This one was proclaimed to have better security than its previous versions, with stronger protection against phishing and malware attacks.

Other features include tab recovery – allows a tab to crash without crashing the rest of the browser, domain highlighter, web slices and accelerator – that makes repetitive tasks into simple one click behaviours.

Chrome 4

This browser was released by Google in January 2010, and came with enhanced features like the browser preferences and bookmark syncing, extension support, improved developer tools, increased browser security and being integrated with the Adobe Flash Player.

Chrome 5 was announced in May 2010 and was touted to be Google’s first browser that supported 3 OS platforms – Windows, Linux and the Mac OS X.

Opera 10.50

The Windows OS version of this browser was released in March 2010. The makers have claimed it to be the fastest browser ever and 7 times faster than its previous version.

This browser has distinct feature – from tabs that can expanded, re-arranged, resized and cascaded for a better overview of the browser to the slider zoom that can zoom a page up to 300%, pin-tab feature that can lock a tab, and not to forget the option of having a mix of private and non-private tabs in the same window.

Opera 10.60 has seen a stable release this month, July 2010.

Safari 5

This version of the Safari OS was released for Mac OS 10 and Windows in June 2010. It has some special features like the Safari Reader that removes all ads and junk to give a clutter-less page just like text in a PDF version.

It also has good page caching for the faster loading of links, a smart address field to remember web pages visited earlier and a greater HTML 5 support, enabling web content creation without third-party add-ons.