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• The Web browser is essential, and to a growing number of users even more important than the operating system itself. As more tasks commonly associated with locally-installed applications are being accomplished using online services, the Web browser will only become more critical in the future. If Firefox seems like the de facto browser for Linux, that's because it is. However, Windows users will remember late last year when Internet Explorer security holes drove them en masse to Firefox, only to later discover similar exploits in Firefox. This incident drove home the need to have multiple browsers installed, if only for emergency backup use. To put these browsers through a quick (and admittedly unscientific) test, I utilized some of the Internet's most popular Web sites. For starters, I performed a few random searches on Google to gauge page-load speed. Next, I simply navigated to the Yahoo homepage. Believe it or not, that site doesn't support very many browsers. I navigated to my house using the maps at Microsoft's new Bing.com (why not test in unfriendly territory?). And finally, I played the current feature video on Hulu, and the same on YouTube. Mozilla Firefox (v. 3.0.11) Mozilla's Firefox is the undisputed king of Web browsers on the Linux platform. No matter what any given distribution has installed by default, the vast majority of Linux users rely on Firefox as their primary window into the World Wide Web. It's popularity is due in large part to the unparalleled number of custom add-ons and plug-ins available. If a feature exists on any browser, there's probably an add-on to enable it in Firefox. This browser is more stable and secure than Internet Explorer, while still performing similarly on Web site compatibility. With all this going for it, it's no wonder that Firefox holds almost one quarter of the entire Web browser market share. That means about twenty percent of current Windows users prefer it. If you don't already use this browser, regardless of your OS, you should. Opera (v. 9.64) For many years, Opera has been the third wheel at the browser party. Today, it's more like the fifth. Opera has had a long history of innovation, often including cutting-edge features before the competition. By including a thumbnailed bookmarks page, thumbnailed tab previews, and split-screen browsing (not as optional add-ons, but integrated into the default installation), the latest version of Opera is still ahead of it's time. One of the simple features that I especially like is the ability to have a separate entry in the search bar for each tab. For example, if you search for "fried chicken recipes" in one tab, and open a second tab to search for "cornbread recipes," the search bar in the second tab will not have "fried chicken recipes," but will be blank for a new search. If nothing else, Opera is a solid backup or secondary browser and is available for just about every operating system you can think of. BeOS stalwarts rejoice! SeaMonkey (v. 1.1.15) The first thing that you're sure to notice about SeaMonkey Navigator is the Netscape Navigator theme. Of all the browsers in this article, SeaMonkey was the biggest surprise. It is hands-down the best non-mainstream offering on the list, no question. This browser had no problem handling YouTube, Hulu, Yahoo, or even Microsoft Bing Maps. Apart from the theme, being an actual descendant of Netscape makes SeaMonkey very approachable to ex-users of Navigator. When you perform a search using the search bar, a pane appears on the left side of the screen displaying search results. This feature can come in handy if you have the screen real estate to spare on a wide-screen monitor. I really did not expect to find anything decent besides Firefox and Opera, but SeaMonkey is truly a great app; something that will remain installed on my machine long after this article is finished.

• Epiphany (v. 2.26.1) Epiphany is the default Web browser for the stock GNOME GUI. GNOME is the default GUI for popular distributions such as Ubuntu, Fedora, and Debian. While Ubuntu has Mozilla Firefox installed as the primary browser, until recently, Epiphany was also installed by default. Epiphany uses Mozilla's Gecko layout engine and therefore bears a striking resemblance to Firefox. The best feature of Epiphany is the all-in-one search/location bar, which is unparalleled at discerning the difference between a search term and the name of a Web site. This is a decent browser as far as site compatibility is concerned, and it correctly displays site elements. It is, however, noticeably slower than most of the other browsers; painfully at times. Overall, Epiphany is a decent, fully-featured secondary or backup browser. Galeon (v. 2.0.6) Galeon, like Epiphany, uses the Mozilla Gecko layout engine. It is actually the parent project from which Epiphany was formed. Galeon has a strange "myportal:" as it's default homepage, which gives you an error each time you open the app. Apparently it's supposed to create a shortcut page from your bookmarks, but it didn't. Galeon is not as slow as Epiphany, however it did have problems with the Yahoo homepage. If you don't use any Yahoo services and don't mind having to immediately set a new start page, this browser is just as good as Epiphany. Konqueror (v. 4.2.2) Konqueror is the default Web browser and file manager for the KDE graphical user interface. KDE is the default GUI for popular Linux distributions like openSUSE, Mandriva, and Kubuntu. Even though most modern distros use Firefox as their default browser, Konqueror is usually installed as a file manager and/or secondary  browser in the KDE distros. While Konqueror leaves quite a lot to be desired, it is a powerful and fully-featured file manager. One greatly-missed feature when running this browser in GNOME is the search bar. It is there, next to the location bar, when run from KDE. Konqueror would not play videos on Hulu, nor would it display the Yahoo homepage. It also got hung up during Google searches and would ignore my keystrokes in the search box. The program fetches pages from the Web slightly faster than Epiphany, but the actual program took quite a while longer to load than the others. To be fair, the last three problems were due to running Konqueror in Ubuntu's GNOME GUI instead of it's native KDE. So, if you're using KDE as your GUI, Konqueror won't be that bad in terms of performance, and higher on the list than Epiphany. Though it's occasionally nice to go from a local file to a Web page in the same app, Konqueror is not going to cut it as your primary browser by any stretch of the imagination.  Arora (v. 0.5) Arora is the last browser to make the cut, but that doesn't mean it's the bottom of the barrel. There are many, many more Web browsers for Linux that just didn't have enough usability to be featured here. Arora played Hulu and YouTube videos, but both experienced seemingly random errors that required a reload (and therefore a fast forward back to your position), which could become irritating quite quickly. It also experiences major "scroll-lag" if there is video or ad content on the screen. While this browser supports tabbed browsing, it seems to prefer opening a new window for links more often than not. On the bright side, the speed was excellent and the program loads quickly. Being based on QTWebKit makes this browser worth watching for diversity's sake. But for now, Arora is best as a secondary or even tertiary backup Web browser due to it's (currently) limited functionality and remaining bugs. Google Chrome? Google has said that Chrome would be available for all operating systems, yet right now it is only for Windows. So far, the Linux and Mac versions of the new browser are only available as pre-alpha developer releases, and only recommended if you absolutely cannot wait for, or want to aid in the development of Google Chrome. While many things do not work properly in the development version, it runs exceptionally fast. And due to it's underlying design, it should be the most secure and stable browser available. Recently, Google announced that the 64-bit version of Chrome will be released for Linux first. Unfortunately, we were told that a version would be released in the first half of this year, so I'm no longer holding my breath. Whenever it becomes available, Chrome will very likely move up on this list.

• Live Labs emphasizes the 'search' in Microsoft Research

  Redmond (WA) - The principal mission of Microsoft's new Live Labs project - announced last week as a collaboration between the company's Research and MSN divisions - will be to focus on improving the functionality and experience for the Internet search engine user, for as long as the next four years, Kevin Schofield, general manager for Microsoft Research, told TG Daily. Since 1991, Microsoft Research has employed many of the world's most brilliant engineers, including former Palo Alto Research Center fellow and creator of the Alto computer, Butler Lampson, who also led the development of PKI cryptography; next-generation Internet transport protocol researcher Henrik Frystyk Nielsen; and object-orientation master Luca Cardelli. Some of their work has indeed come to fruition within, or by way of, Microsoft products; but over the years since they were hired - in some senses, hired away from where they were before - a lot of that work has languished. Last week's founding of Live Labs, however, could potentially be the key that unlocks what some observers have characterized - whether fairly or not - as the "basement" of the corporation. But if these distinguished and admired fellows want to play a role in Live Labs, at least for the foreseeable future, they had better get down to business and think of ways to improve the MSN search engine. Today, Schofield told us, Live Labs will be "focused on the Internet space, and Windows Live. We certainly haven't precluded that, over time, we may expand it to other things." Those other things might include, as we suggested in our question to Schofield, an open project to improve the functionality and user experience in Microsoft Office. Late this year, the company is expected to release Office 12 in concert with Windows Vista, which continues to appear likely to make sweeping changes in the way its applications look and work. "Three, four, maybe even one or two years from now, there's certainly a distinct possibility that we'll be engaged in those sorts of projects," said Schofield. One such project may include collaboration with the Office Live team, which is devoted to building Internet-driven applications similar to the Office suite. "Today, at the initial point, it's really focused on the MSN products today and Windows Live." Last week, we reported on Microsoft's announcement of the founding of Live Labs, culminating from a collaboration between the Research division (MSR) and the company's new chief technology officer, Ray Ozzie. In that report, we stated the work of MSR up to this point has "yielded magnificent research papers, but no practical results - and more importantly, no products." Dr. Gary William Flake, who is leading Live labs as "Distinguished Engineer" with Microsoft Corp., was hired by the company late last year from Yahoo Labs, where he led research into data mining and search validity algorithms, ostensibly intended to compete with Google Labs. Before that, he co-founded a venture called Overture, whose singular mission appeared to be to beat Google at its own game. So hiring Dr. Flake clearly sends the message that Live Labs is a competitive effort against Google. But how much of the broader efforts of the whole of MSR will be redirected toward beating Google? Schofield indicated that the work of Live Labs should not be construed as diverting MSR from its original and existing goals. That said, it also doesn't appear likely that Live Labs will do much to expedite those goals that exist outside what he calls "the Internet-scale space," at least for the next few years. In a research organization, Schofield said, "there's a fundamental tenet that you don't realize until you dive in deep: You can't staff up research like you staff up a product group...I hate to say this, but it's almost a drag-and-drop [process] for software development. Take some people, move them over there, work on that. Research doesn't really work that way, because it's all about solving unsolved problems, and moving the state of the art forward in a particular area where no one has gone before. It's really a bet on the people. First thing you do is, you find people who have domain expertise in that area, and have an interest in diving deeper into research in that area, and you bring them in." From that statement, one can conclude that MSR won't be arbitrarily shifting key researchers and engineers from existing products in other spaces, over to a new project focused on beating Google. Instead, researchers will continue to engage in the company's existing technology transfer program, which has been described as a conduit for MSR researchers sharing their discoveries with the company's production teams as they happen. "We really don't think in terms of timelines," Schofield said about his Research division. "Fundamentally, you can't schedule breakthroughs. That's the complementary role of research versus engineering. Engineering, we can schedule it, because people basically understand that with research, you take risks, and some of the things you do are going to fail...[So] you bet on people. You go find the best people you possibly can, give them the best resources you can, the best support you can, and you set them loose. You do this as an act of faith, that if you hire the best people with the best resources, they're going to come through for you." Schofield drew a kind of verbal map of where he pictures the relationship between Microsoft Corp. and MSR currently, and where he wants it to evolve. On one end of his scale is what he calls basic research, which is the bedrock of his organization, and which he describes as "the steady march of progress in all these different technologies, not necessarily thinking about a particular product." At the other end is engineering, whose processes can be more strictly controlled, he explained, because the people involved are working with the tools and concepts they already know. Engineers can go build something, he remarked, when they have a solid handle on how to build it. This contrasts with basic research, where the how's and even many of the why's have not been determined yet.