(It’s definitely the dominant browser in the Technologizer community–around 40 percent of visits have been made using it this month, via 28 percent with IE, 18 percent with Safari, and nine percent with Chrome.)

In celebration of Firefox’s first half-decade, here are some quick reflections on why it’s one of the most significant software products of this or any other era:

1. It reignited the browser wars. Back in 2004, Internet Explorer had more than ninety percent of the market and seemed to be on its way to as close to 100 percent as any product could conceivably attain. Other alternative browsers, such as Opera and earlier versions of Mozilla, had market shares that looked like rounding errors. Then Firefox appeared and quickly gained traction. Its strategy for success was a clever one: It was just a good browser, period. And today, there are more significant browsers than during any period since the inception of the Web: IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and the Firefox variant I have a soft spot for, Flock. There’s probably some alternate world in which Firefox didn’t come along, IE’s market share is still monopolistic, and the Web is a much less interesting place.

2. It helped enable powerful Web apps. The leading browser of the pre-Firefox era, IE 6, was notoriously, willfully contemptuous of Web standards. Writing sophisticated Web-based applications such as e-mail clients that work with it was an exercise in frustration, albeit one which any company that wanted to write such apps had to go through. But Firefox set a good example by adhering to standards such as CSS and JavaScript that enable today’s Web apps. And Safari (which predated Firefox), Chrome, and even IE 8 all get it, too.

3. It’s the most mainstream open-source project to date. Linux is a remarkable accomplishment, but its domain remains servers and geeks who are passionate about software. Firefox showed the open-source community could build something that appealed to just about everybody–including folks who have no idea what open-source software is.

4. It’s spurned bloat. In many ways, today’s Firefox 3.5 doesn’t feel radically different from 2004′s Firefox 1.0. That’s a good thing–Mozilla has added features sparingly and avoided the temptation to lard its browser up with “improvements” that mostly add clutter. Instead, it offers one of the richest platforms for add-ons that the software world has ever known, allowing every Firefox user to build a browser that has exactly the features that he or she wants.

5. It gave the Netscape story an unexpectedly happy ending. The tale of the once-mighty Netscape Navigator was a sad one, whether you believed that its fall was due to unfair tactics by Microsoft or self-inflicted wounds (or a bit of both). By 2004, Navigator appeared to be well on its way to irrelevance. But Firefox, which exists only because of Netscape’s long-ago decision to open-source its code, is in effect the next-generation Navigator. With all due respect to F. Scott Fitzgerald, its success shows that there are indeed second acts in American lives. At least if the American in question happens to be a piece of software.

No, Firefox isn’t perfect–if I get a moment, I’ll write about five challenges it faces–but its huge influence made the world a better place. Even if you use IE or one of its other competitors.

Your thoughts, celebratory or otherwise?

The commercials star Dean “Former Superman” Cain, and three of them merely suffer from the odd trait–common to about 85 percent of Microsoft ads–of portraying Microsoft customers as being a little less than intelligent, self-respecting grownups. Here are those three:

Okay, so far reasonable people can disagree as to the merits of these ads or lack thereof. But the fourth ad is so disgusting that I don’t want it playing in the same browser tab as my site if I can help it. Here it is–watch only if you have a strong stomach. It’s vile, and makes me think less of Microsoft as a company for having approved it. (Yes, I’m aware that it isn’t aimed at me, and yes, I do have a sense of humor.)

I’m used to browser companies getting a little defensive and telling me that their private-browsing features aren’t all about hiding porn; this commercial seems to say that IE 8′s InPrivate is about porn. Particularly repulsive porn, apparently. It’s quite a long way from “Your Potential. Our Passion.”

Google has run a Chrome ad that’s cryptic but entertaining; Mozilla once had a contest for user-produced Firefox commercials that prompted some genuinely inventive little films. Microsoft’s strategy for convincing people to try IE 8 appears to be…to gross them out. It doesn’t seem like a strategy for success to me, and I hope I’m right.

Gimme Lauren. Bring back Seinfeld. Even revive the commercials depicting Microsoft Office users as dinosaurs. Just spare us the marketing through projectile vomiting. Please?

[UPDATE: I've moved on to wondering whether this is the worst commercial ever made for a tech product. Other candidates welcome...]

[FURTHER UPDATE: Microsoft has killed the ad.]

The Europe-only versions of Windows 7 will have an “E” appended to their names (such as “Windows 7 Home Premium E), and their existence apparently eliminates concerns that Microsoft is competing unfairly with Mozilla, Opera, and other browser makers by bundling IE with the world’s dominant operating system. European consumers and businesses will be free to download IE or any other browser, of course. And Microsoft says that PC manufacturers will be able to bundle IE if they so choose, in which case the end result will still be a computer with Windows 7 and IE 8 installed.

Other options for placating Europe that had been discussed included possibilities such as allowing users to choose their browser as part of the Windows setup process. Microsoft says that other options remain open for the future, but that its decision to strip out IE will allow it to ship IE on schedule in October.

I’m having a hard time getting too worked up about this news, either pro or con. On one hand, I think the Web’s a better place when multiple browsers are widely used. The existence of an IE-free version of Windows will presumably spur some European PC manufacturers to bundle other browsers, and some consumers to try Chrome, Firefox, Flock, Opera, or Safari. Which is good.

But the whole issue of Microsoft’s bundling of IE is like a blast from the past, when Netscape was the dominant browser and Microsoft effectively hobbled it by bundling IE for free with Windows. That was an unfortunate development for the Web and people who used it, since it led to the era in which nearly everybody used IE–and IE was an aging, unreliable, insecure behemoth of a browser that fairly screamed “I have no viable competition!”

But sorry, Europe–it’s too late to go back in time and give Netscape another shot at success. And you know what? It took awhile, but the browser situation resolved itself adequately enough largely through private-sector developments. Firefox came along, and it was so good–and IE 6 so crummy–that it was an instant success. The resurgence of the Mac platform helped to make Safari viable. Chrome is a strong browser from a company (Google) that’s far more powerful on the Web than today’s Microsoft is. The Opera folks just keep plugging away. Microsoft has reacted by breathing life back into IE.

All of which has led to an era in which Internet Explorer’s market share has shrunk dramatically. And that of its rivals has grown. And there are multiple successful browsers engaged in fierce and innovative competition to come up with cool new stuff. Microsoft may have tried to abuse its OS monopoly to crush other browsers. But we can now definitiely say that it failed.

It’s conceivable that the Web might have ended up a better place if governments had reacted swiftly to Microsoft’s anti-Netscape tactics in the mid-1990s. (Although maybe not: As usual with companies that fail to compete with Microsoft, Netscape made some ill-advised moves on its own which didn’t help its cause.) But governments simply moved too slowly: Microsoft’s deal with the EU is a solution to a problem that no longer exists.

That’s my take, at least. What’s yours?

The renewed browser war resembles more of a game of leapfrog than the big-bang releases of the 1990′s when one version of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator could change the balance of power in the browser wars overnight. Google says that Chrome is now 30% faster with today’s upgrade. That matches a performance claim made by Opera in about its new “Presto” rendering engine.

Two months ago, the Mozilla Foundation was bragging about how much snappier Firefox 3.5 will be over its predecessor. Apple, and many recent benchmarks conclude that Safari 4 is the title holder of ‘world’s fastest browser,’ and Microsoft has introduced Internet Explorer 8 by performing benchmarks of its own.

Irrespective of how many fewer milliseconds one of these browsers might take to render JavaScript, they are all getting better, in terms of standards support and performance. The real world implication is that each browser runs AJAX Web apps better than they did a year ago, and pages are being rendered with greater consistency.

Many of them have already have adopted parts of the upcoming HTML 5 specification–the lingua franca of the Web–even though it is far from being finalized. The working group responsible for it is open to breaking it up into smaller pieces.

For the first time in years, there is major innovation happening in the browsers due to increased competition. Opera has longo liked to play the role of innovator; now it’s matching wits against Apple and Google. Mozilla Firefox, the first browser to dent Microsoft’s seemingly immovable market share, is not longer the cock of the walk.

Not too long ago, it seemed as if browsers were maturing. All I can say, is that this latest round of competition is a very good thing for people who use (and create) Web apps, and those who care about standards.

And Microsoft? Well, mostly it’s had to contend with coverage like this story that reports that Safari is forty-two times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and six times faster than IE 8.

Today, the company is fighting back. It’s done its own speed benchmarks and has created a video about them and published a white paper about browser benchmarking. Here’s a stunner: It’s not concluding that IE is a horribly slow browser. In fact, it says that Internet Explorer 8 is not only competitive, but loads many of the world’s most popular Web sites faster than Firefox 3.0 or Chrome 1.0. I met with IE general manager Dean Hachamovitch last week, and he made the same claim.

Why the disparity? On a high level, it boils down to one thing: Nearly all discussion of browser speed centers on performance of JavaScript code, most often as measured by the SunSpider benchmark. And much of the work that browser companies have done to ramp up speed involves optimizing their JavaScript engines. IE 8 performs better in such benchmarks than IE 7 (as witness its better results in the Safari 4 story I link to above) but still lags other browsers.

Microsoft says–correctly–that browser speed is about more than JavaScript. Its own benchmarking involved timing how long it takes IE 8, Firefox 3.0, and Chrome 1.0 to load the 25 largest Web sites, a process that tests not only JavaScript but also how long it takes a browser to render the page and other factors. Judged this way, IE looks competitive. Here’s an image from the video:

As with benchmarks of any sort, it’s possible to spend all day poking holes in Microsoft’s tests if you feel like it. It used the shipping version of Firefox, not the speedier beta, and didn’t include Safari or Chrome at all. And while simply loading a major site’s home page is certainly one valid way to test a major aspect of Web performance, it too isn’t definitive. JavaScript becomes more important as you do tasks in sophisticated Web-based apps–for instance, I’d love to see a well-done benchmark involving how long it takes to perform major e-mail tasks in Gmail in major browsers. And I suspect that some knowledgeable folks will argue that Microsoft is downplaying JavaScript’s importance simply because IE’s JavaScript is still slow.

Then there’s the fact that while most chatter about Safari’s speed involves JavaScript, Apple has also published results for the i-Bench HTML benchmark. They too make Safari look zippy and both IE 7 and IE 8 look sluggish. I don’t know enough about i-Bench (I believe Apple uses a custom version based on a discontinued Veritest benchmark) to have an opinion about how well-rounded it is.

The Microsoft video ends with a line about staying tuned for more info. I’m guessing Microsoft will contend that there’s more to fast browsing than can be measured by any benchmark–it’s also about how quickly you can perform typical tasks, how easy it is to wrangle tabs and find stuff online, how well the browser recovers from problems, and the like. All valid points.

If nothing else, I think Microsoft is performing a service–a self-serving one in this case, but a service nonetheless–by reminding us that all benchmarks are inherently limited. Even the best ones only test certain scenarios, and no matter how good SunSpider is, it doesn’t claim to be a well-rounded browser benchmark–just a JavaScript one. Rather than declaring one browser to be faster or slower than another, period, it’s simply more accurate to specify that it was faster or slower in a specific test.

Once IE 8, Safari 4, Firefox 3.5, Opera 10, and whatever version of Chrome comes next are all final, I’d love to see someone do a really comprehensive suite of speed tests on all of them. Such a project would incorporate both JavaScript tests like SunSpider and page-load tests like the ones Microsoft did–and probably some additional ones, too. And if it were done right, it would tell us more about how the browsers stack up than anyone’s tests to date…

Arrington says that the Flock folks feel like they don’t get enough love from the Mozilla team, and while I don’t know if his scoop is the real deal and have no insider info on the back story here, I do recall once asking the Mozilla team a question that involved Flock, and feeling the tension in the room ratchet up a notch. It’s hard, of course, for Mozilla to both keep busy spreading Firefox and also help a Firefox rival like Flock be successful. But Flock might face the same challenges if it ends up working with Google. We’ll see.

A Chrome-based Flock could potentially have some upsides–the current version, like Firefox, is slow to load (on my Mac, anyhow) and sometimes feels piggy when it comes to resources. Chrome’s emphasis on efficiency could result in a meaner, leaner Flock. (At the moment, Chrome is Windows-only while Flock also speaks OS X and Linux, but Chrome’s support for those two OSes will likely be ready long before a Chromed Flock is complete.)

But if Flock does go the Chrome route, it has one major implication for current users: Right now, one nice thing about Flock is that it runs nearly all Firefox extensions just fine. There are surely Flock fans who, if forced to choose between sticking with Flock and keeping their favorite extensions, would keep the extensions and switch to Firefox. Given that Flock remains a cult favorite rather than the mass-market hit its creators would like it to be, it would be a shame if the lack of extensions bummed out too many of its existing users.

I’ve asked Flock if it has any comment on all this, and will report back…

Update! Here’s a statement from Flock CEO Shawn Hardin:

Flock hasn’t ceased development efforts on the Mozilla platform.  Our upcoming release of Flock 2.1 is built on the Mozilla platform. Having said that, the browser space is heating up, and we’ve seen a variety of new technologies emerge over the last several months that are appealing.

We always have and will continue to make architectural decisions that balance what’s best for our users and what’s best for Flock as a business.  This has resulted in a healthy, growing user base and business for Flock, and we expect this to continue in 2009. In fact, with almost seven million downloads almost entirely from word of mouth, Flock enjoys a highly satisfied user base (consistently over 92% customer satisfaction, with very strong net promoter scores, and an average of four hours of usage per day).

With a continuing focus on user-centered browser innovation, our team is in active research and development on a range of exciting new enhancements to Flock.   It is still far too early to comment on anything specific, but we are very excited about this design phase.

That’s not an acknowledgment that Flock is switching platforms, but it also falls very far short of the commitment to Mozilla you’d think Flock might express if TechCrunch’s report was hooey. It’s not startling that there’s going to be a Flock 2.1, or that it’ll be built on the existing Mozilla underpinnings–if Flock is indeed moving to Chrome, it’s going to take awhile, so an interim Mozilla-based update makes sense.

When you’re forced to do something you don’t particularly want to do, there are two ways to go about it: grudgingly or whole-heartedly. Previous legally-mandated editions of Windows such as the Korea-only Windows XP K and KN are the result of the first approach, and I’m not sure if they made anyone other than the government officials who required them happy.

But what if Microsoft poured its collective energy, intellect, and resources into making the best possible multiple-browser Windows–and then made it the standard version of the OS worldwide?

Such a move would make sense for Windows users for sure. There are more significant Windows browsers–IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, and lovable underdog Flock–than at any time since the mid-1990s. (Um, strike that: Even then, I don’t think there were half a dozen serious players.) For a variety of reasons, lots of use more than one of them, at least occasionally. And yet I don’t know of a single OS that acknowledges that it’s a multi-browser world, other than providing the ability to specify a default browser.

So what if Microsoft made it all easy in Windows 7? The possibilities are obvious:

–It could provide a better, easier-to-find mechanism for choosing the default browser. Starting with Windows setup itself, which could ask you for your browser of choice, then automatically download and install the newest version.

–It could let you install Windows with as many or as few browsers as you wanted. Including the option of an IE-free Windows, just to prove that the playing ground is indeed level.

–It could let the user opt out of the idea of a default browser altogether. If I had my druthers, I might vote for some sort of menu that let me choose the browser I wanted to launch on the fly each the the OS needs to display a page.

–It could sync bookmarks and other settings between browsers. Either by incorporating a utility for doing so or getting ambitious and building bookmarks into the OS as a core service. Bonus points if it lets you sync bookmarks across multiple browsers on multiple copies of Windows on multiple PCs.

–It could sync tabs between browsers. Automatically and transparently, even, so the stuff you’re browsing travels with you.

–It could make it easier to find plug-ins and add-ons, and to manage them across multiple browsers. Microsoft’s own Silverlight for sure, but how about other ones like Flash, too?

–It could help you manage updates and wrangle multiple installs of different versions of one browser. Like Firefox 3.0 and 3.1, for instance–right now, I’m jumping between them, and it’s not much fun. This notion seems like a stretch given that Microsoft doesn’t even do anything to assist with running multiple versions of IE on one PC, but as long as I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming big.

All of this stuff could be managed in a system-level dashboard of some sort–call it Browser Center. If Windows 7 had it and it was done well, I’d be excited, at least. So would lots of other folks–especially if browser choice became a key message of the Windows 7 marketing campaign. (It would sure count as Windows Without Walls.)

Back in the day, there was zero chance that Microsoft would contemplate doing any of this unless the law mandated it and it couldn’t wriggle itself out of doing so–the company clearly thought it was essential that it do everything in its power to make IE as pervasive as it could. Today? It’s possible that Microsoft still thinks that way, but I kind of doubt that the company’s fate rests on IE’s market share. Maybe, just maybe, the company could do itself more good by helping millions of customers get more out of the non-Microsoft browsers they’re already using than to gnash its teeth over IE’s declining share.

So I’d say there’s…oh, a ten percent change of Microsoft being willing to do something along these lines. No, five. But I still think it would be doing itself a favor if it scared itself a bit by taking radical measures to make its customers happy and productive.

If nothing else, it would be entertaining to see how the EU reacted to Microsoft embracing its call for browser neutrality with a vengeance. Not to mention Microsoft nemeses such as Opera’s Jon Van Tetzchner, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, and Google’s Sundar Pichai, all of who have thoughtfully weighed in with advice to the EC on how to address antitrust concerns relating to Microsoft’s bundling of OS and browser. How would they respond if Microsoft suddenly renounced its browser boogeyman status forever?

]]> http://technologizer.com/2009/02/25/one-windows-multiple-browsers-bundled-i-like-it/feed/ 7 Harry McCracken win7firefox1 http://technologizer.com/2009/02/03/is-internet-explorer-a-goner-will-it-ever-be/ http://technologizer.com/2009/02/03/is-internet-explorer-a-goner-will-it-ever-be/#comments Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:10:27 +0000 Harry McCracken http://technologizer.com/?p=7565 ]]> “Soon, Majority of Web Users Will No Longer Use IE.” That’s the headline on a story by Marshall Kirkpatrick over at ReadWriteWeb, reporting on browser market-share numbers from Net applications that have IE being used by 67.5 percent of Internet users, down 7 percent in a year–and down from 90+ percent a few years ago.

Marshall’s title is provocative–is the day really nearing when IE users will be in the minority? (Actually, he defines “soon” loosely, since he says it might take a few years.) I don’t think there’s any real way to project where IE will be in the future based on its decline in recent years. Absent some truly startling development–I once suggested that Microsoft get out of the browser business and simply use Firefox as the basis for Windows’ browser, but it wasn’t listening, apparently–there must be some floor below which IE usage won’t fall. A meaningful chunk of Windows users consists of folks who give little or no thought to Web browsers, and will therefore use whatever Microsoft provides; the big question is just how large that chunk is.

Among computer users who do make a conscious decision to choose a particular browser, IE usage may already be well under fifty percent. On Technologizer at the moment, 27 percent of users run IE. (49 percent opt for Firefox, 11 percent Safari, 6 percent Chrome, and 4 percent Opera.) Seventy-two percent of Technologizer readers use Windows; even when you just consider those ones, far more choose not to use IE than to use it.

Of course, Technologizer is a relatively small site, and its visitors aren’t representative of the teeming masses of tech users. (Hey, you’re a lot smarter, right?) Back when I was at the much larger and more venerable Web site known as PC World, I had a habit of occasionally checking into browser usage among its visitors and writing about it–which was particularly fun starting in November 2004, when Firefox showed up and began to chip away at the IE hegemony.

I’m happy to say that my pals at PC World are indulgently allowing me to continue to check out browser usage on their site. Back in early 2004, more than ninety percent of PCW visitors used IE–and as of last month, that percentage has fallen to just a hair below 50 percent. If PCW fans are a leading indicator of where everyone else is heading–and they are–it might indeed not be long before IE users are a minority. But I wouldn’t be surprised if IE usage fell to somewhere around 40 percent and just stayed there for quite a few years. (Unless Windows usage dwindles more quickly than I expect it will–which it might, but that’s a topic for another post.)

Meanwhile, I was a tad surprised to see that Firefox usage at PC World is down a bit, after four years of nearly continuous growth. In January, 33.11 percent of users ran Firefox; the highest month (so far) was April 2008, when 35.78 of visitors were Firefoxians. (April was right before I left PC World and therefore stopped obsessively blogging about its usage at PCWorld.com. Coincidence? Of course. Probably.I think.)

Time was when the vast majority of people who defected from IE went to Firefox. It’s still IE’s archrival–the only one that has a shot at overtaking IE among Web users at large anytime soon. But with Google Chrome gaining fans, Safari usage growing along with Mac sales, and Opera hanging in there, it seems equally possible that no browser will dominate. As I said in my review of Internet Explorer 8 RC1, we live in an era in which your choice of browser is just not that big a deal.

So where do you think IE is headed? Time for a quick T-Poll:

By any standard, Internet Explorer remains the planet’s dominant Web browser. Even after serious shrinkage over the past few years, estimates of its market share range from around 70 percent to 80 percent, a figure that just about any player in any business would happily take. Yet IE is a beleaguered giant. It’s got companies small (Mozilla, Opera) and huge (Google, Apple) nipping at its heels with alternative browsers. It’s still trying to shake its reputation for poor security. The more sophisticated a consumer of the Web you are, the less likely it is that your browser hails from Redmond. And it’s so widely used that even minor changes have major implications.

I’ve been thinking about all of these factors as I’ve spent time with Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1, which Microsoft released on Monday. Every one of them has an impact on this near-final product, which adds a few features with no counterparts in other browsers; works hard to make its emphasis on safety as tangible as possible; and, when all is said and done, seems a bit hobbled by the sheer size of the user base it’s trying to serve.

Judging from this blog post by IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch, a conversation I had with him myself last week, and–most important–the browser itself,  I think Microsoft is aiming IE 8 at the teeming masses of folks out there who aren’t browser junkies. Maybe even folks who don’t make any conscious decision about browsers at all, other than whether to upgrade to the newest version of IE or not. Which makes perfect sense. But it means that if you’re content with Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, or my underdog favorite Flock, there’s nothing in IE 8 that’s so strikingly better that it’s likely to lure you back.

Here’s a far-from-comprehensive look at some of what’s new (and old) in IE 8:

Accelerators and Web Slices. These two additions, both of which are designed to provide expedited access to useful Web info, are the closest things IE 8 has to new signature features. They’ve both been around since the first public IE 8 beta eleven months ago–Accelerators were called Activities at first–but they both remain intriguing ideas that don’t yet live up to their potential.

Accelerators are options that show up in a context-sensitive list when you highlight a snippet of text on a Web page, letting you perform tasks such as viewing a map of an adddress you’ve selected:

Web Slices, meanwhile, are widget-like snippets of dynamically-updated info from the Web that you can place as links in your Favorites toolbar, so you can check them without leaving whatever page you’re on. Earlier in the IE testing period, two of the highest-profile Web Slices were ones from Facebook and eBay. Curiously, the Facebook one, which let you check out your friends’ status, is no longer available. And the eBay one is odd and clunky. It lets you add items that are up for bid to your IE 8 Favorites bar, but as far as I can tell, you need to find them on eBay using a special search page designed for IE 8 users. And when I stuck them in my Favorites bar and clicked on them, they only showed a not-very-useful undersized image of the item I was watching:

…until I dragged the Web Slices to enlarge my view of the information they contained, whereupon they became pretty useful:

Both Accelerators and Web Slices will only catch on with IE users if plenty of third-party sites bother to build good ones. Judging from the listings for them at Microsoft’s IE Add-Ons site, response has been less than wildly enthusiastic so far. I count 46 accelerators (a high percentage of which are from Microsoft or Google) and 22 Web Slices (most of which are from Microsoft itself, from Indian content sites, or devoted to superniche audiences such as clockmakers or fans of former Lizzie McGuire supporting player Jake Thomas).

Another problem: The current descriptions for Accelerators and Web Slices on Microsoft’s site are strangely skimpy. Most of them don’t tell you exactly what the Accelerator or Slice does, and few include a screenshot of the add-in in action–which is a shame, since that would be by far the clearest way to convey why you might want it. Here are eBay’s Accelerator and Web Slice info pages:

The good news is that most of what’s unsatisfying about Accelerators and Web Slices has nothing to do with the technology itself as implemented in IE 8. If more developers hop on board and do a better job of promoting their creations, both features could become very useful very quickly. And it might happen once IE 8 is officially the current version of IE.

The address bar and search field. Like other browsers, IE 8 makes its address bar into a Swiss Army Knife that lets you do Web searches (including ones in search engines not owned by Microsoft), pull up pages from your history and favorite, and otherwise locate Web pages of interest. I miss the way Firefox’s “Awesome Bar” finds pages even if you begin typing characters from the middle of their URL, but IE’s version is slick and effective:

Someday, I suspect, browsers will dump their search fields and just use the address bar for everything. But for now, IE still has a dedicated search tool, and it’s easy to set it to default to Google or another engine instead of Microsoft’s Live Search. A feature called Visual Search lets you see thumbnail images as you preview results; nice idea, but the thumbnails would be more useful if they weren’t so teeny-tiny (I don’t have a clue what that third image below is):