I’m always willing to give other browsers a try. Internet Explorer does a lot, but it’s far from perfect. For the past few months, I’ve been using Phoenix 0.5, a lean and impressive version of the Mozilla code base. It’s nice, but customizing it takes some effort, and as befits a version 0.5 product some features just don’t work. (Still, when all’s said and done I bet it’s going to be worth the effort. In fact, rumor has it the next go-round of Mozilla will be based on the Phoenix code.)
Several weeks ago, I switched to a different browser. I’m mighty impressed with Avant Browser so far. It’s got the three killer features that are missing in IE: tabbed browsing (multiple Web pages in a single browser window, with each one getting its own tab), intelligent pop-up blocking, and the ability to clean up history, cookies, and other potential privacy invaders.
Best of all, Avant is just a wrapper for Internet Explorer. Under the covers, it uses the IE HTML tools, which means compatibility is simply not an issue. It’s a free download, and it’s easy to configure. The author, Anderson Che, gladly accepts donations, but there’s no obligation to do so.
I’ve only encountered a few minor annoyances. Some add-ins, notably SideStep and the Powermarks Bookmark Manager, don’t work with Avant Browser. I also get occasional harmless error messages that are probably related to my, um, oddball hardware configuration rather than bugs in the software.
But those nits aside, this is one IE update that’s worth it. Even if it didn’t come from Microsoft.
Ed Bott 
You can get PowerMarks to open links with Avant: Go to Options – Browsers and fill in the path to the Avant exe for one of the browser types you do not use. Make that browser type the Powermarks default.
To add bookmarks, you can use the Avant Favorites list and Powermarks ‘Import browser bookmarks when Powermarks starts’ (also turn on ‘Include Favorites’ under Powermarks IE options) . One disadvantage is that you cannot set keywords at the time the link is added.