“While Microsoft abused its monopoly power to beat the pants off Netscape, IE became a superior product by its third iteration. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t done much since to improve its bloated and buggy browser. Without competition, as critics feared, it has had little incentive to better the breed. Features added to recent IE updates are aimed more at promoting other Microsoft products, such as Windows Media Player and MSN Search, than enhancing browsing.”

“Apple’s new Safari (test version available for download from [url=http://www.apple.com/safari]http://www.apple.com/safari)[/url] returns the focus of the browser to displaying Web pages. While I can pick nits with Safari, the worst thing I can say about it is that it’s only available to those who use Mac OS X–which happens to be less than 5% of computer users.”

“The two most striking things about Safari are its clean design and its speed. Apple based the browser on software developed by the KDE project, a cooperative closely aligned with the Linux open-source effort. It displays Web pages faster than any browser I have seen on any type of computer, a difference most noticeable on a swift Internet connection,” reports Stephen H. Wildstrom for BusinessWeek. Full article here.