It's incredible but true. A Belgian company, Mundial Avenue, has just created the small browser of the world. This browser «weights» only 127 Kilobytes (even not the tenth of a high density floppy disk) and offers the same services (and sometimes more) than Netscape or Internet Explorer.

Come on, move over and quick !

SMALL AND FAST

The software is now at the experimental stage, but it seems to work perfectly. Mundial Avenue has already contacted Microsoft who was very interested in that project. After Lernouts & Hauspie will another Belgian firm join the empire of Bill Gates ? Nothing is done at the moment, but if this browser can prove its value, you can be sure that you'll hear it mentionned again in the future. «The browser will exist in two versions», Jean-Pierre Jacobs, the writer of the software, says. «The first version, for the magnetic supports and the CD-Rom, will be able to start directly from the floppy disk and to read the documents contained in the floppy. The second version, for the networks and the BBS, will weight less than 300 Kilobytes but will not saturate the hard disk of the computer as the latest versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer can do.»

This Mundial Avenue product is not only the smallest, it's also the fastest.

«With its small size and its optimized code, our browser starts more quickly than any other browser», Jean-Pierre Jacobs says. «We've made an experience on a PC with a Pentium microprocessor : the Internet Explorer browser takes six or eight seconds to start, our browser takes only two tenths of second.»

DATA COMPRESSION In addition, the fact that Mundial Avenue owns the source code of this software allows the Belgian firm to embed in the browser a HTML interpreter, which doesn't comply with the standards. So the browser will be able to read not only a standard HTML document, but also a document with special tags created for specific uses on specific disks and specific network servers. These HTML documents with special tags will be only readable by the Mundial Avenue browser.

«And we can do more», Jean-Pierre Jacobs says insistently. «The same documents, unreadable by any other browser, can use an additional program integrated in the browser like a data compressor. So the browser will be able to read documents formatted in a way that you can't find ont the Net. That's the case, for instance, with the Windows BitMap. This format has a higher resolution than the JPEG format or the GIF format commonly used on Internet but is, however, bigger. This problem can be solved if you use a browser with a data compressor. Moreover, this browser with a data compressor will allow you to put in the same floppy the browser and housands of HTML pages.»

AND THE MARKETING ?

The Mundial Avenue browser, the smallest and the fastest of the world, is now waiting to be marketed. «It's just a question of time», replies Jean-Pierre Jacobs. «Softwares easy to install, with small size but with unlimited services are the future of the computer world. With our borwser we are convinced to belong to this future.»

Stéphane ETIENNE.