Avant Browser An Internet Explorer Enhancer Adam Stone
The web is a vast and sprawling land, a place of sunlit clearings and shadowed recesses. With no path to guide us, any tool that promises to make the experience easier deserves a close look.
A few names stand out among the latest offerings in the world of free web browsers, including Opera and Slimbrowser, as well as the well-regarded Avant Browser. We took the latter for a test drive and came away with mixed feelings.
Not strictly a web browser by itself, Avant is instead a free, custom web browser application that sits on top of Internet Explorer, adding a wealth of features and functionality to the basic Microsoft offering. Some of its best features bring a new level of clarity and efficiency to the browsing experience.
A major selling point with Avant is its integrated utility for stopping pop-up ads. For those that haven't already installed a pop-up stopper (or that haven't installed Windows XP SP2, which packages a pop-up blocker with IE), this function is a must-have. Another useful feature is a built-in search engine that allows users to launch Yahoo! searches right off the task bar. The integrated Flash animation filter, which automatically heads off time-consuming animations before they begin, is yet another helpful feature in Avant Browser.
Other useful features in Avant that we'd be pleased to see eventually make their way into IE are the URL alias feature, which allows you to associate a short set of keystrokes for a URL (i.e. 'gg' for www.google.com or 'wp' for www.WinPlanet.com), and the record-clearing options, which make it quick and easy to delete traces of web browsing, including such items as your URL history, typed-in addresses, auto-complete passwords, cookies, temporary files, search keywords, and blocked pop-ups.
