the world, or part of it

Until 2004, it had been many years since anyone had really cared about a battle of the web browsers. The famous Netscape versus Internet Explorer duel was old enough for the history books, and no one seemed to mind the winner…for a while. Then, like a golden-winged ship, Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 and the overthrow of Microsoft dominance began. Immediately people began calling for the downfall of IE and the beginning of the open source revolution. Since then, Firefox has remained in second place and is making steady gains on IE. The battle is still raging even though most of that original spark (which I was gladly a part of, and I assume many of the readers were too) has died a bit. The Fox is still hungry for more of the market share, but the pioneer movement that was palpable in late 2004 and early 2005 has ended. The only competitor of Firefox for second place is sitting in the choir at about one percent of the market share. That of course would be the Opera browser, who is making it a goal to out Mozilla as the open-source leader and try to lead the take down of IE’s empire.

When it comes to popularity, Firefox has Opera easily outdone. The success of the browser is owed to the group of devout fans who got out there and spread the word from the beginning that there was a new sheriff in town. Just because they have the popularity doesnt mean that Mozilla has the better browser on all accounts. When you look at the amount of features that each browser comes with, you’ll probably see that Opera is the clear winner. But there are other factors in a browser, such as which one makes the internet more fun to be on. That question relies more on opinion, but I believe that more websites have accepted Firefox and it has been made easier for the users to get around. It may be unfair to Opera because they haven’t yet gained the popularity to be more accepted, but that is how the cookie crumbles.

If you read this article wanting to know which browser to chose, you’re probably in the wrong place. Each one has their own highlights and pitfalls, but I believe that it’s safe to say that Mozilla wont have to worry about the Opera threat. Opera didnt get the same movement that Firefox got, so it can’t really blast into the market. Unfortunately for Opera, Firefox has enough extensions that if anyone really wants to have certain features that only Opera offers, they can download them for FF and still have the function of the soon-to-be number one browser.