A Bangalore based Web company has release EPIC, the first Indian browser based on the Mozilla platform. The news hit me first thing on last Friday and I must admit I absorbed it with skepticism. However that did not stop me from giving the new browser a spin and lo...a second admission. I came out pleasantly surprised. While the browser would not have much difference from Firefox browser which is based on the same platform, it differs fundamentally in its positioning. It is an INDIAN browser.
What makes it Indian? A bunch of features built right into it
- Support for Indic languages - You can type in native languages
- A huge collection of India specific wall papers and themes to personalize your browser
- News portals, entertainment, sports and business channels built in that stream news from various Indian websites
However, I would recommend it for any Indian netizen on account of its 5 features I thought are a first for any browser
Slick App Bar
The cool appbar on the left is what caught my fancy. You can consume any content offered as a service right from this bar. A lot of pre-configured apps are available for the individual to choose from. The bulk of them being India specific again.
India specific Wall papers and themes
Satisfying the Bollywood (or even Tollywood, Mollywood, Sandalwood) fan in you, the cricket buff in you, the patriot in you, the nature lover in you or any other persona, EPIC offers a whole range of themes and wall papers to dress up your broswer
Built in AntiVirus
Another top utility that should seriously get you thinking on whether EPIC should be your default browser
Collections
While Firefox and IE have these as addons, the obviousness of this feature mandates that it be offered as a pre-built feature. EPIC does just that and won a few brownie points from me. With upto 4 people in my house who use the same laptop, collections offer the much needed respite. Simply put, collections allows you to bundle as many websites as you want under a common name. When you next want to open the same set of websites, you need not type all the URLs. Just double-click on the collection name and lo...you are presented all websites in different tabs.
Website not opening?
Not a feature you would want to be using too often. However it provides you a whole set of decent choices rather than the only option of "Refresh" or "Reload" that IE or Firefox offer. You can ping the address, request for a cached version of the page from Google, search for the nearest match... At least you do not have only one choice (more often than not a useless one) when you next find a URL not opening.
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