Gone is the age where you had to only two options for your internet browsing experience; those two options were Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Today the number of internet browsers is perhaps countless. Each browser has its strong points and its weak ones. And while choosing a default browser for our system, we take into serious consideration page loading times, media loading times, file download speeds, and any other special features unique to the browser.
Firefox is one of the best internet browsers out there. With its remarkable stability, impressive speed and laudable user-interface, no wonder it is the preferred browser of thousands of internet users.
Another great feature about Mozilla Firefox is that it is an open source freeware. Which means software developers from around the world can look at the code of Firefox and see what it is made of; from there on, developers can build on the revolutionizing Firefox code and enhance it to form an even better browser. And such an enhanced browser is exactly what we will be having a look at today.
Meet Wyzo, a free internet browser that builds on the Firefox code.
The internet experience for the most of us comprises of browsing, emailing, using social networking websites, and downloading via torrents. Wyzo packs all these features into a one little neat package which does all the mentioned jobs without any glitches.
Let us start from the beginning.
Clicking the ‘Download Wyzo 3’ button will start a download of a ~14 MB setup file. This setup file size falls around the same as other internet browsers such as Google Chrome, of which the setup file size is ~12 MB.
Wyzo installation is straightforward and the first run provides the user with the option of importing his/her settings (bookmarks, passwords, cookies, etc.) from any other internet browsers installed. This easy step helps make the first time use of Wyzo not so unfamiliar.
Here is how the main Wyzo looks like running:
By just looking at it, Firefox users might feel that there browser had merely been given a new skin and renamed Wyzo. While the light skin is great to work with and easy on the eyes, it is not the only featuring setting Wyzo apart from Firefox.
Right above the tabs list, the most popular social networking websites have been pre-bookmarked for the user’s convenience. Want to go over to Facebook really fast? Just click on the ‘Facebook’ button. Similar buttons exist for Youtube, Flickr, Digg, and Amazon, amongst others. Of course if you frequent any other website, the easiest way to add a button for it is by dragging the link in this bar. This will help you have easy, fast access to the pages you visit most often.
In the tabs list, there is no ‘+’ button to add a new tab. To open a blank new tab, press one can choose the ‘Open New Tab’ option in the ‘File’ menu or simply press ‘Ctrl+T.’ To open a link on an existing page in a new tab, the user can either click it with the ‘Mouse 3’ click or right click on the link and select ‘Open in New Tab.’ Wyzo developers will want to make opening existing links in new tabs easier for users who do not have ‘Mouse 3’ buttons; a quick solution would be to open links in new tabs by using ‘Ctrl + Left-Mouse-Click.’ Perhaps amends of this will be made in the next version of the browser.
With Wyzo we need not use an external downloading client/manager. The basic principle behind downloading managers is that they when you click on a file to be downloaded, the manager quickly tries to find multiple download locations, and then proceed to download pieces of the file from all over. The same feature has been incorporated into Wyzo which makes downloading through it faster than other browsers. In Wyzo, this downloading method has been renamed Firedownload. Firedownload’s tray icon rests neatly on your taskbar; to pause/resume downloads or have a look at your downloaded files, you can click on the icon.
Wyzo also comes packing its very own Bittorrent client, Firetorrent. Firetorrent can be configured in the browser settings.
The download progress can be monitored by opening a window from Wyzo’s tray icon. Before Wyzo, I used the Google Chrome plus uTorrent combination to download via torrents. Now, along with other Wyzo users, I do not need an excluve Bittorrent client.
Building on the extremely stable code of Firefox, Wyzo’s integrity as a browser stands right at the top of the list. When its impressive stability is fused with the extra features of including a very own download manager and Bittorrent client, Wyzo becomes a browser which is very hard to ignore.
*Wyzo is available for Windows and Linux users.
