Why Do We Need So Many Browsers On The Mac?

Why are there so many browsers for Mac OS X? How many browsers do we need?

Seriously. I can understand two browsers. Do Mac users collect these things? What’s the point? What happened to Mozilla?

They’re still around but so proud of their heritage that they dumped the browser named Mozilla and renamed it SeaMonkey.

I bring this up because Mozilla released an update of Firefox, the cross platform browser that’s poking a serious hole in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer market share.

Firefox is a very capable browser with loads of features and even more extensions, that, well, they extend the feature set and let the browser become personal.

The problem I have with Firefox is that it looks and feels and smells waaaaaay to much like the Windows Firefox. Apparently, the Mozilla folks agree with me.

That’s why they have yet another browser called Camino. It’s just for Mac users.

The Camino Project is sort of a Mac version of Firefox without all those heavy extensions and features, and without that lame duck Windows look.

What is SeaMonkey? It’s a cross platform browser that was Mozilla’s Application Suite before there was a Firefox. Think of SeaMonkey as what Netscape Navigator used to be, but modernized for today’s Mac and Windows machines.

SeaMonkey is loaded with features you won’t find in Camino, not easily available in Firefox, and nowhere to be found in Safari.

There’s an integrated HTML editor called Composer. Is it good? It’s better than nothing, I guess. Who uses Composer to build web sites? Aren’t there a dozen better tools? Some are free.

There’s also integrated email and newsgroups. The email is handy, I’ll grant you that. But newsgroups? Who uses newsgroups these days?

The Navigator in SeaMonkey is really the browser, but brought in to the 21st century with a new look, new tabs, a pop up blocker, and so on.

I still have to ask that same question. Why? How many browsers are really needed on the Mac these days?

As if the list above wasn’t enough, there’s still more. Everyone remembers Opera, right? It’s the browser that nobody wants and fewer people use.

Some of the Mac360 crew love OmniWeb, but it comes with a price tag. Is it worth it? Isn’t everything else free? I’ll admit that it’s more Mac-like than any of the other browsers, including Safari.

There’s iCab, yet another cross platform browser. Does anyone use iCab? If so, why? It browses. What else could it be good for?

There’s Shiira, a Japanese developed browser based on the Safari browser engine, but available in English. The icons are cool, but I still have this nagging feeling that browser development is an addiction.

What did I miss? I’m sure I missed one. That’s not even an even dozen. Oh, yes, there’s Scourge. YAMB. Yet another Mac browser.

No flames, please. It should be obvious to all, since browsers are mostly free, that there’s plenty of browsers to go around, yet they all do basically the same thing.

If you’re not using Safari or Firefox, what are you using to browse the web? Why? What is so special about Opera, or iCab, or OmniWeb, or Camino, or Shiira, or Scourge or whatever you’re using that you use it instead?

Share your mini-flame, thoughts, experiences in the Comments section below.

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