NETSCAPE / MOZILLA

Netscape's new tab interface. Click it to go to Netscape browser page.

The most popular indie is still, of course, Netscape, since the times of Mosaic, the university browser from which IE is taken. Version 7 is hugely improved. Netscape is now a tab browser, though some pop ups load in new windows. The surfing speed is, in my opinion, the fastest.
The radio included is a lighter version of the ex-Spinner indipendent version, which I recommend to download separately since has a lot more good features, not to mention you can listen to it while using any other software. You can read the review on the Other Software page on Computer Love and download it here.

The E Mail and newsgroups client is also much improved, but still lacks some features, like the choice of display font for plain text, or signatures...
Composer is rather good as a WYSIWYG HTML editor (though not the best), but it's still weak if you need to work with code (no tag hilight, for example)...
Netscape is also integrated with an address book, AIM istant messenger, Real Player and Winamp.
I don't like so much the modern design (though in this new version you can copy and paste on the address bar again), I prefere the classic look, but you can still choose to use it (View / Apply themes), which also respects style sheets for scrollbars.
Netscape has become heavier and slower to load in the years, though this new version is a bit faster than 6... Anyway the good idea is you can send the browser to system tray and quickly click it back, though this of course keeps busy some system resources.
CSS support is complete, but Java still has some problems, and this is a serious matter with some sites... I also had small troubles with log in forms...
Mozilla is the open source experimental browser from which Netscape is made. It's not quite the same thing, (see Mozilla's home page) but it's better not to install both to avoid compatibility problems.

Overall a very good Internet suite, Netscape 7 is still frustrating, because, just solving a few problems, it could be the best browser, with other good features like E Mail client, HTML editor, radio and messenger... It could, but it isn't. There's the potential for it to become the best, but it's almost a decade this potential doesn't become full reality.

OPERA

This European browser is the best if you count the additional features. You can choose wether to load or not images with a simple button, even text style formatting and other graphics. You can actually use this as a sort of text browser. There's a comfortable and easy page zoom, you view it larger or smaller simply by clicking a drop down menu or pressing the keys 0 and 9. When a page loads a status bar appears telling you how much of the document and the images has already been loaded, total size, surf speed and time taken. This can be extremely interesting. The tabs work perfect, after all this is the original, first ever tab browser, and once it was only shareware because of that. Now it's also free with a banner in the right side of the button bar. There's also a great transfer manager.

And now the bad news. Opera includes also a wannabe E Mail client and a news reader. Well, they're too poor. They support only plain text and you can't even change font and size of display, you're stuck to a small Arial. OK, Opera is made by Qualcomm, which also releases Eudora, a more complete but still ugly and lacking E Mail client. Anyway who cares, you can use other programs for that stuff.
The real problem is the hardcore of the browser itself. Opera is the lightest of the big browsers, and on the opening splash screen says "The fastest browser on earth". Not quite, I'm sorry. It loads slower than Netscape, and that says all, and it can't even be sent to system tray. The surfing speed is maybe the slowest of the big browsers. And problems with Java, which has been included only in recent versions. These problems are more serious than those of Netscape. There are also some visualization problems with bad HTML. Flash rendering is also very bad. So, it depends on what kind of sites you plan to visit. If you know you're not going to see those heavy, complicated and ultimately annoying sites filled with the latest hip design tools, abusing Flash, Java and all, if you know you're going to visit traditional sites, like this, then Opera just makes browsing more interesting than any other simple browser. But if you're not sure, and don't want to switch from a browser to another in few minutes, this is another frustrating browser. The development of the features is absolutely excellent, and the respect for that makes the good rating, but the browsing engine must be improved. A lot. Especially if they want money.

OFF BY ONE

This program is amazing. An independent (I mean not a front end for Internet Explorer, but a truly standalone) browser at only 580 KB! It fits on a floppy disk. It loads istantly. Of course it doesn't work like the others. It supports only HTML 3.2, which was the best standard anyway, we could do without all that came after that, as we did back then. So no Java, no Flash, no HTML 4, no style sheets, no DHTML.
The really interesting thing is on this browser you can test your site and see it as other millions still using old browsers do. The only differences are the default background here is gray and headings are shown in Arial. For many reasons, there are people who haven't updated their browsers in the last couple of years. They view sites like on this browser. Many important sites don't remember this, and their pages look really different here. Some are still decent, some aren't.

The software was developed to test its components, and the results are excellent. It looks like the ghost of Mosaic. There's no cache. It's great to view offline your image files without loading heavy programs. There are smart image and text zooms. The page info gives a lot of useful informations about the page, and the history and cookies management is also great.
Given current standards, it can't replace a proper browser, but Off By One can do fast quality surfing and has some unique features.

AMAYA

This weirdo comes from the W3C, the organisation making the new weird rules for HTML. It just shows how far removed from reality the consortium has become, up there in the ivory tower they plan about sites being made like they want but, as someone wrote on a developer forum, Microsoft (which should be part of W3C itself, anyway) is doing the standards now, not W3C, wether we like it or not... Internet Explorer is used by the 95% of the surfers and accepts a very, very different kind of standard, webmasters know it and know what visitors want, and the easiest way to make it.
This would be a browser. A very fast browser actually. But try visiting sites, you won't ever see any of them showed how it's meant to be. Oh, except W3C of course. Some don't even load at all. This also because Amaya is a web editor as well. In the same window, yeah. And a What You See Is What You Get, though an advanced (and complicated, if you don't spend weeks on the endless manual). But not an HTML editor, of course. An XHTML editor. You want to center text? Forget it, use style sheets instead. It doesn't matter if millions of people are still using generation 4 browsers, which don't support correctly CSS, or even crash when dealing them. And they moan about accessibility. A bit of contradiction, maybe? Also, many ordinary surfers became webmasters and did their own thing because HTML 3.2 was easy. This, amateur web authoring, wouldn't ever happen with XHTML, which is much more complicated for beginners, leaving the job to the professionals. I know the most of the sites suck, but it's democracy, baby.

Still, if you care about XHTML, this is the only freeware editor for that silly stuff. The only reason to use it is to test pages with the interesting views: structure, alternate (which is the same of a text browser), links and table of contects to check the headings.

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