Little-known wonders in Chrome, IE & Firefox

It takes around 100 milliseconds to bat your eyelid. And the race now among the popularly used browsers is to optimize javascript performance to be within the time you bat your eyelid twice. There is very little difference between the speeds clocked by the latest versions of the browsers of Google, Microsoft and Mozilla. What this means is that applications and graphics pop up at enviable speeds.

Google's Chrome, Microsoft's latest Internet Explorer 9 Beta version and Mozilla Firebox's 4 Beta 10 update offer just that – ultra-fast speeds, a clean browser and a high level of security. Perhaps the key differentiator here is the user interface experience and extra features/extensions that each browser offers. It is in this niche services that one browser scores over the other, says Harish Vaidyanathan, Director, Evangelism, Microsoft India.

But for ordinary users, these advanced features help them save time and increase efficiency. For instance, you don't have to key in the entire URL address in any of these browsers. All the three latest versions are smart enough to throw up the exact link you are looking for. In some cases, they even offer different options or they may even track your browsing history and display sites you visit very often. You may not need to open separate applications to view Excel sheets or your photo albums, these have now become integrated into the browser itself. Here's a look at some of the fascinating developments introduced by the major browsers.

Google Chrome browser

Tabs are getting very adventurous across browsers. Instead of having multiple windows piled up at the bottom, it saves so much space to have tabs neatly arranged on the top. The fascinating thing here is that you can have split tabs into different windows. This means that you can write that research project you have been working on and at the same time keep a tab on the cricket scores. And this is how you do it: Drag a tab to the middle of either side of your computer screen. When the docking icon appears, release the mouse over the icon and the tab will snap into place, filling exactly half your screen. Four other docking positions will help you work simultaneously in multiple tabs with ease.