Alternative Browser Alliance

I think I can explain how I got on this bandwagon . . . I finally got the boys' computer an adapter so they can access our wireless internet at home. Their computer is running Windows Millenium Edition (ME) which is still a piece of garbage after all these years. Rather than use Internet Explorer (which is full of it's own problems) I installed Mozilla Firefox, which I have used myself for over a year now. Well, it had problems running on ME, and I couldn't get them solved. I also tried a flash-based browser for kids, but it REALLY bogged down their computer.

I checked around for some other browsers and found Opera as I told you last week. I loved it. It worked great on the boys' computer; it worked great on my laptop. Then I found this Alternative Browsers Alliance site and saw all the choices available and decided to start trying different ones. I now have K-meleon on the boys' computer (which I am using to post this), and I have settled on Opera for myself. I was also intrigued with Flock because it has some interesting blogging features, but I didn't like it overall.

So, what difference does all of this make? I think the boys over at the ABA are right when they say:

Competition keeps innovation going. If several products have to fight for market share, they have to continually one-up each other. End result: all browsers improve, everyone wins.

It hardly seems a coincidence that Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer when they trounced Netscape, then started again as soon as Firefox started making gains.

Security may be easier to manage when you only have one place to look, but it's also easier for the bad guys to crack. Right now, they can get 90% of the web just by targeting Internet Explorer on Windows. Now imagine that 90% spread out among IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari on Windows, PowerPC Macs, Intel Macs, and Linux. They'd have to settle for 10% or try to crack every combination they could. Web developers, on the other hand, designing for the common language of the web, would have no more trouble than they do today.

And who knows? You just might find yourself liking another browser better than you thought!

That's what happened to me!