How to select web browser and check its capabilities

Web browser capabilities info window; sample screenshot pertinent to IE 8
Alexander Bell

Web browsers represent the quintessential software category of modern days. Browser statistics as reported by www.w3schools.com for the last 3 months look like the shown in the table below. The numbers clearly indicate the leadership of two most popular browsers: Mozilla Firefox (current version 3.5) and Microsoft Internet Explorer (current version 8.0), known as IE. Their combined market share exceeds 86% (as per Sep 2009 statistics), leaving just a little space (less that 14%) to the rest of competitive products.

This number pretty much reflects the objective performance metrics. Both browsers achieved rather high level of sophistication: they are feature-rich, have rather intuitive, convenient user interface and provide accurate and fast web page processing. Still, there is some minor differences between those two: for example MS IE support the background sound tag (bgsound), enabling to add sound effects to the web page in rather simple way (try it working at www.webinfocentral.com). This feature is not supported neither by Firefox, nor any other major browsers.

In a practical sense, the users could just follow the popularity trend and choose any of Top-3 leading browsers (IE, Firefox or Chrome), which combined are accounted for 93% of the browser market. It is also possible to have all three installed on a single computer, though only one at a time could be set as a default browser.

It is important to have the latest version installed as the manufacturers of the browsers are continuously working on the security and overall user experience improvements. In order to check the version of the browser, follow the simple procedure described below:

• Microsoft IE: select menu item “Internet Explorer Help”, then “About Internet Explorer” and check out the version (the latest one is 8.0.x)
• Mozilla Firefox: select menu item “Help”, then go to sub-menu “About Mozilla Firefox” and check the version (the latest one is 3.5.3x)
• Google Chrome: locate the toolbar button containing little wrench icon, select the menu item "About Google Chrome" and check out the availability of new versions (the latest one is 3.0.1x)

Detailed data report, reflecting the capabilities of any installed browser (see the sample screenshot attached to the article), could be obtained online at any time totally free by using the feature, available at www.webinfocentral.com by following the simple procedure: start the browser (any) and navigate it to the site, then locate and click on the screen button titled “check your browser; the information window will pop-up, showing the list of browser capabilities, similar to the sample screen-shot shown above.

Happy web surfing, folks!