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 Ubuntu.

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 Ubuntu, is Mozilla Firefox (see Figure 8.1). Built on a solid code base derived from the Mozilla Suite, Firefox offers a new lease on life to surfing the Internet. More than 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 Firefoxrediscover the Web. Firefox allows you to add on numerous upgrades, further enhancing your experience.

In Ubuntu you will find Firefox under the Applications, Internet menu at the top of your screen. An even simpler way to start Firefox 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 to easily install, as are multimedia codecs for viewing video content, 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. A particular favorite is StumbleOn which is an extension that selects seemingly random webpages based on your stated preferences, but be warned as this can rapidly diminish your time for doing other things! As Firefox grows, so too will the extensions and plug-ins that you can use to enhance your browsing pleasure.

The Mozilla Suite

The Mozilla Suite was the first major competition to Microsoft's Internet Explorer (see Figure 8.2). After the browser wars of the late 1990s, when Netscape was almost ground into the dust by Microsoft, a group of employees at Netscape decided to open source their existing browser and connected applications. What became available was the Mozilla Suite, and it formed the foundation of future Netscape releases. Firefox was born out of Mozilla, and owes its existence to the pioneering work done by the Mozilla Foundation. Nowadays active development effort has shifted significantly in favor of Firefox, with the Mozilla Suite getting much less attention than it used to. However, there is still a solid core of fans and users across the world.

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

The reason for this is that the Mozilla Suite is more than just an Internet browser; it encompasses an email and newsreader component, a simple web design component, an IRC client, and an address book. For the moment we will look at the browser component, but the other components are covered later on. Bear in mind that if you install Mozilla, you also get the other components 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.

The Mozilla Suite is included by default in Ubuntu, although it is not listed in the Internet menu. If you drop down to a terminal by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting New Terminal, you can start Mozilla by typing mozilla. The default theme for Mozilla is fairly retro, harking back to earlier versions of Netscape, but it is easy to change that by clicking the View menu, and then clicking on the Apply Theme entry, and finally selecting Modern. You must restart Mozilla for the new theme to be applied.

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. Some people like Epiphany for its simplicity, whereas others use it because it is just there. If you want the true GNOME experience, you should choose Epiphany.

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.