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Looking for a better Web browser? I don’t have one for you, but I am taking a look at CubicEye and BroadPage, two funny-looking Windows browsers that have been making the news lately. Are they worth your time? Read on to find out… First up, CubicEye, from 2ce, Inc. Have you ever watched a movie made by someone who knew nothing about computers, where the computer geek pulls up some kind of bizarre 3D environment on his screen and starts “hacking” by moving through it? CubicEye is trying to be that browser.

CubicEye’s display shows an interior view of a cube, with the page you’re looking at displayed on the foremost face. Previous pages, or those you drag there, are displayed on the four remaining faces. There is also a fifth face, presumably behind you, which can rotate into view.

CubicEye apparently even goes further than that, with cubes tacked onto other cubes. I didn’t get that far when I tested the beta – the standard 6-sided cube is confusing enough. CubicEye: The Web Cubed? As I play with CubicEye, amusing myself by looking at my Web sites in bizarre perspectives, I keep repeating one word: Why? Since the four non-centered faces of the cube are unreadable, they’re basically placeholders. You can really only see one page at a time. The rest are just like minimized icons, only they take about half of your screen space.

The beta is unstable and lacks some basic functionality. The user interface is downright ridiculous. If they think they’ve created a comfortable way of moving in a 3D environment, they need to spend an hour playing HomeWorld.

Speaking of video games, CubicEye has system requirements that exceed those of HomeWorld and most other games: Pentium III, Windows 2000, DirectX 7.0, 128 MB of RAM, and 16 MB of video memory. On my Athlon 850, which technically doesn’t qualify, it’s usable but slow.

In short: If you want to impress your boss or make your friends and relatives think computers are really just like the movies, CubicEye is for you. Otherwise it’s just eye candy, and not even very tasty at that. [More information from 2ce Inc.] BroadPage: The Web Flattened

BroadPage, from BroadPage Corp., takes a much more sensible approach. It’s a multi-page Web browser, and you can read more than one page at once. It’s unabashedly two-dimensional.

BroadPage looks like Internet Explorer at first glance. In fact, it uses IE’s engine for its HTML rendering, which makes it nice and compatible. (I believe CubicEye also uses IE, but I haven’t confirmed that.)

Where BroadPage differs is its unique paned interface. You can grab any border of the window and drag it into the window, subdividing your display into panes. You can then view separate Web pages in each pane, and you can keep subdividing panes until you run out of screen real estate.

I also give BroadPage full marks for navigation. You can do everything you would expect: each pane has its own address bar, you can drag links between them, and you can drag bookmarks to the pane of your choice.

You can minimize panes to a series of tabs at the top of the main window, and you can click one of these tabs to view a page full size. You can also drag a tab to a pane you already have open or drag a link to a tab to load it in the background. Last but not least, you can hold CTRL while clicking a link to automatically display its contents in a new pane. BroadPage Review continued BroadPage’s list of navigation options goes on and on: you can also create layouts with your favorite pages already loaded into tabs or panes. Despite all of these options, I find BroadPage very intuitive and was using it successfully minutes after downloading.

I still have the free (ad-supported) version of BroadPage on my desktop. I haven’t yet convinced myself to use it regularly, because it doesn’t have a huge number of advantages over my usual multi-window browsing with IE.

Nevertheless, I think it will be very useful when I break my old habits. I’ll probably keep it around and may even pay (a very reasonable $25) for it. If you do any kind of repetitive work on the Web that involves looking at several sites, the panes, tabs, and savable layouts will make browsing a more pleasant experience.

In short: don’t expect a revolution. You can already drag links between multiple windows using IE or Netscape. But for serious multi-window-browsing power users, it’s just the thing. [More information from BroadPage Corp.]