It can pretty much be taken for granted these days that if you are online, you are using a browser. In Linux, there are the text browsers and then there is Mozilla and Opera. (There is no IE on Linux, which, is perfectly fine with me.) I personally like Mozilla version 0.9.4 because it is fairly lightweight and displays text better than some other Linux browsers. It caters to the Open Source crowd while being pretty easy to use.

It was great to see that Mozilla version 1.0 Candidate 1 was available for evaluation last week. It should be noted that this version is for testing purposes only, so even this review must be read in that light. Developers and users can now hammer away on it, then use the talkback features to help the Mozilla team iron out the bugs, in anticipation for the production 1.0 release.

I evaluated this version for speed, ease of use, and features that would be of interest to someone using it in their business. Speed was based on loading of the browser and rendering a variety of pages while connected to high-bandwidth Internet service. Opera version 6.2 B2 was used as a comparison. I also checked to see how the plug-in and helper applications worked.

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