What are the options as far as open source web browsers?

Now that we have made our way past the reasons why you might want to use an open source web browser, we will take a look at some of the possible candidates that you may want to consider when choosing a less then mainstream option. Feel free to try one, or as many as you like. Don't be at all shy about mixing and matching with your browsers. You can always get rid of one with a simple uninstall if you find that a web browser is not exactly what you want it to be. Now let's meet the candidates:

Firefox

Firefox is by far the most well-known open-source browser. The Firefox browser came into being in 1998 when the Mozilla Foundation was formed. The browser was developed by a team of hundreds of volunteers.

The 1.0 version was not released until the year 2004, which is a sizable amount of time to wait, but the browser more than made up for that time. Firefox has achieved most of its popularity because it is a cross-platform browser. This means that if a Windows or Macintosh user wants to try Firefox, they can run it like a native program.

Another factor working in favor of Firefox is the fact that it is easy to customize. There are a wide variety of plug-ins and toolbars that can be added to Firefox in order to enhance its functionality, or plug it into the information at other sites. This is particularly handy on Web 2.0 sites where you get updates without having to remain logged into the page all time.

Firefox was also one of the first popular browsers to introduce tabbed browsing. In addition to that, it has a wide variety of relatively standard features for Web browsers, including bookmark categories, pop-up blockers and smart keywords.

It's worth noting that Firefox runs on its own HTML rendering engine, which is known as gecko. This engine supports SSL, HTML version 4.0, Java, and JavaScript. It also supports Netscape Navigator style plug-ins.

One final thing of note is that if you choose Firefox and you already have bookmarks in Internet Explorer, Firefox will automatically import those bookmarks for you so you don't miss a beat. Ditto for your Macintosh users out there who are currently on Safari. In March 2009 the Mozilla foundation, which makes Firefox, announced the beta version of a mobile version of Firefox, which is being called Fennec.