FineBrowser – your multibrowsing experience.

Convenience is something people constantly seek. That applies to everything – apparel, vehicles, and everyday working conditions. In search of new capabilities of everyday things we constantly experiment and try something new.

It happens the same way to software programs. A web browser is something that opens the Internet for us, and how comfortable web surfing is, directly depends on the feature-set and usability of your browser. So choosing a web browser to stick to is like purchasing a brand-new car – you have to consider numerous things before making a final decision – like the look and feel, usability and ease of use, speed and acceleration characteristics, etc.

It’s common knowledge that Internet Explorer is by far the most popular web browser on desktops worldwide. There are many reasons for that, various reasons. In the first place, the very marketing policy of Microsoft contributes a lot to the popularity of IE. The disputes around this matter are outside the scope of this article. One thing is clear – Internet Explorer is easy-to-use, familiar, and is most of the time the target development platform for the web masters. Which also means we have to use what we have available.

The situation has it upsides and downsides. On the one hand, we don’t have to bother to find something else, since all the main features are right at the fingertips. On the other though, these features are basic, and not in any way sufficient.

For those of you who don’t like to put up with the Spartan functionality of Internet Explorer I’m pleased to present a new program that belongs to the multibrowser type. That’s when you can open and operate with numerous web pages simultaneously. Please welcome – FineBrowser (http://www.finebrowser.com ).

This choice is not random. This multibrowser is interesting in at least two respects. On the one hand, it incorporates all the characteristic features one would usually expect to find in multibrowser. On the other hand – this is something one might call the next step in the multibrowser evolution. The thing is that many multibrowsers currently on the market, however useful and convenient as far as Internet surfing goes, have not in the recent year shown any degree of significant innovation. This results in a situation, when a great variety of today’s multibrowsers deliver essentially identical functionality, being very similar in their feature-set and operation. However, this similarity does not make the importance of multibrowsing functionality any smaller, and we’ll get deeper into the subject right now, taking FineBrowser as a specific example.

Let’s start the review with the discussion of those very characteristic features every multibrowser provides.

Typical Multibrowser Functionality

Working with multiple pages at a time.

So FineBrowser allows opening multiple web pages simultaneously. All of them are positioned within the main program window and can be switched between both using the window tabs and a special pane, which displays every single web page currently opened.

It’s remarkable, how easily FineBrowser opens more than a hundred of web documents simultaneously (you can open them and take a coffee break while they are loading), and how fast the whole thing happens. Therefore, such a pane comes in very handy. All the more useful when it displays a pop-up hint containing comprehensive information for a specific web page when you hover your mouse over a web page link. And yes, every window tab looks different when a page I loaded completely, which allows you to identify the loaded pages at a single glance.

Additionally, window tabs can be regrouped, renamed, positioned at the top or at the bottom of the main window, and locked out to protect from accidental close if they contain important information.

Usually a multibrowser should allow suspending your browsing session to start next time with exactly the same set of opened web pages you had last time. FineBrowser achieves this by providing the Desktops feature, which makes it easy to save and store a number of desktops ‘as is’, including all the settings and the opened windows. With this feature you can also group your opened windows by topic, save each topic to a separate desktop and then easily change your surfing direction and switch topics according to your liking without worrying about losing any important data.

Loading several web pages simultaneously.

Since multibrowsers allow working with multiple web pages at a time, opening, multiple pages with a single mouse-click is a must-have feature for any program of this kind. The most frequently used web pages can be ‘quick grouped’, so that loading a whole set of pages becomes just a mouse-click away.

Blocking the undesired pop-up windows.

Similar to most multibrowsers, FineBrowser enables you to block the unwanted pop-up windows with ease. This alone is a great advantage over a conventional browser. Most likely you already experienced a frustrating situation when some malicious web page virtually bombarded you with numerous pop-ups and ads… Sometimes only rebooting your machine may help the situation. So the pop-up-blocking feature has already become part and parcel of every multibrowser. As far as FineBrowser is concerned, this program features an enhanced mechanism of pop-up blocking. FineBrowser not just simply blocks all pop-ups using brute force. It acts the smart way and is capable of automatically distinguishing the unwanted pop-ups from those apparently invoked by the user. There is also an ignore list you can manually replenish to easily specify which web pages should not be processed by the pop-up blocking module.

Safeguarding your privacy.

When surfing the Net you most likely don’t want other people to be aware of the results of your work. FineBrowser makes it easy to wipe out all the information on the user activity automatically stored by Windows. With a single mouse-click you can delete cache files, clear cookies, wipe out typed-URL and web pages history.

Translating and voicing web pages for you.

When browsing through the intricate maze of the World Wide Web we sometimes find ourselves stuck with a web site written in a language other than your native tongue. To assist you in understanding the content of such sites FineBrowser – similar to other multibrowsers -- allows you to translate the web page. To perform this task, simply click the appropriate command with your mouse and wait till the newly translated page loads. However, unlike other similar software, FineBrowser enables you to easily configure the view and number of the available translations, so that you can get a page translated quickly to the language of your preference.

In addition, FineBrowser enables you to voice the contents of the current web document. This feature utilizes a text-to-speech engine which should be installed on your computer, and which determines the quality of the speech generated. However, this feature still allows you to sit back, relax, and listen to your favorite news channel, for instance. Actually, I tested the usefulness of this capability by feeding one of this article’s samples to FineBrowser, which gave me an opportunity to ‘reread’ it without having to even look at the monitor. The voice was not without some metal touch, but generally, this piece was recited quite accurately, and with proper intonation. The accents were incorrect sometimes, as if it were a foreigner stumbling at every unknown word. These, however, are simply minor flaws of the voice engine architecture and FineBrowser has nothing to do with it.

The discussed features are characteristic of most popular multibrowsers currently on the market. However, FineBrowser incorporates a number of unique and innovative features, which make your work with multiple web pages all the more convenient.

Innovative Features of FineBrowser.

Web links archive for a accessing web pages faster.

I think everyone would agree, that a faster access to the necessary web resource has a great effect on the effectiveness of your web surfing. How quickly we finally find the required information depends on how quickly we find and type the required Internet address. To make this task easier, FineBrowser features a built-in bookmarks database, which can be manually replenished and can store any bookmarks you need. The database contains not only all the user-added bookmarks and URLs, but can also store additional data like the last view date, your page comments, and even the way it looks. Thanks to this feature you can easily add your personal notes to a web page when viewing it, set a page rating, include it into a rubric and take a web page snapshot. The user can access the previously saved information through the rubricator, where all the pages are grouped into different rubrics and subrubrics.

This feature provides many options when working with information. It’s possible not only to perform an advanced search by name, keywords in comments, rating or date, but also to work with lists of resources. With just a single mouse-click you can generate a list containing all the resources in a given rubric, sort them by comments, access date, or web address. FineBrowser can combine different lists (concatenate, compare, etc.) and export them to a standard html-file. Those heavy web users will certainly find it very handy. Now if you want to tell a friend about some groovy sites, you can send him/her a detailed report based on a resources list, containing small screenshots, ratings and your comments for the web pages.

Full web page description will allow you to easily remember what useful information it contains, and taking a quick look at the enlarged screenshot without having to load the actual page makes an excellent visual aid. Thanks to this, it’s possible to efficiently work with the already viewed pages offline with a possibility to select a number of pages and load them in new FineBrowser windows. So once visited, a web resource is safely stored in the database and we don’t have to memorize those lengthy Internet addresses. It’s like bookkeeping – safely in the records.

Additional features when opening multiple pages at a time.

FineBrowser, unlike other multibrowsers, provides some new options when opening many pages simultaneously. The first one, as mentioned above, is by using a list. Possibilities are limitless with this feature. On the other hand, you can utilize the rubricator to open all the pages within a given rubric.

Besides, FineBrowser makes it easy to open several hyperlinks just from within a web page. Simply select the necessary text segment, right-click it and voila! – you can open al the links it contains both in new Internet Explorer and FineBrowser windows. The application will exclude the duplicates the smart way and will let you specify which pages should not be loaded.

Accessing the already loaded web pages.

FineBrowser allows you to avoid loading the already opened web pages time and again. If, for instance, when exploring a web resource we encounter a link that leads to an already opened page, FineBrowser will detect it and simply switch to the that page without loading it anew. Additionally, FineBrowser automatically stores the page navigation history. This allows you to easily go to the next/previous web page by utilizing the special navigation buttons. This feature is helpful, especially when you usually view the available web page randomly.

Visited links highlighting and navigating within a domain.

However, the real power of FineBrowser comes from the program’s ability to utilize the data automatically stored in its internal database when navigating through the Web. Thanks to that feature FineBrowser can highlight the already visited web pages in a special way (strikeout by default). Hovering you mouse over such a link makes the program display a pop-up hint containing all the available information on a given web page, including a small snapshot. Often this helps avoid revisiting the unnecessary web [ages and understand where a link leads without having to click on it.

We often come to a website again to continue exploring the resource, or to simply remember what kind of information it provides. FineBrowser allows you to optimize this process thanks to its innovative ‘domain links’ feature. Once you visited a specific web site, next time you encounter some page of the site, FineBrowser will inform you about it by highlighting the “Domain links” button. Clicking the button with your mouse displays a list containing all visited site pages with detailed information attached. This helps you to easily decide whether a page is worth revisiting by taking a quick look at your own personal comments.

Summarizing this review I can say we have many options when choosing a browser. Chances are, everyone will find something for himself/herself. Just remember to dig for and explore new things – since what programs you have at the ready to a great extent determines your everyday success. And FineBrowser can make an excellent tool in your arsenal.

More information about FineBrowser and its many features can be found at http://www.finebrowser.com (the official site). The evaluation version of the application is available here: http://www.finebrowser.com/download/finebrowser.exe