Internet Explorer vs. The World
By John B. Husted

Contrary to popular belief, Al Gore did not bring about the creation of the Internet. Believe it or not, that distinction can arguably be given to the Soviet Union.

In 1957, the USSR launched Sputnik, stunning the world and sending shockwaves through the United States government. President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to regain the technological lead from the Soviets. Part of that development was lead by J.C.R. Licklider, who pushed for a country-wide communications network. In 1969, the first “Internet” (then called ARPANET) message was sent between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute. In 1983, ARPANET was converted to use the TCP/IP network, then was retired and replaced by NSFNet in 1990. Soon thereafter, NSFNet was connected to CSNet, which connected various universities in North America, and then to EUNet, which connected research facilities in Europe. In 1995, the United States government turned over management of the Internet to private organizations – and here we are. According to ComScore Networks, well over half the households in the United States now have Internet access.

Enter Microsoft. Microsoft released the Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser in 1995 in conjunction with Windows 95. Although IE integrated well with the Windows operating system, most Internet users preferred the rival Netscape Internet browser until 1996, when IE 3.0 was released. As more computers were shipped with the Windows operating system, and since Netscape charged $50 for their browser, Microsoft’s IE became a force to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, precisely nine days after IE 3.0 was released, the first IE security hole was reported. Most people obviously didn’t mind too much because Microsoft’s market share continued to grow by leaps and bounds, capturing the vast majority of browser usage by the late 1990s.

But security holes still plague Microsoft. Internet Explorer, that big blue ‘e’ on your computer that you click on to get onto the Internet, is the browser most of the world uses to surf the Internet, check eBay auctions and perform general research. However, this popularity has a significant downside. Hackers, knowing most computers use the Internet Explorer Web browser, concentrate their hacking efforts on that very popular software. Combine that effort with the multitude of security flaws in Internet Explorer, and problems are bound to arise.

According to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), there have been almost 100 vulnerabilities found in the Internet Explorer package; almost 100 ways for an outside user to access your computer. One of those recent vulnerabilities was so severe the US-CERT recommended using a different Internet browser until the issue was resolved. That’s pretty serious. Granted, users who keep their software updated are reasonably secure, but unfortunately the patches for security issues are often not released until well after the vulnerability has been released and even computer geeks sometimes forget to check for updates.

So, what can you do about it? How can you distance yourself from IE security issues? Well, there are numerous alternatives to IE on the market, the vast majority of which are free. Two of the most popular are Mozilla FireFox and Opera.

In January 1998, Netscape (which was the only real competitor to IE at the time) decided to release the source code for its Web browser to the public through the newly formed Mozilla group. After several years of work, the Mozilla group released a suite of programs, which included an Internet browser, e-mail program, calendaring system and others. However, part of the goal of the Mozilla group is to reduce “bloat;” software that gets bigger and more complex with each release. To combat that, they tore the suite apart and began to release each application separately, allowing users to download the Internet browser by itself. The name they gave the browser was FireFox.

“That’s all well and good,” you say, “but what makes FireFox any more secure than IE?” The simple answer to that is that FireFox is written and developed by “hackers,” and hackers are well aware of security issues in other systems and want to make sure their own systems are not susceptible to the same issues. Further, because anyone in the world can download FireFox and look at the actual source code, bugs are found and fixed almost immediately. For instance, the US-CERT recently released a vulnerability alert for FireFox (the only vulnerability alert issued for FireFox) and the patch for that problem was released the next day.

“Okay, big deal. It’s more secure. Why should I bother taking the time to learn a new software package?” Even without the security improvements, the advantages of FireFox are almost endless. You know all those terribly annoying pop-ups that some Web sites throw at you? The ones that guarantee free gifts or the perfect match? FireFox blocks all pop-ups by default. Every single one. How about trying to look at multiple Web sites at once? Say you want to check airline prices for American, Southwest and United. Using IE you would have to open three windows, which would require three times the memory and three times the clutter on the desktop. FireFox uses a concept called “Tabbed Browsing;” the ability to open multiple Web pages in a single window and switch between them using a series of tabs, much like WordPerfect opens multiple documents. Instead of needing two WordPerfect windows to view two documents, WordPerfect puts both documents into the same window with tabs at the bottom of the page to switch between documents. FireFox does the same thing with Web pages. On a slow Internet connection, this feature is especially handy. You can easily open several Web pages at once, and by the time you are finished with one page, another has loaded. This dramatically reduces the “twiddle your thumbs” time while waiting on pages to load.

FireFox also has several built-in Internet search functions. In the top right hand corner of the window, there is a “search” box, which allows you to search the Internet without specifically using an Internet search page. For instance, if you are reading news on FoxNews.com and want to look up information about the 2004 All-Star game, you can type “2004 All-Star game” into the search box in the upper right hand corner, and Google will return all results for “2004 All-Star game.” Don’t like using Google? There are a plethora of search engines available. Everything from Yahoo to Amazon to eBay can be added to the search box. Not only that, but FireFox will allow you to search a specific Web site from the URL address bar. For example, once the search is in place, you would be able to type “EBay baseball glove” in the URL bar, and all the EBay auctions with the words “baseball glove” would be displayed on the screen. Granted, it is slightly more complicated to set up, but it is an extremely powerful and useful feature. It is much easier and faster to type “EBay baseball glove” in the URL address bar than it is to go to the EBay Web site, then search for “baseball glove,” then browse to the right category to find what you are looking for.

Which brings me to speed: Out of the box, FireFox is fast. Very fast. With a little tweaking, it is even faster. When you browse to a Web site, two things have to happen. First, the data has to be transferred from a Web server to your computer. Second, your computer has to display, or “render” that data to make it readable. While the Internet browser has little to do with the transfer speed, it has everything to do with the “render” speed. FireFox far outstrips IE when it comes to rendering pages. While a page that loads in three seconds with IE and two seconds in FireFox may not seem like much, it is still a 33 percent speed increase.

Finally, FireFox is customizable and expandable, using what they call “extensions.” IE looks like Microsoft wants it to look and acts like Microsoft wants it to act, which includes many features you may never use and excludes many extremely handy features. FireFox can be configured to look and act almost any way you want. Don’t want to see images displayed on a page? FireFox can do that. Don’t want those annoying Flash advertisements to play? FireFox will let you turn them off. Want to change the look and feel of the icons? Hundreds of packages are freely available to change them, and because FireFox is open source, you can rest assured that no viruses or spyware will sneak in without you knowing it, unlike many of the visual enhancement packages for IE. A quick perusal turned up extensions to do everything from automatic form completion, to spell checking, to an extension that lets you control Web pages with your mouse.

Another outstanding alternative to IE is the Opera Internet Browser. Debuted in 1994, Opera was built brand new from the ground up by developers in Norway and not based on previous Web browsers, unlike many browsers available. Like FireFox, Opera has numerous enhancements that speed usage and decrease annoyances.

On the security end, Opera is at least as secure as FireFox, and maybe more so. The only recent problem was a scripting bug in February, but even that was not a serious problem. Had the same bug been in IE, it would have been a serious security risk, but because of the way Opera is secured, it was a minimal issue. Like FireFox, on the rare occasions flaws are found, Opera is quick to issue a patch to fix the problem.

Where FireFox allows users to search from a separate search box, Opera allows users to search the popular search engines using the address bar itself. For instance, to use the Google search engine to look for information on BMW, you could type “g BMW” into the address bar. Likewise, to search Amazon for books by Tom Clancy, type “a Clancy” into the address bar. Although it is slightly more complicated to add built-in search engines to Opera than it is to FireFox, with a little know-how, you can be happily searching anything you desire.

Pop-ups are no longer a problem with Opera. You can block all pop-ups, selected pop-ups or no pop-ups. So if you want to see the pop-up on a particular page, you can allow it while still blocking the annoying ones. How about multiple pages in a single window? Opera was one of the first browsers to allow tabbed browsing. Not only can you open multiple pages in a single window, but Opera allows you to save a “session” so you can open a set of pages at one time. For instance, if you know that every morning you want to check FoxNews, your eBay auctions and the baseball scores from last night, you can configure Opera to open those pages every time Opera is started. So when you get to work in the morning and open Opera, FoxNews will load in one tab, eBay in a second and the ball scores in a third. Handy as a pocket on a shirt.

Opera also has a built-in e-mail client. Some people will appreciate this feature, some won’t. On the plus side, the e-mail capability puts both e-mail and browsing into one window, reducing clutter. The e-mail client is fast, functional, clean and supports the standard POP and IMAP e-mail accounts. It also comes with a “learn as you go” spam filter, which is almost a necessity as spam floods the Internet. Opera’s filter is built such that it looks at the message, decides if it is spam, and if so puts it into a folder by itself. If the message is not spam, you can remove it from the spam list and Opera will learn from that action. In other words, Opera will learn from you what is spam and what isn’t. On the downside, all Opera e-mail goes into a single database. For people with few e-mail accounts, this is fine. For those with multiple e-mail accounts, this can be a problem in that all the e-mail is thrown together. However, Opera does allow you to create rules for e-mail, which can be used to sort e-mail by account.

The chat client included in Opera acts like most chat clients on the market. It allows you to connect to IRC and chat both publicly and privately, as well as send files to other users. Further, it keeps track of chat rooms you previously visited and any online contacts. Again, for people who use IRC a lot, this feature is a godsend. More functionality in a single window is a good thing.

The major downside to Opera? The free version is advertisement supported. So, unless you want to spend the $39 to buy the software, you will always have an advertisement on the screen.

Internet Explorer was a good browser for the early stages of the Internet. When the max connection speed was 56k and downloads were measured in kilobytes instead of megabytes, IE functioned well enough for most people. But times change. As high-speed Internet has become the norm rather than the exception, and “always-on” connections are connected to the Internet 24 hours a day, the security risks of IE have started to outweigh any benefits it may have. The Internet has become a tool rather than a toy, and other browsers have become available with more available features, less clutter and better security. FireFox and Opera are two of the best.

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