Avant Browser: Free Download of an Alternative to Internet Explorer

Just about all PC owners use one of two browsers, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox - with the latter becoming increasingly popular. But there's a new kid on the block that, in my experience, offers an even better alternative to plain old Internet Explorer. It's a free download called Avant Browser, published by the Avant Force group. Building on an Internet Explorer setup, the Avant "shell" offers a smartly-designed interface with easy-to-customize, practical features. Avant Browser is a free download must-have for people who toggle between multiple websites and people who like to tell their browser, with utter ease, which web extras (animations, Java, ActiveX, etc.) to allow or disable.

Avant Browser's Groups Feature

Instead of requiring you to open a separate instance for each new window (with IE), Avant Browser allows you to move between tabs the way Firefox does - except that Avant extends the tabbing capability by allowing users to create groups of pages that can be opened on multiple tabs with only one click. When I write for Associated Content, for example, I frequently shift between AC pages, NicheBot, Textalyser, Dictionary.com, Wikipedia, Google, and other web pages. In Avant Browser, I simply created a Group entitled "Writing" which automatically opens all these sites as different tabs, saving time and keeping all the tabbed windows in the same order every time I sit down to work. How efficient and reliable!

Avant Browser's Ability to Manage Web Extras

Avant allows you to dictate, with the utmost of ease, what you want the browser to tackle and what you want it to avoid. What I call "web extras" (like ActiveX, Scripts, Flash Animations, Videos, Sounds, etc.) can each be disabled and re-enabled easily under the same menu. Simply go to the Tools drop-down, and without hunting, you can specify how you want each of these things to be handled. This quick on-or-off functionality helps save your system's resources by allowing you to bypass extras you don't want, whether you wish to avoid them permanently or just temporarily. It's yet another example of Avant's intuitive feel, which is apparent immediately after you install the free download.

Avant Browser's Other Features

The capabilities described above are just a few of the spiffy features that Avant adds to Microsoft IE. Other positives of this free download include:

· the ability to clear a selected feature easily, be it cache, cookies, recent pages, history, blocked popup lists, blocked ads lists, or just auto-complete forms

· an easy way to refresh all pages at once

· the capability of saving all open pages and exiting so that you can close the browser and re-open it later, instantly re-navigating to all or some the same pages you closed

· ingenious back and forward navigation using mouse buttons (e.g. holding down the right button while clicking the left button to go back)

· selection of subtly different skins

I'm so thrilled with the free download of the Avant Browser that I feel like an infomercial salesman hopping up and down saying "Wait….there's more." and "Get it today!!" But it's an honest enthusiasm for a well-assembled, intuitive product. You can download Avant Browser, the free alternative to Internet Explorer at www.download.com. For more details on Avant Browser, visit www.avantbrowser.com.