it's like surfing the web, man

It's already been established that I dislike IE with a passion. Naturally, I am always on the lookout for a new and interesting way to view the web, despite my love for all things mozilla.

Tonight I found another browser to try out, something known by the clever moniker iRider (just when you thought e as a prefix was done being annoying). I think the selling point of iRider is its ability to load pages in the background by default. Those of us that have become accustomed to tabbed browsing may think this isn't a big deal, but for those coming from IE and their multiple windows and annoying popups this may be something to try. All pages loaded into the background are automatically organized into trees based on the site they came from, which makes it easy to control everything. You can also open a group of regularly viewed sites through one bookmark, but that can be done in Opera as well. Standard text-select can open a bunch of links in the background at once, which I found pretty cool. A handy feature is its own integrated Search page, which submits your query to as many web search engines as you like. iRider's interface is a bit ugly (and it doesn't appear to be skinnable), but it prides itself on treating the web like a collection of pages in a magazine - ones that you can flip through with ease not having to be at the mercy of load times.

It's pretty quick at rendering pages, and manages to behave a lot like IE by using features of the Windows shell. It's also easy to get used to the commands, and is fully configurable if you don't like defaults. However, the fact that it is not freeware is a little annoying. At least Opera just makes you look at an ad banner if you don't feel like buying. Download the 21 day evaluation here if you are so inclined. The company's preocupation with surfing and wave imagery is a bit tired. We got the point eight years ago, for fuck's sake.