Competition is breeding innovation in web browser development.
In the past year, every major browser maker has announced new and significantly better versions of their software. Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera each had two or more major releases. Microsoft Internet Explorer 9's public beta is very promising, and Apple Safari's most recent version is great, too.
If you think about it, browser makers effectively control which web standards actually get implemented. If Safari or IE doesn't support some new HTML5 feature or certain JavaScript methods, those features or methods become very difficult to use in a functional, cross-browser site.
Given this level of control, I wondered what browser makers did for their own websites. In this showcase, I have collected images from leading browser makers' websites. I hope you find these screenshots as inspiring as I did.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer
Microsoft's IE8 landing page is attractive and very professional looking, making great use of color and image reflection.
The site's visually sophisticated content slider, which is pictured mid-transition below, alternates video and graphic content.
The videos from the content slider open in a functional and attractive modal window, complete with just about every feature I could imagine.
The site also appears to be optimizing the page for the specific edition of Windows that the user is running.
Subsequent pages in the IE section include intuitive tabbed navigation, and also look very professional.
The site makes good use of category banners, and includes different page layouts seemingly based on a desire to display information in an easy to understand manner.
Finally, the IE9 test-drive page uses a different aesthetic, perhaps aimed more at web designers and developers rather than at corporate CIOs.
Mozilla Firefox
Mozilla Firefox has long been the darling of the web development community. The free, open-source browser is perhaps the single best browser for developing websites, thanks to its adherence to web standards and awesome collection of development friendly add-ons. It is also one of the best browsers in terms of cross-platform support, since it runs well on Windows and most Apple operating systems. And it was one of the first to run on Linux, too.
The Firefox pages are functionally simple, relying on excellent custom graphics to communicate the browser's essence.
The site can often have a whimsical feel that, perhaps, demonstrates the project's openness and flexibility.
When the site does employ content sliders on its "Tips & Tricks" page, those sliders are simple, elegant, fading, and fast.
By default, videos on the Firefox site play in the native HTML5 video player. In this way, the site is demonstrating some of the newest and most advanced standard compliant features.
Google Chrome
Google's Chrome web browser was the upstart that started this latest outbreak of browser competition. It should get much credit for forcing the recent browser innovation that we're now enjoying.
Chrome is known for its performance, thin header, and recently added support for most operating systems.
Visually, the Chrome site looks just about like every other Google service or product.
Direct communication, lists—even when graphics are used—are frequently employed to offer options to site visitors.
The Chrome site also makes frequent use of videos, relying on Flash videos embedded from YouTube.
The site is quite willing to link to external information, which allows it to integrate graphics from other sites.
Opera
Opera is, perhaps, the most innovative and creative of the web browsers. Like tabbed browsing? Opera pioneered it. What to surf using mouse gestures? Opera offers it. Like mobile browsing? Opera Mini is the most popular browser for some mobile platforms. Like the new look of Firefox 4? Or think Chrome's tabs on top are cool? Opera inspired both.
The browser maker's site is also inspirational.
< a href="http://www.opera.com/">
The Opera home page has a quick and attractive content slider that replaces the background image and content for the entire top of the portion of the page.
The site often provides step-by-step instructions in the form of lists.
Apple Safari
Apple's iconic style and design aesthetic is clearly displayed on the Safari landing page.
The Safari page features a smooth and relatively compact slider that almost glides from image to image.
The features section on the Safari site is three columns wide and densely packed with text. In some sense, it feels more like a book than a web page. Yet, for Apple it works.
On the Safari HTML5 page, Apple again chooses a three-column layout, but this time it resembles a glossy magazine site.
For the developer-focused section of the site, Apple uses a more utilitarian design, which is nonetheless clean and attractive.
[Camino] http://caminobrowser.org/)
Camino is the other Mac browser. Based on the same engine as Firefox, Camino has been optimized to run on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs.
The Camino site has a Web 2.0 feel and makes good use of communicative imagery.
Flock
Flock is the browser that lets social media addicts have their Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, SCVNGR, or other social media accounts always onscreen in a left-hand panel. So it is not surprising that social media icons are present on the Flock home page.
Many of Flock's page have a blog layout.
