Web Savvy: Not Your Ordinary Browsers

Frankenbrowser (frank-en-brauz-er), noun: Any of numerous applications that transmogrify Internet Explorer's look, feel, and features in ways that range from highly practical to downright bizarre. See also CrystalPort, CubicEye, NeoPlanet.

Listen up, Webster's: The name and definition are mine, but Frankenbrowsers are real--and they're multiplying. These aren't full-blown alternative browsers. They rely on Internet Explorer to do the heavy lifting of rendering pages, so they sidestep glitches that have sunk past upstart browsers. But unlike mere plug-ins, Frankenbrowsers retool IE in profound ways.

NeoPlanet, the genre's old-timer, packs an agreeable hodgepodge of browsing enhancements, including a Download Manager that lets you schedule file transfers to happen in bulk when your PC is otherwise unoccupied. But its signature feature is the way it lets you perform radical surgery on its personality via skins--custom icon designs and color schemes that you download and install with a couple of clicks.

True, some of the 600 available skins are just e-billboards for corporate enterprises ranging from Jack Daniel's to the Baltimore Ravens. But most of them are the handiwork of NeoPlanet fans. These user-crafted makeovers use slick palettes and detailing, such as brushed-metal effects, for a refreshing departure from the gray, lifeless norm of Windows interfaces. And even though my rational side keeps telling me that cosmetic changes shouldn't make browsing better, they do.

Still, NeoPlanet's reign as my favorite Frankenbrowser ended when I found CrystalPort. First of all, CrystalPort fixes a lingering IE limitation: its inability to handle more than one Web page unless you launch multiple copies of the browser. CrystalPort's tabbed design lets you load as many pages as you like, hop between them in a heartbeat, and save them as a group.

Then there's AppCapture, which lets CrystalPort treat other apps like plug-ins. That means, for instance, that you can tuck your e-mail or instant-messager client of choice into the browser for quick access. For me, that feature alone is worth CrystalPort's cost of $20. At press time, though, the product's creators had plans for a new, improved version and a price hike to a yet-to-be-determined figure.

Every good Frankenbrowser is innovative; 2ce's CubicEye is utterly unique. Billed as a 3D browser, it gives you a window that looks like the inside of a cube, with Web pages tacked on its walls. You can rotate the cube so any page is on the primary, back wall. Here's where things really get weird: You can divide the cube's walls into other Web-plastered cubes, subdivide those cubes ad infinitum, and then zoom around them in smooth, 3D motion.

3D or Not 3D?

The point of CubicEye, 2ce says, is to simplify Web navigation. But this package is more a work of freakish genius than a workaday tool--amusingly hallucinogenic, but also disorienting. And the 3D effects gobble resources: You need a Pentium III PC with 128MB of RAM, brawny graphics, and late-model versions of IE and DirectX.

So would I advise plunking down $20 for the full version of CubicEye? Nope, but the free lite edition is worth a gander if your PC is up to the task. One thing's for sure: You won't be bored.

On a personal note, occupying this page has been a blast, but it's time for a breather. PC World Contributing Editor and old pal Brad Grimes takes over next month. See you elsewhere in PC World.