Everyone bow your heads in respect for Netscape.  AOL recently announce that they will be discontinuing development of the first popular web browser.  I remember a long time ago when I first started on the web and the nice big icon with the ships wheel on it.  Oh, Netscape, you were my favorite for years.  The Communicator suite at version 4 was definitely a highlight of your career.  But then Internet Explorer got better and took over your audience.  In revenge, Mozilla took your open source code and created Firefox, Thunderbird, and Seamonkey.  I don’t really like the Seamonkey name.  Maybe AOL could sell Netscape to Mozilla and they could change the name of Seamonkey to Netscape Communicator and it can rise from the dead again.  Bwoo Ha ha ha.

Rest In Peace, Netscape.  We will all miss you.

The other day I decided that I was going to check out Opera I heard they were sueing Microsoft for bundling IE with Windows which is an issue I could rant on but that’s another post.  In any case, I haven’t used Opera in . . . hmm . . . let me see now . . . never.  I started my web browsing life with Netscape, then Internet Explorer, then Firefox.  Nowadays I use Firefox on everything but my Mac.  Safari works perfectly for me so I’ll take that.  So I thought “What’s so special about Opera?  Is it as good as Firefox and Safari?  IE isn’t too bad but I don’t think it’s as good.”  So I downloaded Opera and tried some web browsing . . . it seemed kinda slow to me.  So I loaded the same pages in Firefox.  Much faster.  IE.  Faster than Opera, slower than Firefox.  Safari for Windows.  I’d say on part with Firefox.  Based on my mediocre but average user like tests, I have to say this:

Opera, shut your mouth until you can actually beat IE in a fair fight.  If someone had IE and Opera pre-installed on their computers, they would use IE after finding out how much faster it is than you.  If Opera was the only browser on the machine, they would only use it to download a faster browser.  You may have the web standards taken care of but you don’t have the speed.   So shut your mouth.

Yes, I complimented IE.  Do I like IE?  Well, that’s another post.

Stay tuned for more of the Browser Wars, Full on Reviews and Comparison of any an every web browser I can find.