IE7 Pro adds a lot of showmanship to the Internet Explorer browser. The freeware add-on has some smart solutions for tabbing, including default settings to open URLs in new tabs and let double-clicking close a tab down.

Here's another pleasant surprise: "dragging" and "dropping" an in-text link into white space opens the link in a new tabs without any mouse work. IE7Pro also borrows from several software concepts to help raise IE7's appeal, including Firefox's, to save and fill forms, and insert user scripts a la Greasemonkey. The MiniDM download manager adds a long-missing tool to IE's options, and the pre-fetching options makes IE much lighter on its feet.

The list of added features is long, but they're all accessible from a status bar icon that the program installs for you. Right-click on it to get access to mouse gestures, customizable hotkeys, and more. Highly recommended.

Download (2.37MB)


* Reviewed by: Seth Rosenblatt
* Reviewed on: November 7, 2008
* Version reviewed: IE7Pro 2.4.6

For those who like their customization in-house, the Avant Browser's latest update might appeal to you. Built on an IE-rendering engine, Avant takes off in a different direction--IE if it were being produced by a small firm instead of Microsoft.

The browser is sufficiently fast, preloaded with two dozen similar skins as well as tabbed browsing and modular toolbars that let you move around and hide the Status bar, Toolbar, Search window, and navigation controls. The Menu bar, though, is counterintuitively pinned to the upper-right corner, and icons for proprietary functions, such as an in-page search term highlighting toggle, aren't instantly comprehensible.

Avant can save personalized data online, making bookmarks and form content accessible from any machine. Around the same size as Firefox, Avant includes many features that are available to Firefox users only through plug-ins--such as automatic form fillers. The Full Screen view autohides all menu bars, a nice touch, but certain plug-ins--notably Flash--didn't work on Windows Vista.

Avant is a good browser with some nice built-in features and interface-customization options, but the lack of extensibility and Vista problems don't help. We recommend it to users who want a Microsoft-based engine but think that Internet Explorer 7 is a pain.

Download (1.94MB)


* Reviewed by: Seth Rosenblatt
* Reviewed on: November 8, 2008
* Version reviewed: Avant Browser 11.7 build 35

No longer a fledgling upstart, Firefox 3 is full-featured, lightning fast, and an able foe for both the big-dog competitor Internet Explorer and competitors nipping at its heels. Firefox's killer add-ons remain strong, and the latest update makes version 3.5 about two times faster than version 3. However, competition is strong and it can no longer be said that Firefox is the fastest browser available.

Several notable improvements in the latest revamp keep Firefox abreast of current browsing tech. Along with Mozilla's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine that renders Web applications faster on Firefox than ever before, there have also been improvements to the layout engine Gecko for faster page rendering. The new Private Browsing brings a feature to Firefox that competitors have had for a while: the capability to turn off cookie and history logs. Users also have more granular control over cookies, history, and bookmarks in version 3.5 via the redone Clear Recent History option under Tools. Geolocation courtesy of Google has been activated by default in Firefox, so that generic searches such as "city hall" will come closer to pegging the government offices nearest you.

Web developers should be excited about expanded support for HTML5 local storage, downloadable fonts, and native support for OGG-formatted embedded video. ICC profiles, SVG transforms, CSS media queries, native JSON support, and Web worker threads also get lots of love from v3.5. There's no doubt that Firefox 3.5 is a must-have, but it's an update that's more about keeping the browser current rather that blazing new trails.

Download (7.74MB)


* Reviewed by: Seth Rosenblatt
* Reviewed on: June 30, 2009
* Version reviewed: Mozilla Firefox 3.5