A Tabbed-browsing solution with an in built RSS feed reader and the ability to build custom web pages.

Pros: eCorral is a standard web browser which supports tabbed browsing. It also has a built-in RSS feed reader that can auto-detect RSS feeds, and allows you the option of subscribing to and managing these RSS feeds in a very simple way with very few clicks. There is a feature called “corrals” which is essentially to save groups of websites at a time, which can be opened again later – this has several important implications especially when you are researching a number of websites (say for example when you want to buy a new laptop, then you’ll visit a number of websites and you want to be able to access the websites / web-page / site-search you have been viewing even later on). The “corrals” can also be shared with friends (so that in effect you can check out the same set of pages you were researching for you new laptop elsewhere, provided they have eCorral also).

There is also a fancy feature of building custom web pages using content from Web sites, RSS feeds, local files and certain applications. So you can create a fun website for your particular needs. The interface is decent and features an Office 2007 style grouping of menu-bar functions (which at least in this case is not poorly done). It is fairly intuitive and easy to use because generally it maintains the design philosophies of standard web browsers. Opening a new tab is remarkably fast as compared to say Internet Explorer, and this is one of its most immediately likable features, especially for those users who are heavily into tabbed browsing.

Cons: It is not clear as to what extent the custom web pages can be shared. It does not seem to have a web-server type feature so it is likely that this cannot be done. There doesn’t seem to be a crash-recovery feature. So using too many tabs and suffering from a crash can be costly. There doesn’t seem to be a built-in pop-up blocker.

Overall: 4 star candidate – something between 3 and 4 would be the perfect choice. It is an attractive tool with a couple of very good features, but it has limitations too.