Web Browser Wars at BarCamp Melaka 2009
By Harmeshver Singh. Monday, 7. December 2009, 17:35:56
This is a summary of one of the presentations I did at BarCamp Melaka 2009 at Multimedia University which took place on the 14th and 15th of November. The topic of my presentation is as stated above, I was quite lucky that my session got over 50+ people out of the 170 people who attended the BarCamp.
Basically I began by introducing myself and then introducing the top 5 web browsers (Base on Market share). I explained that I will not be going into above the top 5 as there will be too many to compare and I could not do all that in 1 hour. The web browsers that I choose to compare are as followed:- Mozilla FireFox 3.5, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, Apple's Safari and last but not least Opera Software's Opera.
I started off by asking which web browsers most people use, the response I got was quite shocking, out of the 50+ people in the room, none of them even mentioned using Internet Explorer 8 or below. Some however did admit that they use Internet Explorer at work as their workstations didnt allow them to install additional softwares or that even the web application that they are using are only Internet Explorer compatible. (Worst still, it was only IE6 compatible.)
After that I went to introduce each of the web browsers one by one to the audience, I gave my take on each of them. I went though the pros and cons of each browser, without trying to be bias. The only browser I had a problem giving thumbs up was well again Internet Explorer 8. Seriously it got to be one of the hardest to praise, I only could think of disadvantages of using IE8.
Once I explained my take on all the top 5 web browsers. I went and gave my ranking of the browsers (this is just my opinion, if you have a different take, it is ok)
- 1st – Opera – Comes with almost everything out of the box without installing plugins. First to come up with features that other browsers follow.
- 2nd – Google Chrome – Simple and Clean, love the interface and the speed of browsing. Also love the ability to sandbox each of the tabs.
- 3rd – Mozilla Firefox – Tons of plugins, but giving a bit of memory leak problems. Still good in security sense.
- 4th – Apple's Safari – Nothing much since I dont own a Mac or use Windows a lot.
- 5th – Microsoft Internet Explorer – Nothing good to say (Also only for Windows).
I explained why I think Opera is one of the best web browsers between the 5. The main reason is that Opera is one of the first web browser to go into the cloud with both it's Opera Link and Opera Unite services. I explained Opera Link and Opera Unite in detailed and also mentioned some other features such as Speed Dial and Mouse Gestures.
After all that I took some questions and answers. One of the questions required me to explain how opera turbo functions which I gladly answered. Once all is done I gave away some Opera pens (Sponsored by Opera Software) to the audience.
Presentation Slides:- http://files.myopera.com/Zentarien/files/Web%20Browser%20Wars.pdf
Pictures can be found on my facebook profile, tons of people took pictures of this event and tagged me














