hydra - the browser for a good cause
This week I’ve been scoping out alternative browsers built off of IE. I’m not fond of IE at all, and when in need of an alternative to Firefox I will usually use Opera. But it’s good to keep up on the other offerings out there. Since most of the market still uses IE as their main browser, it’s nice for them to have choices, and here is a pretty nice one I’ve been playing with. It just may become my new alternative browser. Check out Hydra.
If you’re fond of the Office 2007 interface, you’ll feel right at home with the design of this browser.
It’s been built to include tons of features most Firefox users incorporate through the use of extensions. If you’re a Firefox user, you’ll adapt to this one quickly, but I imagine most casual IE users may feel a little overwhelmed at first by all the choices and options they’re not used to dealing with. Let’s take a closer look at the toolbars to see what’s included.
There is a typical navigation menu, followed by a few other choices.
In the Power Tools section, Presets is the equivalent of Session Manager, allowing you to designate particular sites and open them all in one click. There a few built in presets for different searches, and you can customize to include your own. There are many built in Bookmarklets Firefox users will recognize. This is also where you turn off CSS for a “no styles” page view. But here’s one javascript offering I know my girl Justy will appreciate:
You can easily create new Profiles from the toolbar, which I’ll admit is easier to do than the similar feature in Firefox. The Web Gallery is a handy customizable display of your favorite web pages, which can be reached with once click.
The Edit toolbar has the usual offerings but is supercharged by the Collector:
The Collector is a built in browser clipboard to store your clipped content. Clips can be saved individually or can be merged into a web document. This is quite a convenient feature.
The Favorites & Sidebars toolbar has some great sidebar features built right in.
From your sidebar you can access many widgets and gadgets:
As you can see there are several useful tools and tech offerings
Easy Access gives the most popular offerings from google, yahoo, ms, and chat, plus some useful tools shown below:
Security & Settings offers more useful features:
This where you turn off image loading if you’re trying to avoid myspace trackers. Access view source from here, along with a lot of other familiar offerings. One function I particularly liked was the Document Explorer which allows you a tree view of the page structure and code.
Tools has some great features built in:
The Translation feature is great for those foreign language search results. The Extractor has useful offerings, allowing you to extract images, links, or page content, and includes a built in screenshot of the browser window. For more advanced users the built in Ftp, Usenet, and Telnet clients are convenient. Would be nice to have irc here also.
The final toolbar offering is a built in RSS reader.
The Settings allow you to customize a few more features. Most notable is a built in AdBlocker. However, there is no option to import lists, so all entries must be added manually. Now that’s a PIA, but hopefully something that will change in future versions. My favorite here is the built in mouse gestures I’ve come to rely on.
All in all, I have to say this is a well designed browser with a lot of features you’ve come to expect as a Firefox user. A few annoyances I found: memory hogging, limited right click functionality particularly in gmail, and no middle click for opening new tabs.
But what makes this browser really unique is its charitable offerings for children. A percentage from each download and from profits goes to charities geared towards helping children. Hydra even takes it to the next level by offering users the ability to create Proposals and Submissions through their forums, to help a child in need. Know someone with a sick child, or have one yourself, you can submit donation requests for the child and Hydra will share the wealth with them. All you have to do to help out is just download the browser.
