The Download Blog

If you're in the market for a remix of Internet Explorer--perhaps you need it to work on an internal office network--an interesting alternative is SlimBrowser, whose name belies its feature set. SlimBrowser's tabbed interface allows you to look at multiple Web sites all at once. It looks and feels more or less like its more popular competitors, so the learning curve isn't as steep as you might think.

The basics are all present and accounted for: effective pop-up blocker, more than 100 skins that don't require restarting, and support for most of IE's toolbars and plug-ins. One of the more unique features is a shortcut menu that lets you browse your Desktop, My Documents folder, and the Control Panel from the browser window. There's a neat little pop-up recovery feature, too, in case you missed one that was not a pernicious advertisement.

The RSS reader was a bit wonky to configure, but the online forum has a deep knowledge base. SlimBrowser is recommended for those who need a bit of variety in their Web surfing.