The browser, which the group plans to release under the GNU General Public License, will be called No Limits.
The main distinguishing characteristic of No Limits will be its ability to support two rendering engines, i.e., the code that displays a Web page. Users will be able to opt between the engine that displays a page the fastest or the most compatibly.
"We plan to have NO limits in terms of compatibility," explained the primary keeper of the No Limits code, Peter Revill, who also goes by the handle "Nick Nervlord." Revill added that "there will be two options for users: fastest and most compatible, and they can be switched between at any time and the page refreshed."
The Four Horsemen have developed a few other programs, such as a PC security program designed to prevent unauthorised access to users' systems while they are away from their machines, said Revill. The No Limits coders had completed a browser with multiple rendering engines but then went back to the coding drawing-board once they decided to add an HTML parser that would decide automatically which rendering engine to select.
No Limits is written in Visual Basic and currently supports the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Gecko rendering engines. But The Four Horsemen are "strongly considering looking at a browser in Linux that would use the (KDE) Konqueror and Mozilla engines, instead of the IE/Mozilla combination," Revill said. He added that such a switch was just an idea at this point and had not been undertaken by the group.
Revill said he is planning on making a binary beta version available to interested parties soon. The Four Horsemen are aiming to deliver the final No Limits browser before year-end, possibly in November. The group will make the browser available for download for free.
Alternatives ahead
Several vendors are experimenting with browsers that offer users alternatives to the dominant two-- Microsoft's IE and AOL Time Warner's Netscape.
AOL itself is working on technology code-named Komodo, which is expected to debut in its AOL 7.0 and next-generation CompuServe clients later this year, that will allow for a browser other than Microsoft's IE to become the foundation upon which AOL's clients will be based, going forward.
And Opera Software is continuing to pump out versions of the Opera browser that support a variety of platforms. This week, the company debuted its Linux version and a version that supports the QNX operating system running on IBM's NetVista Internet Appliance. Opera is also developing a version of its browser for the Macintosh, which the company expects to make available sometime later this year.
Revill emphasised that he believes No Limits will be the fastest browser on the market, given its multiple rendering-engine support. "Our only competition is slow rendering speed, and we think we can win," he quipped.
But as Giga analyst Stacey Quandt noted, even the fastest, cheapest and best browser may not win.
"Sometimes, the best technologies don't win out. Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Server) is faster than Apache, but Apache has the greatest market share, for example.
"The real question is how well will No Limits tie into existing applications," Quandt continued. "They are going to need some ISV (independent software vendor) partnerships, with entities like KDE and GNOME, and/or investments to make this work."
