Five Best Alternative Web Browsers For Windows, You Never Know Existed

The world is progressing towards “everything on cloud” phase, making web browsers the most used application for anyone and everyone. It now doesn’t matter much which platform you are using. Be it Windows, OS X, Linux or cloud based operating system such as Chromium, you always need a web browser to access the Internet. The omnipresent presence of web browsers in our day-to-day life has made it such, we never give it a second thought. Anyone accessed the world-wide web ever is already familiar with web browsers. Popular browsers such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, OperaSafari etc are not new to anyone. But the world of web browsers is not limited to these few web browsers only. There are hundreds of web browsers available for you to try. In tech language they fall in the “alternative” web browser category. These so-called “alternative web browsers” come loaded with some unique features. And there are concrete reasons too to the question “why use an alternative browser?“.

If you are one of our regular reader, you must have seen our compilation of four alternative browsers. We also covered alternative browsers like Lunascape, Waterfox, Comodo Dragon, Midori. Continuing our trend, here’s a refreshed list of five best alternative web browsers for you to try. And we bet you haven’t heard about most of them.

Five Best Alternative Web Browsers For Windows

We tested these web browsers on Windows 8.1 Update 2 Pro with WMC 64-bit operating system running on a laptop with Core i5 processor and 8 GB RAM.

Some of them are also available for Mac OS X, Linux. Some are even available for smartphones running iOS (iPhone, iPad), Android or Windows Phone.

Here comes the best alternative web browsers for you to try. Let’s dive in.

Beamrise – Alternative “Social” Web Browser Based on Chrome

The first in our list is a web browser named “Beamrise.” From the words of the developers, Beamrise is the new “social web browser“. As the name suggests, it comes loaded with exclusive social network functions. It allows you to communicate with your friends and families, share photos, pages, and videos.

Beamrise is based on Chromium, so if you like Google Chrome, you may feel at home. You can use all your favorite Chrome extensions and apps on Beamrise browser. You just need to visit Chrome Web Store to download and install them on Beamrise.

beamrise-alternative-web-browser-for-windows

The first time you launch Beamrise, you need to create a Beamrise account or login, if you have already. This step is mandatory and you can not skip it. Creating an account is easy. You can use your Facebook, Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo account or your email address to sign up for a free Beamrise account.

beamrise-browser-account-setup

Your Beamrise account will save all social network accounts, favorite pages, applications, and other preferences. So, the next time you use the browser on another computer, you can login to your Beamrise account and start from where you left.

Beamrise browser allows you to chat and connect with all your Facebook, Skype and Google Chat friends. You can chat and browse the web at the same time without loosing track. Some other notable unique features worth taking a shot are visual bookmarks, video chat, animated messages using winks, emoticons, and more. Another unique feature known as Beamrise Text lets you send SMS messages to your friends’ phones. Discover is another feature that lets you discover new things and collect and share stuff you love.

You can download and install Beamrise social web browser from the official website here. Beamrise browser is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8. It should run Windows 8.1 without any problem.

Dooble Web Browser – Platform Independent Alternative Web Browser

Dooble Web Browser is next in our list for improved privacy, usability and stability. The developers claim that Dooble is a compact, configurable, and uniform browser. It is feature-rich and simple to use. It supports multiple operating systems. It is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X, Debian, FreeBSD, and OS/2 operating system. It is portable and comes with some impressive features. The positive reviews from Dooble users supports the claims of the developers.

dooble-alternative-web-browser

Some of the unique features worth mentioning are encryption, content blocking, private browsing, session restore, inbuilt FTP browser, and File manager. Further if you are geeky you can also use Dooble to generate PDF files from a terminal. You should definitely try Dooble web browser yourself like us and get impressed.

dooble-web-browser

You can download Dooble web browser from its official web page hosted on SourceForge. After downloading, extract the contents to a folder of your choice and start using it. It’s as simple as that. You don’t need to install anything and you can carry it around in a portable drive like USB Flash drive or external hard disk.

Pale Moon – Best Alternative Web Browser Based on Firefox

Pale Moon comes next in our alternative web browser list. Pale Moon web browser is open source and based on Mozilla Firefox. It’s based on Firefox so obviously all extensions, add-on and themes work with it. Pale Moon developers disabled some Firefox functions to speed up browsing. It’s optimized to use fewer resources so it can run smoothly.

Similar to Firefox installation process, when Pale Moon browser launched for the first time, it lets you import Options, Bookmarks, History, Passwords and other details from Internet Explorer or Chrome. The user interface is adopted to look like what Firefox used to be before new Australis interface.

pale-moon-web-browser

You can show (or hide) the Menu Bar, Navigation Toolbar, Bookmarks Toolbar, and Status Bar. You can also merge all of them for a clean experience. The regular features like multiple tabs, pin favorite sites and customized status bar are available.

Pale Moon is available for download from its official website. Pale Moon web browser is available for Windows, Linux, Android and Atom platform. 64-bit version of Pale Moon is available for Windows Platform. There’s a portable version of the web browser available too.

Maxthon “Cloud” Browser

Maxthon Cloud Browser is a good alternative web browser that comes loaded with a lot of unique features. Some notable features that comes along with the standard package includes built-in PDF reader, Video Ad skipper (lets you fast forward video ads), 3D gaming engine and portal, Cloud sync of tabs, passwords, and more. It keeps Do Not Track enabled by default.

maxthon-web-browser-install

Instead of using one page-rendering engine it comes loaded with two page-rendering engines for best compatibility with different websites. It uses Internet Explorer’s Trident page-rendering engine and Webkit engine. Webkit page rendering engine is used to power Apple Safari and Google Chrome browsers.

maxthon-cloud-browser

The first time you launch the web browser, it asks you to either sign up for Maxthon Passport, so you can enjoy the full potential of Maxthon across all the platform. Maxthon Passport lets you use cloud syncing and storage service. It lets you get the same experience everywhere.

Maxthon is one of the “true” platform independent web browser. Maxthon Cloud Browser is available for Windows (starting from Windows XP through Windows 8.1, both 32-bit and 64-bit editions), Apple Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. You can download Maxthon Cloud Browser from its official webpage here.

Sleipnir Browser

We saved the best for last. Sleipnir (pronounced as slay-p-near) is an awesome web browser developed using the Blink engine. It has one of the best user interface we have seen yet. It renders text beautifully that makes all web pages look great. It is simple but elegant. Starting from installation to importing data from other browsers and web browsing, everything is taken care nicely. First time users may take some time to get used to the new user interface but once comfortable, users will start loving it.

sleipnir-web-browser-install

The installation process is the simplest, you have to just click on the blue Install button. When you launch the browser for the first time, it will ask you to import data from other web browsers that you have. The import hardly takes any time and after everything is ready, you are good to go browsing. You can install Google Chrome extensions on Sleipnir from the Chrome Web Store. You also have the option to add your favorite search engine service.

sleipnir-web-browser-portal-field-in-action

It lacks the traditional address bar, tab bar. The address bar is evolved to a “Portal Field” that performs multiple tasks. Similarly tabs are evolved to “Thumbnail” tabs. The developers claim that the new “thumbnail” tabs will help you find an open tab quickly even if you have 100s of tabs opened. The overall toolbar occupies less than 54 pixels thus giving you more space than any other browser to display web pages. Sleipnir browser supports gestures thus making it easier for users to browse the web. To use gestures you need to simply slide the mouse while holding down the right-click button. You can use gestures to close tabs, go back, and more.

sleipnir-web-browser-beautiful-elegant-fast

Sleipnir web browser is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Android, Apple iOS and Windows Phone. They don’t have any Linux version available. You can download Sleipnir from the official web page.

It’s Just a Start

We have covered five best alternative web browsers for Windows platform in this post. We know there are many more web browsers available to test. Browsers that are unique, that are better than the popular ones we see, we use, we hear about daily.

Let us know about any other web browser you use, if we like it, we will cover it in our next alternative web browser round-up. If you liked any, we covered here, let us know.

If you liked the post, please don’t forget to share it with your friends.

We have not included full review of the web browsers we covered here. That will be overkill for the topic posted here. We promise to add review of each one of the web browsers mentioned here. We will also cover alternative web browsers for OS X and Linux platform shortly.

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