Ian, have you ever used MyIE2? AvantBrowser and MyIE2 share certain features and I have wondered which is better?

I originally looked at it because I was looking for a Netscape replacement for my mother (No flames, please, I'm moving her from netscape to outlook because she just got an iPAQ, and I don't want to mess with "converters".) Avantbrowser came up first on the google search I ran, so I looked at it, and have been trying it. I've not looked at MyIE2 recently; I may have ooked at their website somet ime ago, but never followed up.

i really like avantbrowser. the "url alias" feature is great since i can type in something like "ny" and get to the new york times. really good for stuff i don't go to often enough to use on my links bar and mostly quicker than going into favorites. it was easier for me to learn how to manage tabs than in other programs.

I've personally been playing with Avant for about a year now. Long enough to have seen through two logo changes at least. I've played with MyIE2 and for some reason just did not like it as much. The design of Avant's GUI just feels more natural to me and it did not take me long to discover where everything was. At least to me it feels more natural to actual IE. The only real problems I've noticed with it is when using things that don't expect to be running in an MDI window, such as Microsoft's Windows Update or Apple's QuickTime plugin. Even there, the fault is not really on Avant Browser itself, and the problems usually only turn up when the window using those apps is lying in the background. Quick fix is to either not change tabs while working with those plugins, or to go ahead and load them in a true IE window by themselves. Problem solved.

What I probably like best about Avant though: I have an old Mozilla inspired skin from quite awhile ago - when I first started using Avant. I don't think you can find it anymore and the ones out now aren't quite as good. When I put that skin on top of Avant I can sometimes forget that I'm actually running a clone of Internet Exploder instead of the great open source goodness that is Mozilla itself.

Thank you, syrrus. Good response. The thing that I dislike about MyIE2 is the UI, non-intuitive to me. I need to give Avant a whirl.

Another option is SlimBrowser. Link
It has all the features everyone has mention and several more. I've used Advent,MIE2, and Slimbrowser and it is the one I prefer.

I have been using Avant for several months. I really like its features. I love having the built in search. I find it easy to use and the fact that it has so mnay extras added to it.

How about Firefox? It is the browser only component of Mozilla, so your Mom can use Outlook for her email and still have a great browser that isn't susceptible to the security holes of IE. It is up to version .8, but is very stable. There are a few sites it has trouble with, but 99.9% of the time it works very nice and smooth. http://mozilla.org

She's using Netscape (not mozilla) right now - it's installed, but not her default browser. I suspect she's going to change that, and I don't care that much anyway. It's not like disk space is a premium any more!

I like Avant for all the reasons mentioned above. As well, the UI is easily modified to the way I want to see it. I like to have as much real estate as possible so bars and icons are adjusted to suit. Pop-up and Ad-blocking are excellent, even without SP2 I very rarely get these annoyances. Even flash is easily blocked.

I know you can do all that with Firefox but I found it to be too much work to do what I already got with AB.