Browsers – the next encounter

Browsers – the next encounter
The rivalry, or so-called “browser war”, is in full swing. The two most popular browsers- Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox recently brought to work their latest and most serious arms.

The history of web browsers goes back to the early 90’s when a program called WorldWideWeb was created. The first “war” was waged between the Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator browsers, finished with a crushing victory of the first one. In 2003- an outbreak of a second “war” of browsers took place. This time, Internet Explorer faced Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Safari. In 2008, Google Chrome joined the the competition.

Some people consider that the beginning of the latest clash started with the year 2004, when Mozilla 1.0 appeared – the first browser, which in their opinion was clearly better than the Microsoft’s program. It was much quicker, less complicated, more functional than the existing application. Users quickly began to see its functionalities, and so in early 2009 Firefox has become the most popular application in Poland.

Another important date in the history of browsers is 11th December 2008, when Google Chrome version 1.0 debuted. The application was faster than Firefox, had a simplified interface, but it lacked functionality – including extensions support. But the new features were being regularly added in the later versions, which appeared with increasing frequency.

Explorer and Mozilla couldn’t continue to ignore it. In March 2011 they discovered the cards. Internet Explorer was first – releasing it on March 14 IE9. According to Microsoft, the ninth edition of Explorer is a modern, unique product. Independent commentators admit that IE9 actually looks like a modern browser. IE9 is the only one of the leading browsers, which is designed only for Windows, and relies heavily on integration with the system. This allows a better use of hardware resources. And so the way to the functions of the operating system interface is open. An example is the function of pinned sites, which allows you to put your favorite sites directly on the taskbar in Windows 7 and treat them as other applications.

Just over a week later Mozilla show down the Firefox 4. Many new features were implemented, including: grouping of cards also called Panorama, or a function, which uses “drag-and-drop” to organize the cards in easy to manage groups.

Shortly after the release of its browser, Microsoft boasted 2.4 million downloads of Internet Explorer 9 on the first day of release. Mozilla’s answer was overwhelming – during 20 hours, the popular “fox” has been downloaded by over 5 million users.

An interesting fact about Firefox 4 is the creation of an interactive world map that shows, on which continents, in which countries, and even cities a new browser has been downloaded (simply select a color element in the lower left corner). Global map is based on IP addresses of the users.