You've heard of Internet Explorer, Netscape and if you're a Mac user Safari. There's also Opera, Mozilla and the new meteoric kid on the block - Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox).

I'm not surprised if you haven't heard of Surf Monkey, Net-Tamer, Voyager or Web-O-Matic or the other nearly 100 different browsers available to surf the web. More appear regularly, most are free and some you still have to pay for but what they all have in common is the differences of how they present information online.

What's worse is the lack of standards, what may work in IE may not work in Firefox and vice versa and this creates compatibility problems for web developers. The Web Page Rendering Engine is the feature of greatest significance and it's here that the viewer may encounter problems on occasion. These engines vary between Internet Explorer Compatible, Mozilla Gecko & Open Source standards.

Put simply it's all about 'the standards' as consistent presentation is made difficult when it comes to writing web applications. Limited creativity, usability and browser incompatibility cause the developer's headaches when deciding which standard is best addressed. With 'standards' ownership, the browser ultimately dictates how information can be accessed on the web.  

Although Firefox has only been officially released since the start of the year it's already gained a very healthy user base in that time and of course Microsoft is not standing still. We'll see IE version 7 (designed to replace their current but 2 year old browser) long before we see the next version of Windows, (slated for 2006/07).

The difference between the two - between Microsoft control or that of open standards bodies - will be the battleground for the next two years, and one that promises some real fireworks. By wrenching control of the standards away from Microsoft, rivals are looking to encroach on Windows domination.

So what's on the horizon? Last September Google announced plans of the Gbrowser, and just like Gmail - their 'free' email system (similar to Microsoft's Hotmail) - they were proposing to develop their own browser as their 'window to the web'.

Although this appears to have been dropped, Google decided to strongly support Firefox and it is this relationship that is predicted to be their way of intruding on Microsoft's domain. Think about it - nearly all internet user's access the web for the growing number of applications and services that are becoming available online and no longer need be installed onto a local computer. Even Intuit now provides Quickbooks online so that a company's financial information can be accessible via any web enabled PC. In fact GST & Tax information can now be reviewed using the ATO's new online 'Business Portal'. People are no longer considering the internet unsafe and I was quite surprised to see our Government's faith in providing this service online (albeit with incredible security).

Which just proves my point even further - it no longer matters if an application or service is installed on your PC or available on your company's fileserver. With the unwavering push for faster internet connections and the availability of 'always on' internet - accessing information online and via the web browser is faster, cheaper, secure and more robust than running software on hardware dependent software systems.

Microsoft, for its part, is not going to go down without a fight and the current browser war may well be seen as nothing but a skirmish compared to what is coming.

To find out more on the growing list of browsers check out http://browsers.evolt.org or to monitor the ground shift of browser usage visit http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp