www.apple.com/ipod/start

The battle to build the best Web browser is now a five-way fight.

It would be fair to say we’re now living in the golden age of the Web browser. That’s a big change from just a few years ago, when the browser market was stagnant. Microsoft had vanquished Netscape after grabbing a huge chunk of the industry. Then it simply stopped innovating. Yet while all seemed quiet, tiny Opera was crafting faster browsers with new features like tabs, and Netscape’s effort was revitalized by the open-source Mozilla foundation.

Then Google and Apple jumped in, with Apple launching its Safari browser for Windows last June and Google launching a surprise attack by unveiling Chrome in September. Like Opera and Mozilla’s Firefox, Chrome packs the speed and power to transform the humble browser from a tool for surfing Web pages into all-purpose software for checking e-mail, cranking out spreadsheets and keeping tabs on friends.

It’s impossible to know who will win at this point, but if you use a browser to do your work on the Web, you can’t lose.

Just when you thought the browser wars couldn’t get any weirder, here comes Steve Jobs rumbling onto the scene like the Stay Puft Marshmallow man tromping over buildings in downtown Manhattan.

If last year’s release of Safari for Windows seemed like an experiment, Apple’s release Tuesday of a beta version of Safari 4 for Mac and Windows makes it clear this is going to be the messiest fight since Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray battled Zuul and Gozer the Gozerian in the movie Ghost Busters. Currently, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer owns 67.6% of the browser market, followed by Mozilla’s Firefox with 21.5%, Apple’s Safari with 8.3%, Google’s Chrome with 1.1% and Opera with 0.7%, according to NetApplications.

Yahoo! BuzzSafari 4’s headline feature: Nitro, a Javascript engine that Apple boasts will run Javascript 4.2 times faster than was possible on its previous browser, Safari 3. Running Javascript quickly and reliably is the key to making ever more sophisticated Web-based applications work well, with Mozilla and Google among those touting the speed and stability of their Javascript efforts.

Safari 4 also includes Coverflow, a uniquely Apple touch that will be familiar to anyone with an iPod. The feature allows browsers to look through their Web history or bookmarks as if they were flipping through a shelf full of record albums.

The software also puts tabs for bouncing from one page to the next at the top of the browser window. And similar to Google’s Chrome, Safari 4 offers previews of your favorite pages that you can go to with a single click. The best feature, though, could be simply that the browser, a free download, definitely came from Apple: It just plain looks nice.

Stocks tumbled on Tuesday as investors confronted fresh signs that the recession is worsening and worried that efforts to stabilize the beleaguered financial system may not prove sufficient.

Wal-Mart (WMT.N) was the only stock higher in the 30-component Dow industrial average after the retailer posted a quarterly profit that beat Wall Street’s forecasts. It was up 3.3 percent at $48.07.

U.S. President Barack Obama is due to sign a $787 billion economic stimulus bill into law on Tuesday, but investors are fearful that the measure would not help soften the impact of the 14-month-old recession soon enough. The White House hopes the package will save or create 3.5 million jobs.

The slide took the benchmark S&P 500 below the 800 level for the first time since the bear market low of November 21, weighed by financials, energy companies and big manufacturers.

Shares of Bank of America (BAC.N) fell 10.2 percent to $5 on the New York Stock Exchange, as shares of JPMorgan (JPM.N) lost nearly 9 percent to $22.53. Wells Fargo (WFC.N) dropped more than 7 percent to $14.54, as the KBW Banks index (.BKX) tumbled 7.2 percent.

“There’s still trouble in the banking sector, trouble with respect to corporate earnings and nothing that we’ve seen is going to reverse that in the short term,” said Dan Greenhous, market analyst at Miller Tabak & Co in New York.

“I don’t believe equities are appropriately priced for weakness through the entirety of 2009.”

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) slid 263.95 points, or 3.36 percent, to 7,586.46. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (.SPX) dropped 32.62 points, or 3.95 percent, to 794.22. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) tumbled 53.90 points, or 3.51 percent, to 1,480.46.

Before the market’s open, a report showing that manufacturing production in New York state fell to a record low in February added to worries about the deepening recession among investors already fearful that a new U.S. economic stimulus package won’t be a quick fix.

In Japan data showed on Monday that the world’s second biggest economy sank deeper into recession with its worst quarterly contraction since the oil crisis in the 1970s.

Energy shares slid along with plunging oil prices, sending Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) down 4.3 percent to $71.41. U.S. front-month crude dropped 6.7 percent, or $2.54, to $34.98 a barrel amid concern the deepening recession will sap energy demand.

Among big manufacturers, shares of 3M Co (MMM.N) fell almost 4 percent to $47.55, while Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N) shed 5.1 percent to $29.36. On Nasdaq, shares of iPod and iPhone maker Apple Inc (AAPL.O) were a top drag, down 3.5 percent at $95.78. The semiconductor index (.SOXX) fell 5 percent