Alternative Browsers: Why Use Only One?

When it comes to browsers, most web workers rely on the usual suspects: Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera. There are many alternative browsers, though, and some of them are useful for targeted types of tasks. Here are six examples that I like.

Camino is a favorite with many users in the Mac community. It’s based on the Gecko rendering engine, which Firefox is also based on, and many users favor it for its lightning-fast speed, which includes opening and closing itself very quickly.

Flock is an extremely popular browser for people who do social networking. It has many social networking features built right in, and its whole interface caters to media you share with others, the channels they are on, and more. In its new version, it also integrates tightly with Gmail, letting you instantly access your Gmail messages and sending all messages in Flock through Gmail, if you wish.

K-Meleon is an open source browser which, like Camino, is known for its fast speeds. It load and unloads very quickly, and is based on the Gecko rendering engine used by Camino and Firefox. There are many third-party plug-ins available for it.

OmniWeb is based on Apple’s WebCore technology, which also drives Safari. Handy feature: You can save your sessions as workspaces and then come back to them.

Konqueror is an open source browser that functions as both the browser and file manager for the K Desktop Environment (KDE). If you haven’t gotten into KDE, there’s a new version in beta now, and free.

The OffByOne browser is an extremely small and fast application, with a footprint of about a megabyte. I wouldn’t it use it for every task, but I keep it on a USB thumb drive I carry and occasionally use it for quick-and-dirty tasks.

Do you use any alternative browsers?

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