I’ve been checking out the web browsers available to Mac users, enjoying the experience, and always relishing the opportunity to do some surfing. This month, more than any other, I am glad that I decided upon very specific, tangible criteria for my comparison. The reason? I am reviewing Microsoft’s Explorer. If you are familiar with my other articles you already know that I am not the world’s biggest Microsoft fan. My reasons are varied - and strictly my own - and they have little to do with the quality of Microsoft’s products, which are usually very good. So, using my established criteria, I believe that I was able to be objective with this review. The criteria for the review are as follows:
* Ease of Installation
* Ease of Connectivity (via an ISP)
* Speed of Connectivity to URLs
* Information of Status of Connections to URLs
* East of FTP Downloads
* Interpretation of HTML format
* Consistency of Loading Images
* Ease of Moving between URLs
* Bookmark Ease of Use
* Cache Management
Downloading the Browser software from Microsoft’s web site was easy and quick, which I appreciated. Installing Internet Explorer 2.0 was just as easy and straight forward. The total process took no more than 30 minutes from start to finish. As a non-techie, I appreciated the simplicity of this process. It was new to me to receive screen notifications that the software program was copying my hook-up/ISP information and preferences from my existing browser. This is a very nice, time and keystroke saving feature.
I did have a slight ‘hiccup’ the first time that I went on-line, as the Explorer 2.0 did not want to connect to Earthlink (my ISP of choice) on the first two (2) tries. Once I massaged this for a few minutes, however, it was never an issue again. The actual load up time, however, was a bit slower than I was used to. I also prefer that my browser load text and graphics together from top to bottom of page. Internet Explorer is set up to load text first, then graphics. This feature, while an esthetic one, is an irritant to me, but may be a non-event for other users. One of my favorite tests for different browsers is to load up the Independence Day (movie) web page. This is a graphically heavy page. The Internet Explorer took quite some time to fully load the page, specifically 2.3 minutes. As a comparison, NetSurfer (by Net Manage) took 1.8 minutes, and Netscape’s Navigator took 1.2 minutes on my 14.4 bps modem. Clearly the Explorer did not stand up to it’s competition in this area. My only explanation is that - like 70% of all web pages - the ID4 page was designed on Netscape Navigator, thus causing a ‘translation’ delay with this browser.
I was awed by the number of buttons on the Explorer’s tool bar: there are 19 buttons at the top of each page. Some are the standard fare: open, print, email, back, forward, stop loading, reload, home, search, news, open favorites list, add to favorites list. Then, however, there are Explorer-unique buttons: enlarge font, shrink font, cut, paste, clipboard, display HTML source, and change options. As with all other browsers, the bottom of the browser display included a bar graph displaying the load status of the URL. This feature appears to be 100% accurate based on load rate (we weren’t so lucky with last month’s browser). This, again, is a small but relevant feature for me: make it accurate or don’t include it. Microsoft’s browser is bullet-proof here.
I had no problem getting URLs fully loaded with Explorer, again something I had trouble with in the past. I appreciate that I did not have to do any memory manipulation or cache management with the Explorer. I am always thankful when a program interfaces with my Mac OS, so that I don’t have to do any manual corrections. My only issue here, already made once, is that the loading of URLs is quite slow. Note to Explorer users: if you move from one site to another before the first site is fully loaded, make sure that you click on the ‘stop loading’ button. If you don’t, you may find that your system will freeze and require rebooting (and reconnecting, etc).
Downloading FTPs is also very easy and straightforward. Explorer provides excellent updates on the status of the downloads, and allows the user the opportunity to determine the receiving file. These are not critical features, but it does make life a little nicer (and reduces needless keystrokes). I had no problem downloading any FTP file, finding it later, or having any file only partially available.
The least user-friendly feature within Microsoft’s Explorer was the Favorite List. This feature seemed cumbersome and not as fluid as many of the other features provided. The Favorites list did work, and I was able to utilize it to move between URLs. Use of the Favorites List did not, however, speed up the loading of new pages.
Microsoft did recover its user-friendly image with its automatic cache management. This was a trivial, but important feature for me. It did also mean that an empty cache had no impact on the speed of loading any page.
 
In conclusion, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is an easy browser to use, with many nice features. It is not the browser for me, however, since it is much slower than other browsers that I am familiar with and its loading preference (text over graphics) does not suit my esthetic needs.
Next month I’ll be reviewing the Netscape Navigator browser as I just downloaded the 3.0 Beta version yesterday!
 
For suggestions on browsers that you think we should review, please email Deanna at deannaf@earthlink.net
