TheWorld Browser

CNET Editors' review

by: Polina Polishchuk on June 18, 2010

TheWorld 3.1 is a Web browser based on the engine that powers Microsoft Internet Explorer. Like Internet Explorer 7 and 8, TheWorld has a multithreaded frame that is supposed to prevent window freezing.

The browser's default appearance is simple, yet it feels cluttered because its toolbar is packed with icons. Its user interface is similar to that of Internet Explorer 7 and 8 except for a few minor details. The icons are bubble-like and the top toolbar is on the right-hand side of the screen next to an extra option that lets users hide it. TheWorld also supports custom mouse gestures; right-click and move the mouse to the left to go "back," or right-click and move the mouse up and right to open a new tab, for example. If you tend to use multiple tabs simultaneously, is has a slider bar that hides all of the tabs except for the last one. It also has a built-in download manager and pop-up blocker with their controls at the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. Its preinstalled extensions, such as page tools and the ad filter, are located in the add-on manager on the bottom toolbar as well.

TheWorld Browser's Web site features several of their own add-ons. Its uses Google as its default search engine and has a search bar at the right-hand corner of the screen. When first opening the browser, there is a "start page" tab that lists your recent pages and includes a search bar where you can choose between Google, Yahoo, and Bing search. The heart-shaped icon at the left-hand side of the screen adds favorite pages above the tab bar for easy access and stores them in a yellow star icon, like Internet Explorer's, as well.

The browser tends to load sites with a lot of HTML slowly, and its browsing speed generally feels clunky. In a simple timer test using Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 3, TheWorld received an average cold start-up time of 4.82 seconds, warm start-up of 2.73 seconds, and navigating time (from nytimes.com to facebook.com) of 1.64 seconds. When compared with Internet Explorer 7, it's slightly slower than IE, which received 4.99 seconds, 2.32 seconds, and 1.59 seconds times, respectively. On the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark test, TheWorld received an average score of 57,374.7 milliseconds and Internet Explorer received 56,816 milliseconds. Because of inconsistencies and varying results, it is tough to say which browser has faster JavaScript performance. But when compared with other Web browsers, such as Google Chrome that gets an average score of 734 milliseconds, their JavaScript performance is slower.

Apart from several useful features such as the one-click sound muting, tab options, and mouse gestures, TheWorld Web browser is mediocre. If you want a fast performing browser, you should consider other browsers. One curiosity with the application is the Chinese error message that came up while browsing, but it didn't stick around long enough for us to copy and paste it into a translator. Maybe the creators of TheWorld browser took the name a little too literally.