Finding the Right Browser

Chapter 14

Netscape Versus Internet Explorer: Finding the Right Browser

Now that you know a little bit about the Web, you need to know how to get there. In this lesson, you explore two of the most widely known browsers used to view the Web: Netscape Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What's the difference? Which is best for you? This lesson is designed to help you find the best browser for you.

In this lesson, you find the answers to the following questions:

• What are some of the basic things I need to know?
• What are some current Netscape features?
• What are some current Internet Explorer features?
• Can you give me some examples of how they're different?
• What version should I use?

Browser Basics

Web browsers are basically the same. Each one displays text and graphics, hyperlinks to other pages or places, and each displays this information in an easy-to-read format, much like a word processor.

As you learned in Lesson 13, "Navigating the Web," all Web page browsers have common areas. Buttons and toolbars are the most common features that you will use when exploring the Web. Luckily, each browser uses these features, so knowing the basics of one will assist you in knowing them all.

Figures 14.1 and 14.2 show the differences between the Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer interfaces. Both figures display the full range of features available for both browsers. You can, however, customize them both to change their look and feel.

Figure 14.1.

Microsoft Internet Explorer's toolbar.

Figure 14.2.

Netscape Navigator's toolbar.

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Coffee Break: A Brief History of Time

Netscape and Microsoft were not always the de facto standards of the Internet. The Web took off only about four years ago, and at that time only one browser--named Mosaic and available for free--was in use. Mosaic was written by Marc Andreessen, who went into business for himself making a new browser called Netscape.

Just two years ago, 10 to 15 different browsers were on the market, all free, all vying for supremacy. Netscape's innovations, customer service, and timely upgrades helped it reign supreme.

Microsoft got into the game late but brought its resolve (and huge cash reserves) to the marketplace to impose its standards. The story isn't over as these two companies are locked in a battle to have the best browser or, more likely, to achieve the largest market share.

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Where to Go and How to Get There

In the preceding lesson, you learned that you can make permanent records of sites you've visited so that you can return to them later. Both of the browsers reviewed in this lesson have extensive guidemarking features. Although both of them contain this feature, they both handle guidemarks slightly differently. I cover this aspect of both features in greater detail later in the lesson.

Safe and Secure

One feature that browsers use to attract corporate customers is their ability to safely send credit card numbers and financial information transmitted over the Internet. These browsers guarantee this capability by encrypting--scrambling the contents--of Web pages.

Encrypting is a big boon to businesses who want a safe way to get your money for their products in the most convenient way possible. Of course, this capability sets up a system by which companies with Internet content, Web pages and the like, can charge micropayment fees for your use and purchase of their products over the Internet. Both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer offer secure environments for these transactions to take place.

Micropayments: Micropayments are a method by which companies can keep an "electronic charge account" for you. Micropayments offer an affordable way to charge anywhere from one cent to one-hundredth of a cent as payment for services or products offered over the Internet.

When Browsers Need Help

Web browsers can't "do it all" when it comes to viewing movies, listening to radio broadcasts, decompressing downloaded files, and providing interactive content. To assist in these activities, they employ plug-ins and helper applications (see Lesson 15, "Helping Your Browser with Plug-Ins," for more details).

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Just A Minute: In the early days of Web browsers, helper applications were needed for just about everything, but both Netscape and Internet Explorer are adding these features as plug-ins, which are internal browser applications that handle many features that used to be "farmed out" to external helper applications.

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Collaboration Across the Office or Across Country

Both Netscape and Internet Explorer include tools that enable you to collaborate with others across the Internet. They also offer text-based chat modules such as Internet Relay Chat (IRC) for group discussions. Also included with both browsers are Internet phone capabilities, which enable you to place telephone calls over the Internet.

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Just A Minute: The thought of using the Internet for long-distance calls is attractive, especially now that connection fees are much lower than long-distance fees. The downside is that both participants must be using the same browser and be online at the same time. Netscape claims answering machine capabilities, and Internet Explorer won't be far behind.

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Mail and News Tools

Both Netscape and Internet Explorer have e-mail and Usenet news clients; Figure 14.3 shows an example. Although you can use these tools, you may find that you want to use more full-featured clients if you spend a lot of time using e-mail or newsgroups. For more information on clients you can use for e-mail and news, refer to Lessons 6, "Person-to-Person Communication with E-Mail," and 10, "Getting the Scoop: Using Newsgroups," as well as Appendixes B and C for Windows and the Macintosh.

Figure 14.3.

Netscape offers a basic e-mail client, as does Internet Explorer.

Current Netscape Features

Netscape is the current browser of choice by a two-to-one margin in relation to all the other Web browsers available. This use is due to many factors, not the least of which is the fact that Netscape was the first truly full-featured Web browser available to the public.

Theoretically, the Web is based on open standards, but because many Webmasters want their sites to look good on the popular browsers, they often use Netscape's special programming extensions to make their sites more attractive. As a result, other companies have had to clone Netscape's capabilities so that they can compete.

Netscape, unlike Internet Explorer, is free only to students, libraries, and nonprofit organizations. Those people who do use it under the "free" license are not offered any technical support. Although you can use Netscape on a trial basis, you must eventually purchase it.

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Time Saver: Depending on who your Internet service provider is, you don't always have to pay for Netscape. Your Internet service provider may give you Netscape as part of its service package. Bell South, Sprint, America Online, CompuServe, and AT&T all provide Netscape free of charge. You can even call them for technical support.

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Netscape Calls Them guidemarks

I've already told you about ways that browsers keep track of places you've been. With Netscape Navigator, you use guidemarks, as shown in Figure 14.4, to revisit Web sites. Using Navigator, you can access guidemarks by clicking the guidemark menu and then clicking where you want to go.

Netscape stores these guidemarks in a file that you can then use in other ways. You can customize it to have separate folders for specific topics, and you can export the list for other Internet-savvy programs to use. Navigator guidemarks are also easy to edit, change, and delete.

Figure 14.4.

In addition to using the guidemarks menu, Netscape also enables you to open an editable window of your guidemarks.

More Netscape Features

Netscape has many more features that make it a powerful and useful browser. Here are a few more:

• In-Box Direct is a feature that expands the capability to receive interactive Web pages--including pictures, video, audio, and more--that can be received and viewed in an e-mail message.
• Netscape automatically adds the http://www. and .com in an address so that you have to type in only a single word to access that site (but make sure it's the right word). If you type cnn in the Location: field, for example, Netscape automatically takes you to http://www.netscape.com.
• A fully configurable interface and feature set is one of Netscape's strongest points. You can decide for yourself how you want to use it and what features you want to use. You can also customize the look of the Netscape screen to make a comfortable browsing environment.

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Just A Minute: Currently, Netscape finds only addresses that begin with www and end in com. For addresses that begin and end differently, you still need to type them in manually.

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The Future

The race for the best browser seems to be a race of features and usability. Even Netscape admits it can be outdone. Microsoft's ActiveX technology, which is discussed in the next section, for example, is currently scheduled for a future version of Netscape.

Also up and coming is the ability to perform audio conferences with multiple participants. Voicemail, too, is on Netscape's agenda, along with chat functions that are usually associated with the IRC. Of course, another common trend for both browsers is a continued increase in interactive capability.

Current Internet Explorer Features

Microsoft's Internet Explorer was a late arrival to the browser world. As a result, Microsoft cloned Netscape rather than fighting the established standard. And clone Netscape it did because most pages made for Netscape look virtually identical in Internet Explorer. Even though Internet Explorer is playing catch-up with Netscape, Microsoft will be a force in the browser market.

Internet Explorer tries its best to make you feel comfortable if you're converting from Netscape. You can change Explorer's interface to match Netscape's almost button for button if you want.

Microsoft Calls Them Favorites

What Netscape calls guidemarks, Internet Explorer calls favorites. Explorer's favorites work much like Netscape's guidemarks in that you can access them through the Favorites menu as well as opening a window that enables you to edit, organize, and delete your favorites, as shown in Figure 14.5.

Figure 14.5.

Internet Explorer uses favorites, which are easy to customize and edit to suit your needs.

More Internet Explorer Features

Like Netscape, Internet Explorer has many other features that make it convenient and easy to use. Here is a list of some of them:

• The most notable aspect of Internet Explorer is its price--free. You can download it right off the Microsoft home page free of charge. Remember, though, that there is something to be said about software that is free: You get what you pay for. Internet Explorer comes with no customer support.
• Completely unaddressed by Netscape is Internet Explorer's capability to increase or decrease the size of the text in the viewer with the click of a button. This feature is great if you're trying to read the fine print of some page or you want larger letters to reduce eye strain.
• Internet Explorer is much smaller and takes up less memory than does Netscape Navigator. This feature can be a big advantage to users who do not have 16MB of RAM on their computers.
• ActiveX is Microsoft's answer to Netscape's plug-ins. ActiveX components act like plug-ins, but Microsoft claims they are more dynamic because you can download them along with the page that uses them. ActiveX differs from plug-ins by being able to represent an application interface, like a spreadsheet or database, right in the browser window.

The Future

Compared to Netscape, Internet Explorer may soon seem like a whole new product because it will be tightly integrated into the Windows 95 operating system (beginning with version 4.0) to a point that you can't tell where one starts and the other ends. Of course, this will be a problem for Macintosh users.

This transformation will begin when you are able to view files and folders on your system's hard disk as hypertext. The new HyperText option will make every window look like a Web page. The names of files and folders will be in hypertext; you simply click the underlined name to open that item.

Finally, another coming feature called WebCheck will monitor Web pages in your Favorites folder or on your desktop and automatically notify you of changes to those pages.

Same Site, Different Browsers: Some Examples

So, is a browser a browser or is one superior to the other? The answer depends on where you point that browser. Most content on the Internet is relatively neutral in regard to which browser views it. Of the browser-specific content out there, however, most of it is still directed toward Netscape, even though a significant amount is geared toward Internet Explorer's capabilities. The best way to determine which browser is best is by looking at two sites that push the browsers to their limits.

Netscape's Winning Features

As an example of Netscape's winning features, the object shown in Figure 14.6 is a three-dimensional image that can be rotated and viewed from all sides. Imagine walking through a supermarket on the Internet and being able to pick up items and look at them from all angles!

Figure 14.6.

This site is Netscape-centric.

Internet Explorer does a fine job of showing regular text, but notice that the object in Figure 14.7 is in a separate window, not in the page like Netscape. You lose the effect of the Web page if the objects aren't located within it.

Figure 14.7.

This example shows the same site as Figure 14.6 but using Internet Explorer. Big difference.

Internet Explorer's Winning Features

To be fair, Internet Explorer displays some sites much better than Netscape. Look at Figures 14.8 and 14.9 for an example. The site shown in Figure 14.8 uses ActiveX to achieve what I described earlier as an application interface. That is, it looks like an actual spreadsheet. You can move the scroll bars, and the new calculations are made instantly, changing the graph on the fly.

Figure 14.8.

This site is Internet Explorer-centric. Notice all the areas where you can enter data; using this site is just like using a calculator!

The current iteration of Netscape doesn't do ActiveX at all, so in Figure 14.9 you can see the blank space and what looks like random characters in the shaded box. Netscape has said that future versions of its software will include ActiveX support. Currently, you can buy a plug-in from Ncompass called Script Active that does allow Netscape to view ActiveX elements. (Go to http://www.ncompasslabs.com/products/scriptactive.asp for a free evaluation copy.)

Figure 14.9.

This figure shows the same site as in Figure 14.8, but through Netscape's eyes. Not so interactive, is it?

The examples shown in this section are sites designed for specific browsers. Keep in mind, though, that their similarities far outweigh their differences. Ordinary daily use of either browser should produce satisfactory results.

Get `Em While They're Hot: What Version to Use

The problem with the breakneck speed at which software companies must bring out upgrades is that software still has many bugs. When you're deciding when and how far to upgrade your browser, you should be cautious.

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CAUTION: In the software industry, you may hear of a universal warning about version numbers that end in a .0 or contain an a or b (which stands for alpha and beta versions, respectively). These versions sometimes have incompatibilities, bugs, and performance issues that have not been addressed. Waiting until the .01 or .1 versions appear before upgrading is often wise.

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Getting the newest version isn't always in your best interest because the product may not have been fully tested. One of the qualities that makes an older version of software attractive is its user-tested stability. When you're dealing with Internet browsers--and software in general--like wine, there is something to be said about vintage and maturity. When you're ready to upgrade, the best way to find out about new versions is to check the Netscape or Microsoft home page regularly.

Less Filling, Tastes Great

Older versions of browser software may not have all the bells and whistles that newer versions have, but they are usually smaller and use less memory. Netscape Navigator 3.0, for example, requires almost twice as much memory to run as 2.0 does. You should keep this factor in mind.

Do you really need to view the movies on the MTV site? If your computer is an older model, viewing movies may not even be an option, so don't bother with features you can't use. The newer browsers are primarily directed at the latest version of system software and memory requirements that run your computer.

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Just A Minute: The future of browsers is already upon us. Version 4 of both browsers will probably be available when you read this guide, and planning for versions 5 and 6 is already under way. Do these people ever sleep?

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Summary

In this lesson, I took you through a quick tour of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. You learned the basics of browsers, as well as their similarities and differences. Despite their many differences, you discovered that the two don't contrast greatly. Each browser has an integrated e-mail and newsgroup client and the capabilities to show movies, play sounds, and even make calls around the block or around the world. The biggest single difference is probably the price. The browser you choose depends on how many features you want and how much memory your computer has.

Workshop

The following workshop helps solidify the skills that you learned in this lesson.

Q&A

Q I'm interested in speed. Which one is faster: Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer?

A Both, depending on whom you ask. Netscape and Microsoft have "documented" evidence that their browser is much faster than the other. Really, telling which is fastest is not easy when you take into account the type of machine you have, the RAM and hard disk size, and the speed at which you connect to the Internet. Get out that stopwatch and try them both.

Q If both browsers are so similar, which one should I use?

A The answer depends on what you want to use the browser for. Are you using it to access a specific Netscape-centric Web site? Or did your computer come bundled with all the Microsoft applications you could ever want, including Internet Explorer? Really, the best thing to do is try them both and see which one fits into your routine. Ask your friends and coworkers which one they use and why. Ultimately, your choice is a matter of personal taste.

Quiz

Take the following quiz to see how much you've learned.

Questions

Answers

Activity

If you have downloaded either Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer version 3.0 or later, have a little fun by going to the Virtual City repository located at http://www.vir.com/~farid/ctrepos.asp. Cruise through some of the countries and cities listed to get an idea of what the virtual world is like as seen through the eyes of a Web browser. To look for even more 3-D worlds, go to http://webspace.cgi.com/intro.asp.