Browsers with bells and whistles

IHT - NY Times: "The number of competitors to Internet Explorer is surprisingly large and diverse. The most commonly mentioned alternatives are Mozilla and its cousin, the recently released Firefox 1.0, two browsers descended from Netscape, the early Internet company that is now part of AOL. Firefox is a Web browser pure and simple. Mozilla uses the same basic core, known as Gecko, and adds tools for reading e-mail, chatting and composing Web pages. Both are open-source tools freely distributed and subject to modification by programmers worldwide.

If you are considering making the leap to a different browser, there are other choices, too. A Norwegian company, Opera, is selling its browser, though a free version that displays advertising is available as well. Apple Computer has Safari, which builds on one called Konqueror, from the world of Linux. If that is not enough to choose from, there are dozens of browsers out there like Amaya and Dillo that cater mainly to people with particular interests - 'Star Trek' fans, for example. There are also hybrids like NetCaptor, Phaseout and Avant that use Internet Explorer's core and then add features. Microsoft encourages software developers to revise and extend Internet Explorer and maintains a catalogue of such offerings at www.windowsmarketplace.com.

Some, like NetCaptor, which offers a popular feature called tabbed browsing and sells for $30, cost extra, but many are free."