Disjointed, Freakish Reflections™ on Web Browsers

Mozilla 0.9.1 was released today, to much fanfare. Even the Slashdotters are praising the latest release, which marks a monumental leap forward over Mozilla 0.9. After downloading it myself and playing with it, I’ve been very pleased, though I still have a few small gripes (right clicking on the menus should work damnit!). Otherwise it seems like a much leaner, cleaner, faster and more stable build. Great work, Mozilla developers; I’m looking foward to a 1.0 release soon. However, with the news that Netscape is going away, I don’t know if any browser will be able to put a dent in Microsoft’s stranglehold, which is a shame, because Mozilla is a really great browser. Right now, I’m going to continue using Opera 5.11, because that is the best browser I’ve ever used – its only dowside is that I can’t really use it to post on Blogger or 4degreez.

Some of my previous thoughts on Browsers:

Also worth noting is this article and this article by Joel Spolsky illustrating what Netscape did wrong with version 6. Mozilla has come a long way though, and I think by the time 1.0 comes out, there will be little to complain about.

Update: 4:45 p.m. ET

After using Mozilla 0.9.1 all day, I can say that while it has improved greatly over previous versions, it still has a ways to go before it can really compete with IE. I ran into a few bugs and it crashed a couple of times, so its not quite the rock solid browser I was looking for. It doesn’t even come close to Opera, which is still my browser of choice. But then, 0.9.1 isn’t a finished product, so I still think its coming along well and that the finished product could be worth it.