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There's a war raging on the World Wide Web. Battle lines have been drawn. By our recent research (this morning), there are at least 24 factions waging war over who will become the standard Web Browser, with more lining up to join the battle. And that's before Microsoft actually jumps in.

The current leader, hands-down, is NetScape. (The nickname for their product is "Mozilla", the "Mosaic-Killer"). With their new release of 1.1N, the best estimates are that roughly 77% of the Web traffic today flows through their browser. What's more, nearly every Web page these days is "optimized" for 1.1N. Most Web pages even provide links to NetScape's site (http://home.netscape.com), where the software can be downloaded at no cost for educational and non-profit use. The commercial version costs $39, and is now available in retail outlets.

By way of history, in the Dark Ages of the 'net (1993-1994), there was Mosaic. Some of the developers left and formed NetScape, the company and the product, and proceeded to stomp out the competition by making their product available as shareware. This got NetScape a critical mass of sites that began exploiting features only found in their product, which tends to remain, even now, ahead of the standards for HTML, the language of the Web.

It's easy to see why NetScape continues to dominate, yet, with the 'net, and particularly the Web, product life cycles are measured in days and weeks. Overnight, Microsoft could conceivably dwarf the competition with their browser, which is alleged to be a part of "WinEver", AKA Win 95.

Among the features that set NetScape away from the rest of the pack are:

1. Speed. You can view a document while it is downloading. (Doing this in other browsers tends to send them out to lunch.)
2. It's a real Windows (or Mac) program. Anything you see through the viewer can be put into a clipboard and moved to other applications. This includes all the graphics you see. (WYSIWYCS: What You See Is What You Can Steal).
3. Multiple sessions. When you link to a site, you must wait while the connection is made and the stuff is transferred. In NetScape 1.1N, you can launch up to four simultaneous sessions, no waiting (your mileage may vary).
4. Security. The standards for security are becoming more clear. With NetScape and Terisa Systems teaming up recently, security should be resolved by the end of summer. NetScape has a commercial product called NetSite, which provides secure (encrypted) Web transactions. On their browser, a little key appears on the bottom of the screen. When you look at an "unsecure" Web page, the key appears broken. While not many sites are offering this feature yet, this appears to be a glimpse of things to come.

For an excellent report on each of these browsers, it's hard to beat the article by Peter Kent called "Browser Shootout", which is available, naturally, through the Web at http://www.mecklerweb.com/mags/iw/v6n4/feat46.htm.

I was going to list the other browsers, but I'm limited to 500 words in these columns, to give more room for Tim's article above. (Tim, do you suppose you could get your next column's message across in fewer words?) Note to Web-readers, Tim's article is not "above". The newspaper this column appears in, Computing News and Review puts my articles on the same page as Tim Holland's articles. Being much smarter than me, he gets more word space.

See you next issue.

Jon Sisk
www.jes.com

Original article for Computing News & Review, June 1995

Copyright © 1995 Jonathan E. Sisk.