Maxthon, NetCaptor, and Avant

There are a couple of non-standards-compliant web sites I need regular access to that won't display correctly in a Mozilla browser. Not willing to pay for Opera, or put up with its gargantuan banner ads, I spent a day trying out what are considered the three major IE shell replacement browsers in an attempt to drop that big blue E from my desktop permanently. I'd also like to get away from ever needing Internet Explorer again after the adventures in spyware I experienced in October. Anyway, all three of these browsers feature tabs, skins, and nice security features, including the ability to disable ActiveX entirely.

First I installed Maxthon 1.1.120 Combo, formerly MyIE2. Maxthon seems to be aimed directly at power users, possibly being the most customizable browser I've ever seen. The options window is so crowded it's almost unusable unless you already know what you're looking for and where to find it. Unfortunately, no one at Mysoft Technology seems to have realized that what power users actually want in a browser is transparency of use, so to speak: a browser that does what it does quickly and easily, without calling attention to itself. With all the Maxthon toolbars and sidebars active, there's more browser on screen than web page. But the real deal-killer for me was the way it deals with Java applets. In every one I tried, the right mouse button was either inoperable or doubled as a left button. What? Thanks, anyway.

So I moved on to NetCaptor 7.5.3. Having adjusted to the way Maxthon handles itself as an app, I found NetCaptor easy to get into, as the two browsers are very, very similar, although NetCaptor is clearly intended for a much less experienced user. This is actually a good thing. The free version is not full-featured, and has a fairly unobtrusive rotating text bar just above the browser window. For whatever reason, tabs are stuck at the bottom of the window, and tab controls are not as intuitive as those in Firefox or Opera. Still, it's a quick, easy browser that makes IE completely irrelevant.

But Avant Browser 10 makes NetCaptor look quaint and outdated. Avant is freeware, like Maxthon, but is so feature-rich, so stable, so user-friendly, and just so... professional, that it makes the $40 Opera look like a complete waste of money. Yes, Avant uses IE's rendering engine, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, as it plugs up at least 90% of the security holes that make IE such a horrible application to begin with. Avant also seems to have the smallest memory and processor footprint of the three browsers I tested, and is quicker than any I've used, aside from the Gecko-based K-Meleon. I made only one or two quick changes to the default toolbar layout, and decided that I actually prefer the tab bar on the bottom of the window, above the status bar. It even has an integrated RSS/Atom feed aggregator that works very well, much better than K-Meleon's aggreg8, though not as slick as Firefox's Live Bookmarks. Still, I've yet to find a major fault with this app, it's just a beautiful piece of software. It still can't stand up to Mozilla Firefox as the world-class browser. But the question must be asked: given Avant Force's resources, how is it that they can turn Internet Explorer into such an outstanding browser, and Microsoft cannot?