Browsing the Internet browsers: The big three all deliver the goods — and fast
Writing about Internet browsers used to be a lot easier. You could crank out a few hundred words of praise for the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox browser, sneer for a while at the stodgy performance of Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer, and shrug at the admirable but rarely used Chrome browser from Google Inc. And you’d be all done. Simple.
These days, it’s a bit more complicated. Firefox is still excellent, especially in its latest incarnation, Firefox 4, which made its debut a few weeks ago. But the latest from Microsoft — Internet Explorer 9 — is an impressive upgrade that easily holds its own. And the major improvements in both browsers were largely inspired by Chrome from Google Inc., which has quietly become the world’s third most popular browser, and deservedly so.
Google is pushing advanced browser technology because the company’s services — Gmail and YouTube, Google Docs and, of course, Google searches — all live online and are mostly accessed through a browser window. So Google designed a browser that treats all of those remotely running programs as if they were installed on your own machine. That means the browser is stripped of excessive menus and toolbars, making it look almost like a bare computer desktop, and it means a fanatical devotion to sheer speed, so that Internet-based software acts like it’s running locally.
In their latest offerings, both Microsoft and Firefox have adopted the same style. Indeed, it’s often difficult to tell the three browsers apart. The usual menu bars are gone, replaced by a cluster of controls on the upper right side of the screen, just like the Google browser. In another nod to Chrome, IE 9 has gotten rid of the separate window for typing Internet searches. Now you type searches and full webpage addresses into the same window.
Firefox 4 keeps the separate search window but has added an excellent search feature to the address bar. You can assign nicknames to favorite sites, then use the address bar to run quick searches. Say you do a lot of research at Wikipedia. You can type something like “wiki Donald Trump’’ into the Firefox address bar. You don’t just go to a page that recommends links; you go directly to Trump’s Wikipedia article. You can work the same trick with Google or Bing, or use it to shop at Amazon.com. If I need new socks, I can just type “ama argyle.’’
For some time, Google Chrome has let you “pin’’ frequently used Web pages to little tabs at the top of the browser. Say you spend a lot of time at Facebook. Just pin it up. The little tab will actually glow every time you get a new message. Now Firefox has added the same feature. So has IE 9, although pinned sites are attached to the Windows taskbar, not to the browser.
The IE 9 version lacks the glowing notification feature, but it’s got something even cooler. Website designers can add special codes that work with the IE 9 tabs to let you control their websites from the Windows taskbar. For instance, I’ve pinned an Internet music site called Jango to my taskbar. When I right-click the icon, up pops a listing of my favorite music types. Press one, and the Jango site opens up and starts playing the music. I get my favorite Henry Mancini tunes with just two clicks. Delightful.
Chrome has earned a reputation as the fastest browser around, rendering Web pages with exceptional speed. And according to the popular Peacekeeper speed test site, the Google browser remains far out in front. To my surprise, IE 9 took second place and Firefox 4 brought up the rear. Not that it matters. In real-world use, I found the differences pretty much imperceptible. All three browsers deliver the goods, and quick.
Still, Microsoft’s share of the browser market has continued to shrink even after the release of IE 9, mostly thanks to big gains by Chrome. Here’s the main reason: IE 9 won’t run on computers using Microsoft’s 10-year-old Windows XP operating system. That’s a lot of computers; XP still runs on nearly one-third of the PCs in the United States alone, including those in the Globe newsroom. I had to test IE 9 at home.
Microsoft says it decided against designing an advanced browser for such an archaic software platform. Google and Mozilla figured differently; both Chrome and Firefox work fine on XP. And you’ll be delighted with either of them.
In the long run, I’ll probably stick with Firefox 4, but mainly out of habit. These days, the big three Internet browsers are all excellent. And much of the credit goes to Google, a company with a knack for transforming nearly everything it touches — even browsers.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
