Avant Browser is a discontinued

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

from a

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

programmer named Anderson Che with the browser engines

Trident A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm. The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other marine ...

, Gecko and Webkit the user can switch between. It runs on

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

and above, including

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on J ...

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

versions 6 through 11 are supported.

History and development

Avant Browser was largely inspired by

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

, the first major browser to have a

multiple document interface A multiple-document interface (MDI) is a graphical user interface in which multiple windows reside under a single parent window. Such systems often allow child windows to embed other windows inside them as well, creating complex nested hierarchies ...

. The developer's objective was to wrap a comparable interface around the layout engine used by

, thereby achieving Opera-like

ergonomics Human factors and ergonomics (commonly referred to as human factors) is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Four primary goals of human factors learnin ...

without suffering the frequent problems that browser had rendering pages tested only in Internet Explorer. In fact, it was initially released under the name "IEopera", though this was soon changed due to trademark concerns. Later, Avant's developer, Anderson Che, has concentrated on adding user-requested features, and Avant was among the first browsers to have popup blocking, advertising server blocking, and one-click disabling of potential security vulnerabilities such as

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

and

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

. The Avant Browser's default search engine is a version of the

Yahoo! search Yahoo! Search is a Yahoo! internet search provider that uses Microsoft's Microsoft Bing, Bing search engine to power results, since 2009, apart from four years with Google Search, Google until 2019. Originally, "Yahoo! Search" referred to a Yah ...

engine renamed ''Avantfind'' and is given a custom look. Other search engines are available via the address bar's "Quick Search" facility, and instructions on how to change the default to an engine of the user's choice have been posted by the very active Avant Browse
user community
The community has also created other tools and extensions for Avant, including registry files which allow it to use the Information Bar and other security enhancements of Windows XP SP2. The developer also used to have a sister project known as Orca Browser, an Avant-like shell of

Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, wi ...

's Gecko layout engine as used in

Firefox 3 Mozilla Firefox 3.0 is a version of the Firefox web browser released on June 17, 2008, by the Mozilla Corporation. Firefox 3.0 uses version 1.9 of the Gecko layout engine for displaying web pages. This version fixes many bugs, improves standard ...

using similar approaches to Flock. Orca Browser project is now discontinued. Gecko layout engine was included in Avant Browser version 2012 Ultimate edition, alongside the traditional Trident layout engine. Avant was one of the twelve browsers offered to

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Ass ...

users of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

in 2010.

Avant Browser 11

Avant Browser 11 (build 130 released on January 26, 2011) includes support for many toolbars that are compatible with Internet Explorer, a facility for users to create their own scripted toolbar buttons, and a password and form-filling wizard. A native bookmark system was also added n place of sharing Internet Explorer's ''Favorites''. These bookmarks may be stored online with feeds,

autofill Autofill is a function found in some computer applications or programs, typically those containing forms, which prefills a field automatically and can save a user time. A web browser's autofill feature is used to fill out forms with previously en ...

s, and browser settings. This allows the user to synchronize any number of Avant installations on different computers. Avant can still share Internet Explorer's ''Favorites''. This option was reintroduced by the developer after some users lamented its loss. Another innovation is that Avant may now be run from a

USB flash drive A USB flash drive (also called a thumb drive) is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than . Since firs ...

(or other portable storage device such as an

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

player) without needing to be installed. In conjunction with Avant's session saving facility, this allows the user to halt a browsing session on one PC, move to another and resume viewing the same web pages.

Avant Browser 2012

Avant Browser 2012 Ultimate edition (build 3 released on October 25, 2011) added the Gecko layout engine (the rendering engine used by

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

), and the most recent release (build 168 released on April 6, 2012) also included the WebKit layout engine (the rendering engine used by

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

), making Avant Browser a three-engine browser. Layout engine is selectable by the user. There is also a lite edition which contains only the Trident layout engine.

Features

Avant allows users to synchronize their bookmark, feed and setting storage. There is a portable version that can be used without installation. It uses a low amount of resources due to all pages running in a single process and is compatible with many Internet Explorer toolbars and add-ins, including Google toolbar. Further it has an RSS reader, 21 themes to change its appearance, a translation feature, supports proxy servers, white and blacklists for domains such as advertisement servers and an option to quickly block unwanted page elements. It supports 15 languages.

References

External links