Research Blog 1 Group 6

Submitted by Bill D on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 12:15

When I began my research, I decided to look at all three of the web browsers from a general viewpoint, to try and find their key differences and similarities. The following web-site helped the most:
http://hubpages.com/hub/What-is-the-best-browser

This page gave a summary comparison and contrast of the three browsers. It also offered a comments section where readers could comment on which browser they preferred and why. Since I am doing the writing for my group's white paper, I need to be familiar with the key features of each browser since I most likely won't know all of the in depth features of each that the other members of my group have found until I read their research. Some of these features include pop-up blockers, search tools, tabbed browsing, security, magnification and add-on capabilities. Each of the three browsers differ from each other in almost every area so it choosing a "best" browser would really depend on what a company was looking for in a browser. The key differences here, though, give me an idea of how I can lay out the white paper, focusing mainly on the areas where the browsers differ and not where they all share the same function.

On this website I also found a great chart that we may be able to include in our white paper. The chart is a pie chart that breaks down the current distribution of browser use. It shows internet explorer being used by the majority of internet users, followed by firefox, safari, and all the others. This chart may be used in the introduction to show the reader that many people don't realize the other options that they have.

The reader comments on this page also offered a lot of insight into how these browsers actually function, versus how their parent companies say they function. From these comments it seems that most casual internet users prefer Firefox. It also seems that large firms and companies prefer Opera because it has the best security of the three. Others, though, claim that Firefox is superior to Opera because Opera has problems loading various of websites. Most people agree that Internet Explorer is the worst of the three.