Peter Kaminski

As a user, I love Firefox.

As a developer of web software, it became apparent today that I’ve got
to experience my product the way most of my users do, through the late, great Internet Explorer.

So, the two real big things I miss from Firefox are (surprise) tabs,
and the Google search box. (I’m also scared about Microsoft’s horrible
record of security holes, and I wouldn’t recommend using IE unless you
have to, but that comes with deciding I have to use it.)

Looking for solutions, I examined some add-ons and superstructures for IE:

• Browsercraft Companion Suite
• Maxthon (née MyIE2)
• Microgarden WebTools
• MYweb4net

Browsercraft, Maxthon and MYweb4net include extras such as pop-up
blocking, and other settings and utility launchers. They’re also free
(although there is a paid premium version of Broswercraft). WebTools is
shareware, $14.95.

Browsercraft and WebTools are add-on toolbar solutions that enhance IE.
Browsercraft is a pretty fancy suite, with extra XML scripting features
and lots of other stuff. WebTools is basic toolbar that enables tabs,
that’s pretty much it.

Browsercraft looks pretty cool, but the interface runs a little slow,
and the "tabs" are pretty clunky. I couldn’t tell, either, that it wasn’t going to anonymize but still report my browsing back to Browsercraft for their statistics stuff.

WebTools works reasonably well, but it’s pricey for what little it does.

Maxthon and MYweb4net are applications that provide the extra
functionality and use individual IE windows in a multiple-document
interface to provide the tab functionality. (They don’t look like MDI
apps, but you can see that they are if you play with the Window/Cascade
or Window/Tile menu items.) As such, they have a little more control
over how the toolbars work, while still providing the trademark
Internet Explorer browsing experience in each window.

They’re pretty similar, although each has it’s little pluses and minuses, and it probably comes down to a matter of taste.

I couldn’t easily convince Maxthon not to use its own search results
for the search box when hitting return, although if you don’t mind
clicking a button instead of hitting return, you can set it to default
to Google.

MYweb4net ended up being just right (or as close to it as any of these,
anyway — I want my Firefox!), so I’ll stick with that for a while.

It’s not perfect — the toolbars flash a little, and the windows/tabs
don’t operate without a little clunkiness, but it works reasonably
well, and better than vanilla IE. A note that helped me a lot: the
“Open In New Window” context-menu item opens a new tab instead of a new
window (thank you!), and there are still lots of new window commands in
the File menu and hot keys.

I’m still going to be using Firefox for my non-work browsing, though!

Test environment: Windows 2000AS under VMware, Internet Explorer 6.0sp1.