With Apple announcing the public beta version of Safari 4, and claiming that it is "the world's fastest and most innovative web browser for Mac and Windows PCs", the war of the browsers appears to have started again in cyberspace.

The browser war between Microsoft and Mozilla (anyone remembers Netscape?) came to an end in 2001 when Microsoft released Internet Explorer 6. This browser captured around 90 per cent of the market, leading to browser stagnation. This time around, there are five major browsers fighting for marketshare -- Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera.

Microsoft continues to dominate the market with around 67.40 per cent share (Source: Net Application, an online statistics firm). However, its marketshare is dipping -- it was slightly over 75 per cent in Q1 2008. Firefox (around 22 per cent) and Apple's Safari (8.3 per cent) are battling for space. Opera (0.71 per cent) and Google's Chrome (1.13 per cent) are queering the pitch.

However, statistics could mislead. Some 'browser stat' sites are really better described as browser tracking sites. They track browser trends.

So it's not surprising that they get a lot of hits from netizens with the trendiest browsers. Similarly, sites that begin life 'optimised' for particular browsers almost certainly get a disproportionately large number of hits from those browsers. Most important, perhaps, spam-bots lie.

All browser tracking efforts are based on the 'User Agent' identifier reported by the Web client itself. But nothing prevents any client (including a Web browser) from misidentifying itself.

Besides, there's a danger now that browsers may interpret standards differently or even invent new ones. We could have a situation where we need to use different browsers for different websites, say experts.

Mozilla's Firefox is a non-profit organisation that develops a variety of software including browser, e-mail, instant messaging and calendar applications. Firefox is open source and standards compliant.

It has a wealth of features particularly when you take advantage of the many available plug-ins. Firefox is not tied to any software vendor. It runs on the major operating systems including Windows, Mac and Linux.

Apple's Safari is primarily used by Mac users, though it also runs on Windows. Apple is aggressive about pitching Safari to anyone who downloads iTunes or QuickTime. Opera is a feature-rich browser offering many built-in features such as mouse gestures. It is also relatively fast and efficient. Google's Chrome lacks many features. It is supported currently only by Windows. Apple and Google both use open-source components in their browsers.

Apple claims its Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. Innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable include Top Sites; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow -- to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top -- to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

The company also claims it executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than IE 7 and more than three times faster than Firefox 3. Safari quickly loads HTML web pages three times faster than IE 7 and almost three times faster than Firefox 3. However, Apple is yet to compare Safari 4's performance against the Windows versions of Chrome, Firefox 3.1 Beta 2, or Internet Explorer 8 RC1.