The Sleeping Giant Strikes back!
Some of you remember AIM back in the 90's where it had sovereignty over all Instant Messaging programs.. Now AOL launched AIM Triton.. A new beginning for a new era. A fresh start with a version tagged 1.0!
Now everything is integrated within the software... Video Chat, Voice Chat and VoIP, IM, Games and much much more..
Ok... now that's one thing I wanted to tell everyone about.. but the more important news is not just that!... AOL is Back with a vengeance!
After it's acquisition of Weblogs Inc. and their redesigning of their AOL.com Portal... they Skinned an Internet Explorer and called it AOL Explorer...
AOL Explorer is the most powerful Web Browser that I had ever used so far.. and I'll sum it up in some points until you get to try it out yourself when you download your version of AIM Triton or just the standalone AOL Explorer.
- Point 1: Tabbed Browsing! Just like FireFox and Opera but the good thing is... It's based on Internet Explorer...
- Point 2: Tab Re-Arrangement.. unlike other browsers where you can't move the tabs in your Tabs bar.. In AOL Explorer you can move them and reorder them based on your preference.
- Part 3: Image Snap Shot of the window. Just move the mouse over the tab you want and it'll show you a thumbnail of what it contains! that's a feature I loved..
- Part 4: Tab Explorer, by pressing F8.. you can explore each and every tab you opened.. just click on any of them and trace back in thumbnails of previous pages you viewed in that tab!... just like clicking the Back Pull down menu where it just shows you the title of the previous pages... this shows you thumbnails! it makes you identify the page you want to move back to easily.. I bow in respect to whoever thought of this! it made my life easier..
- Part 5: Start Up Folder, Ok this needs a little more elaboration.. ok.. have you ever started your web browser and wished that it opened your GMail, Hotmail, Your blog and your favorite Portal all at once in different tabs? well.... that's exactly what the start up folder does.. just add a page to your favorites and choose to save it in the start up folder.. and voila! Whenever you start up AOL Explorer.. it'll open the pages you have there in tabs! I LOVED THIS!!!
- Part 6: Power Browsing, Right click anywhere in the page and go to Power Browsing and you'll get a bunch of options... Like, Who owns this website where it takes you to AOL's Whois registry and you get the whois information of that particular website you're on, and there are a few options where it shows or highlights URLs on the page and differentiate between links to pages within the same domain or to another website... AND MUCH MUCH MUCH More... and there are options just for fun.. like... "I Need Glasses", "I Need A Mirror" and "Flip My Monitor Over" You have to try them for yourself..
- Part 7: Feeds and Mail integrated on the side of the screen.. just click on them and they come in focus.. and the skin is so nice that you just want to sit and stare!
- Part 8: OK, this might come in handy for some of you.. right click on a tab.. and tear it off! it will open in it's own window! Cool? you haven't seen a thing until you try it yourself!
These are just a few of the options. You have to explore the rest! I'm sure you will be amazed by how powerful this broswer is!
As of today, I'm back to AOL... I set my default browser as AOL Explorer.. so hurry up and download it! |
Comments on "Claim Back the Net!"
Based on IE is bad, Moving tabs is feature in 1.5, having more than one home page, Firefox can do that. What is the use of opening a tab in a new window? I tryed it out and I must say Firefox is way better.
I bet the spammers , hackers ,pop-up programers , and virus builders , have made you there poster child
Thank you all for your comments..
but each browser has it's pros and cons.. I'm sure AOL Explorer has some cons... some think that the trident base is a con.. some think it's not..
anyway... everyone is entitled to their own opinion..
Personally I have no problems with firefox.. except that it never refreshes right.. it always loads the old copy of the page from the cache.. which does not happen with IE or AOL Explorer.. and this is very important for any web designer to check their updates.. anyway that's just minor.. the other thing that does not work is search within forms on pages... which works fine with IE but doesn't work at all with Fire Fox.. which is annoying.. and that also is a minor glitch..
Anyway.. I just don't want to get into a comparison between 2 browsers cause this is not the space or the occasion for it..
I thank you all for passing by and sharing your thoughts.. and I hope to see you again.
Out of the box, it's a better end user experience. I know many people will hate it/not give it a chance solely because it's AOL, but from an end user/feature perspective they do a better job. For the average Joe who doesn't give a rip about extensions, it gives them what they need, right away.
Things I like about AOL Explorer:
1. It's simply more compatible with most sites out there. I can't say that for Firefox.
2. It gives you a bunch of useful features without dealing with extensions. Extensions are for geeks. Your average-joe user (like my mother) is never going to get into installing extensions. AOL Explorer gives you extension based functionality out of the box
3. It's very nice looking and the UI is not cluttered. Skins are yet another nerd-ware feature. The Average Joe isn't going to install them...and out of the box, Firefox isn't the most attractive application out there.
4. The Tab Explorer feature kicks ass. The foxPose extension doesn't even come close to the elegance or usefulness of Tab Explorer.
I'm not saying Firefox is a bad browser - it's an excellent browser that has its place in the market. However there's a good sized chunk of users out there that don't want to deal with the technical stuff that you need to do in order to customize firefox to make it look and work great.
For the average user who wants an excellent web browser - AOL Explorer fits the bill perfectly.
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