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People keep saying that the "Browser Wars" are over and Microsoft won. Microsoft certainly seems to think so, because their Internet Explorer rested on its, er... "laurels" for quite a while, with security fixes, display bugs, and new features (such as tabs) lagging far behind. There is no version of IE for Linux or any other emerging operating systems. There will be no IE6 for the Mac, and no IE7 for Windows 2000. Which may be a blessing, because IE7 has a completely different user interface that makes it harder to find advanced features. The respected internet security organisation CERT and the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security have recommended avoiding IE. Meanwhile, the number of alternatives is growing, and the number of people using them is growing as well. Sounds more like the Rebel Alliance is just getting underway, and the Empire isn't barely able to strike back.
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If your Windows system is slow, IE is largely to blame. There's a nifty set of utilities called 98/2000/XPLite which (among many other configuration tweaks) can disable some of IE's performance-sapping features, or even remove it from Win98 and WinME (replacing it with the faster Win95 Explorer for files, and your choice of another browser for the Web), speeding up Windows dramatically in the process. But even if you leave IE fully enabled, there are better alternatives for you actual day-to-day use.
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Mozilla Firefox is a leaner, faster browser based on the latest version of the technology behind Netscape. It's a free cross-platform, open-source program, with pretty much all of the features you'd expect in a modern browser, including the ability to open multiple pages in tabs, pop-up blocking, built-in searching (via Google), and automatic login to sites... plus a growing array of plug-ins that add just the additional features you want. (It doesn't include a mail/news reader like the original Mozilla browser; that's been spun off as Mozilla Thunderbird.) Even Microsoft-owned Slate.com recommends it over IE.
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Apple created Safari so they could replace the lagging Internet Explorer for Mac with something better. They succeeded so well that Microsoft just gave up on IE for Mac. It takes a pretty impressive product to get Microsoft to just give up and quit the field, and this is further evience that no one really needs Microsoft. Safari is fast, it's standards-compliant, it includes the kind of usability features that Apple is famous for, and it's available free of charge. And now it's even available for Windows.
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The original Mozilla includes not only a browser, but a mail/news client, and a web-page-editing module. It was initially launched with the blessings and financial support of AOL/Netscape, who used it as the basis for the last few versions of the Netscape browser (which is still available but won't be updated, since the availability of Mozilla direct from the developers makes a Netscape-brand browser redundant.). It's a full-featured package that adheres to official web standards, and does quite well even on sites that are "best when viewed with Internet Explorer". It's available for most operating systems (e.g. Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, OS/2, BeOS, VMS, Amiga, RISC).
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Opera is lean and fast cross-platform browser
with a history of including handy new features that the others forgot about, like navigating effectively using just the keyboard, organizing multiple windows with different pages in them, or interpretting "mouse gestures" as commands. It's "portable" enough to run on desktops, handhelds, and even many high-end phones. It's available either in a free advertiser-supported version, or in an ad-free commercial version. It's also customised for multiple languages, and runs well on lots of operating systems (Linux, Mac, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, Symbian, QNX, OS/2, and Windows).
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OmniWeb is a browser that focuses on all the little details of usability rather than trying to do absolutely everything. It's designed specifically for Mac OS X with full support for the subtle benefits of the current Mac interface; the developers are fully and exclusively committed to developing for OS X. It supports OS-X-compatible plug-ins for Netscape and IE. It can be used for free, but periodically reminds the user (without actually interfering with use of the program, which is nice) that they're invited to pay for it.
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Camino is a developing browser for Mac OS X. In many respects it's similar to Mozilla Firebird, as a stand-alone browser based on standard Mozilla technology, but rather than being a Windows-style program running on a Mac, Camino is is a "real Mac program" that fits the way Mac OS X programs are supposed to look and feel.
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Owners of Macintosh computers (especially older ones running pre-OS X operating systems) should take a look at iCab, a new browser by a German developer, which focuses on being efficient, stable, and standards-compliant. A standard version is available free, with an enhanced version available for a small fee. In addition to the usual features, it offers the option of automatically filtering out banner ads and cookie management... all without add-ins. Versions are available for everything from the 68K CPUs with System 7 to the latest G5 system with OS X.
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Konqueror is a combination file-manager/viewer and web-browser, but more flexible than MSIE. It supports all of the official standards (HTML 4, CSS2, Java/ECMA-script), plus MS ActiveX controls, Netscape plug-ins, and Java applets, and it renders pages very quickly. (Its rendering engine is the one that Apple chose for Safari.) The bad news (for Windows and Mac OS 9 users) is that it's available only for Unix-like systems using KDE... because it's a free component of that desktop environment (which is included in most Linux distributions).
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Galeon is a browser that uses the open-source Mozilla page-rendering engine, but the user interface is faster, and simplified for web browsing, and web browsing only. So it doesn't include a mail client, newsgroup reader, file browser, etc. on the rationale that those tasks are best handled by separate programs. But it doesn't sacrifice niceties like tabs for multiple pages, smart bookmarks, and "themes" to simulate the look of other applications or just give the browser a more distinctive appearance. It's available for Unix-like systems using GNOME (which is included in most Linux and BSD distributions).
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K-Meleon is light-weight browser for Windows. It's an open-source browser which uses the standards-compliant Mozilla page rendering engine, but lacks the "bloat" of that more full-featured browser. It still supports all the basic browser functions, including both IE favorites and Netscape bookmarks, user profiles, and a password manager. And it adds niceties like pop-up controls, user-configurable keyboard support and menus, and an open plug-in interface. It's still a pre-release program with some known bugs and a few missing features, but it's stable enough that many users have already switched to it full-time.
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MyIE2 installs on top of IE5 or IE6 for Windows, and adds a bunch of features Microsoft hasn't bothered with (such as opening multiple pages with tabs and theme/skin support), plus several features unique to MyIE2. One of the more interesting is "mouse gestures", which is a fairly new user-interface concept that's starting to get attention: you click the right mouse button, then move the mouse to the left, or up and down, or down and to the right, etc. and the browser interprets that as a command such as "next", "reload", or "close tab". MyIE2 is free of charge.
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Netcaptor technically isn't really a full-fledged web browser itself. What it does is put a different user interface on Microsoft IE's page-rendering engine. It's main advantage over IE is that it allows you to open multiple documents in the same copy of the program, putting each on it's own tabbed page (kind of like pages in a spreadsheet) with color coding to indicate whether the page is finished loading. It can also bookmark a group of pages, opening them all at once. A free ad-supported version and an inexpensive commercial version are available.
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Conversay Voice Surfer is an interesting option, especially for someone with physical disabilities that make mousing or even keyboarding difficult. It's a voice-controlled web browser that will go to a URL when you say it, with "saycons" that you can activate by saying their name. Web sites that take advantage of Conversay's technology can be used interactively, talking to the user and responding to what you say.
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Dillo is a very lightweight browser designed to be stable (each new release is promised to be at least as stable as its predecessor), extensible, and fast (a natural byproduct of its size). It uses GTK (the GIMP ToolKit, also used by GNOME) for its interface, but doesn't require GNOME itself. It's still unfinished, but it appears to be making steady progress toward becoming a fully-functional browser.
It's available for a wide variety of Unix-like systems (including Mac OS X).
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Amaya is a project of the World Wide Web Consortian (W3C, the body that sets standards for the web) to produce an open-source tool featuring integrated web-browsing and web-authoring. This was Tim Berners-Lee's original conception of how one would use this "Web" thing he invented (and since he's a member of the W3C, it makes sense that they'd produce a tool of this sort). It's available for Windows, NT, Linux, Solaris, and AIX (and can be compiled for any other Unix).
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Act is a Windows browser so tiny that it even makes even the lightweight browsers look a bit chubby. (It fits on a diskette.) It's a freeware browser that supports most standard web features such as frames and style sheets, but not JavaScript (which some would regard as a good thing). Its cache can be used for off-line browsing of sites you visited while online, and it has a built-in un-ZIP capability for downloaded software.
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Lynx and Links are free text-only browsers, a characteristic which speeds up page loading incredibly. The bad news is that web developers are getting really bad at designing sites to be usable without graphics (and client-side scripting and plug-ins), so it's getting harder to use them. But there are versions available for most text-based operating systems, including many handhelds, good ol' DOS, and Unix shell accounts. Links is in active development, with plans to add support for graphics to Linux versions, even without Xwindows.
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Arachne runs on DOS (and a test version for Linux), but is fully graphical. (Yes, Virginia, there were graphical interfaces before Windows.) Unlike most software for "antique" operating systems, it supports a lot of modern technology, including frames and tables, mouse wheels, optional modules for MP3, MPEG, AVI, and QuickTime... even skins. It's being updated frequently, and makes an old 386 (or earlier) with 4MB of RAM (or less) a viable web-browsing machine.
(An HTML editor for DOS is Edit Revolution.)
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Palm OS,
Netware,