Choosing a Web Browser

The Internet has forever changed how we access and share information. The ways in which we view the Internet have also changed and are continually improving to give better and richer experiences. In this section, we look at some of the popular open-source web browsers available for Fedora.

A Brief Introduction to the Internet

The Internet itself was first brought to life by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1969. It was called ARPANet after the Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency. Designed to build a network that would withstand major catastrophe (this was the peak of the Cold War), it soon grew to encompass more and more networks to build the Internet. Then, in 1991 Tim Berners-Lee of CERN developed the idea of the World Wide Web, including Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). This gave us what we now know to be the Internet.

Mozilla Firefox

One of the most popular web browsers, and in fact the default web browser in Fedora, is Mozilla Firefox (see Figure 8.1). Built on a solid code base that is derived from the Mozilla Suite, Firefox offers a new lease on life to surfing the Internet. Over 25 million people have downloaded Firefox since its release in late 2004, and it has grabbed significant market share from Internet Explorer.

Figure 8.1. Mozilla Firefox rediscover the Web. Firefox allows you to add on numerous upgrades, further enhancing your experience.

In Fedora you will find Firefox under the Applications, Internet menu at the top of your screen. An even simpler way to start Firefox, though, is to click the small world icon next to the Actions menu. Either way, you will open Firefox.

Beyond the basic program are a wealth of plug-ins and extensions that can increase the capabilities of Firefox beyond simple web browsing. Plug-ins such as Shockwave Flash and Java are available, whereas extensions provide useful and sometimes humorous additions to the browsing experience. For example, ForecastFox is an extension that gives you your local weather conditions, and Bandwidth Tester is a tool that calculates your current bandwidth.

The Mozilla Suite

The Mozilla Suite is a tightly integrated web browsing and messaging application suite that was spun off from Netscape (see Figure 8.2). Since Netscape became dormant a few years ago, the Mozilla Foundation was set up by AOL and other companies to continue the now open-source development of the once-popular browser. The fruits of this labor can be seen in the Mozilla Suite. By default, Mozilla is not installed in Fedora; instead you have to specify it in the installation or install it later using Yum or apt.

Figure 8.2. The Mozilla suite, the forefather of Firefox and a descendant of Netscape.

Bear in mind that if you install Mozilla, you also get the other parts of the suite: the mail and newsgroup reader, the address book, and the IRC client. If you do not require all of this, you might be better off with Firefox.

Epiphany

Epiphany is the browser supplied with the vanilla Gnome desktop (see Figure 8.3). Very basic and built on the same Gecko rendering engine as Firefox and Mozilla before it, Epiphany has advanced in a number of areas to the current version.

Figure 8.3. Epiphany, the standard Gnome web browser.

Konqueror

KDE users have the option to use Konqueror, which is the default browser for KDE (see Figure 8.4). As well as handling file system navigation, Konqueror can also be used to surf the Web. It, too, is based on the Gecko rendering engine as found in Firefox, Mozilla, and Epiphany.

Figure 8.4. Konqueror, the standard KDE web and file system browser.