browsers posts

While there's no shortage of alternatives in web browsing, it looks like Internet Explorer 8 still has some pull out there. Net MarketShare, a company that monitors usage and market share of major web browsers, has released their January report.

According to the report, IE (all versions) holds a solid 62.12% of all browser usage. In addition to a 27% share on Windows, it has also taken a pretty big bite out of other operating systems as well. All these numbers translate to one thing: people are still using IE8...a lot of people. Sure, part of this has to do with the fact that it's the default browser for Windows and used by many large companies but it's still a pretty big deal.

The folks at the Windows software team are humbled, having only released version 8 of IE less than a year ago. They also reported that the popular browser was responsible for blocking over 80 million malware attacks. It will be interesting to see how long the streak will last given the rising popularity of browsers such as Firefox.

ed note: StatCounter currently pegs IE8's individual share at 22.1%, just ahead of Firefox 3.5 at 21.7%

Mozilla's long-awaited mobile version of Firefox has finally been released, albeit only for Nokia's Maemo (what used to be code-named Fennec) platform. Like the desktop version of Firefox, version 1.0 of Firefox for Mobile looks to set itself apart from other mobile browsers with the inclusion of browser add-ons.

Mozilla's Weave Sync add-on is already available for Firefox for Mobile, and in the blog post announcing the new browser's release Mozilla point out some third-party add-ons that they anticipate will be useful in a mobile context, including AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides.

While I love the additional functionality that browser add-ons provide, I have to say that they are also often responsible for speed and stability issues. When I enable all of the add-ons that I like to use in Firefox, it perceptibly slows, 30-40% on some pages. Certainly this has as much to do with how well-written the add-on is as it does the nature of an add-on architecture, but I bring it up as it relates to one of the most important aspects of mobile computing (even, and maybe particularly on a phone): battery life. If add-ons put an additional load on your mobile browser, isn't this going to negatively impact your battery life? For you, is it worth the trade-off?

[via Technology News]

With the advent of powerful Internet-enabled mobile phones, it's no secret that mobile browsers are accounting for a larger share of web traffic all the time. In fact, one firm says that the growth of mobile browsers is so rapid, they'll soon overtake traditional desktop browsers. Research and analysis specialists Gartner, Inc. are predicting that "by 2013, mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access device worldwide" in a new report.

If trends continue as Gartner suspects, there will be 1.78 billion PCs on the web in 2013, but mobile devices equipped with browsers will total 1.82 billion. For developers and designers, Gartner thinks this will mean an increased focus on optimizing sites for the most popular handheld browsers. That's one way things could go, certainly, but in my (admittedly non-expert) opinion, mobile browsers will also continue to improve, becoming more compliant with contemporary web standards and features.

Gartner's other predictions included this controversial gem: "By 2012, Facebook will become the hub for social network integration and Web socialization." Read the summary of the report for more near-future prognostication.

[via Engadget]

It's finally official! Mere days after it hit Release Candidate 2, the finished version of Firefox 3.6 comes out tomorrow. It's been confirmed over at Mozilla's official blog, where there's also an intro video from Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox. (Or, you can watch the video after the jump.)

Beltzner runs through all the new features in 3.6, including quick theming with Personas - which is up to a whopping 35 THOUSAND themes now. Firefox now also scans for plugins that need to be updated, for extra stability and security. Beltzner also focuses on designer features like CSS gradients, accelerometer support and web standards support.

The timing of this release is perfect, since IE is currently shedding users thanks to its role in China's attack on Google. If Firefox is going to take a bite out of IE and hold off the WebKit contenders like Chrome and Safari, now's the time to do it. So, along comes Firefox 3.6, marketing itself as the best choice for security and stability ... looks like a good sales pitch to me, even if you're not in love with add-ons.

Mozilla is already making good on its promise of more frequent updates to the Firefox browser, pushing out an update to the release candidate of Firefox 3.6 just a week after the first RC became available. As we told you last week, Firefox 3.7 has been dropped from the development cycle to make these more frequent updates possible. Is Firefox delivering significant new features, though? Indeed it is!

Although 3.6 RC 2 is a "security and stability" update, it includes all the things that make Firefox 3.6 great -- faster load times, improvements to JavaScript, no-restart theme changes with Personas -- and it also fixes some stability issues caused by the way third-party software interacts with Firefox. Linux users should pay special attention to this release, as it fixes a Javascript bug that only affected the Linux version of RC1.

Firefox 3.6 is on schedule for final release on January 26th. Looks like this "frequent updates" thing is working out for Mozilla so far.

[via CNET]

If you're into getting the latest, greatest, most-untested updates to Google's Chrome Browser, the developer channel is the place for you. New updates to Chrome on all platforms just hit the dev channel, with a bug fix that should solve some problems with HTML5 audio and video. The big news is just for Mac users, though: Chrome Extension support is here!

That means OS X users now can share in the epic winningness of Download Squad's 10 must-have Chrome extensions, compiled by our own Sebastian, and a collection of 15+ extensions put together by Lee. Or, if you prefer to find extensions on your own, head over to Google's Chrome Extensions Gallery and start browsing.

This update to Chrome via the dev channel shouldn't be confused with the latest nightly build of Chromium, which is the open source browser that forms the basis for Chrome. As Nik pointed out, Chromium nightlies for Mac now have Bookmark Manager enabled by default. You can enable bookmark sync in the dev channel release of Chrome Mac, but a known bug crashes the browser on adding a new folder.

[via CNET]

It's been a long time coming but Mozilla has finally released Firefox 3.6 RC1. The first build is now ready to download from Mozilla's FTP servers and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

The original deadline for the final release of Firefox 3.6 was set for December 2009, but that was bumped back by Mozilla. In a discussion with CNet, Mozilla's Mike Shaver stated "[Mozilla has] always been more quality-driven than time-driven, but we understand timing in the market matters to our users and our competitiveness." Philosophy aside, Mozilla is probably thrilled to have finally gotten 3.6 to the release candidate stage.

One unintended benefit that has come from holding off on 3.6: it gives Firefox 3.5 more time to sit in the #1 position on the browser share charts. After all, as soon as users start moving to 3.6 the shift will probably allow IE to slide back into the first spot. IE8 has already closed the gap, moving within about half a percentage point.

Just when we thought Mozilla was getting Firefox 3.6 back on track to meet its December 2009 deadline, it looks like the release schedule has been extended again. Firefox 3.6, the next version of the browser, is now aimed for "early 2010."

Firefox 4.0 has also been pushed back from its original target of 2010, and is now due in "late 2010/early 2011." However, a beta of Firefox 4 is scheduled for summer of next year, so beta junkies can get their hands on it then. Just last week, we reported on some early images of the dramatic facelift Firefox will get in 4.0.

Some of the new features being added to Firefox 3.6 before the final release include tab matching - which shows you when an a page in your location bar is already open, so you can choose to switch to that tab instead of opening a duplicate - and even the ability to run plugins as separate processes, so they don't take down your whole browser.

We reported on that last week, but Mozilla's wiki indicates that it's a go for Firefox 3.6's final release: "out-of-process plugins in Q1 2010 shipped on 1.9.2 branch" is listed as a goal.

[via CNET]

While Google's stance on a lot of things is "just search it," that's not always the most comfortable way to do things. For example, when I poke around my browser's history page it's nice to have things sorted and grouped rather than deposited in a large pile.

History2 provides a more flexible way to peruse Chrome's archives. Install the extension and click its icon in your toolbar, and the History2 page above is displayed. It doesn't replace Chrome's built-in page -- you can still access that via ctrl + H or under the wrench menu.

Instead of the default chronological linkdump, History2 groups your browsing by site and provides buttons to jump to specific days. Right now the extension only allows you to explore the previous seven days, though that's not a serious shortcoming in my mind. Anything older than that I probably won't recognize in my history anyway.

As with Chrome's built-in history page, a search box is provided for quick lookups. Once you've entered a term and searched, History2 is smart enough to keep it applied as you click through different days.

We've all been watching the browser share trends for quite some time now, wondering when the day would come that an alternative finally shoved Internet Explorer off its perch.

It's finally happened - at least when we're talking about the most popular single version of a browser. You can see it all in the bar graph above: Firefox 3.5 has dethroned Internet Explorer 7.

Yes, we can all see the other two lengthy bars below IE7. Add them up, and it still means Internet Explorer (6,7, and 8 combined) is more popular overall. Still, for anything to overtake IE anywhere is pretty dang impressive.

We've still got 10 days left in 2009 to see where things wind up, but there's no denying that this has been a good year for Mozilla.

[via TheNextWeb]

The Khronos Group, which is in charge of the tried-and-tested OpenGL framework, has announced that its work with Mozilla to form a 3D Web standard has reached draft standard form. Ladies and gentlemen: WebGL is born!

Draft standards rarely undergo many changes, and most of the important details and unique selling points are now set in stone. There are already nascent, developer versions of WebGL built into beta versions of Firefox, Safari and Chrome -- and now, with the draft standard in place, you can expect to see rapid development of both full WebGL support in the browser, and applications that can utilize the new technology.

Don't expect to see first-person shooters like Modern Warfare 2 rendered in-browser for a while though; it's still very much early days. First you'll see 3D-editing tools, then simple virtual worlds, and eventually in-browser 3D games that rival their native-code cousins.

[via CNET]

We've already mentioned other ways to power up Google Chrome. Before extensions arrived on the developer channel, Userscripts and bookmarklets were your only options. Both are still great ways to add some kick-ass functionality to Chrome. If you're running the stable or beta builds, you may want to stick to them for now.

• 10 handy Userscripts for Google Chrome users
• 15+ handy bookmarklets for Google Chrome (and other browsers, too!)

Now, onto the extensions!

If you have a favorite that I left off, feel free to share it in the comments!
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The flash-based tool will render a page in recent versions of the most used browsers, and will let you view an image of the rendered page one at a time, side by side (2-up view) or my personal favorite, onion skin view, which stacks two images from two different browsers on top of each other and gives you a slider to adjust translucency back and forth so you can see just how horribly Internet Explorer renders your page elements relative to every other modern browser.

The service is currently free and I expect that I will be using it quite heavily.

At the time of writing, the supported browsers are:

• Firefox 2.0 - Windows XP - version 2.0.0.18
• Firefox 3.0 - Windows XP - version 3.0.4
• Internet Explorer 6.0 - Windows XP - version 6.0.3790.3959
• Internet Explorer 7.0 - Windows XP - version 7.0.5730
• Internet Explorer 8.0 - Windows XP - version 8.0.6001.18702
• Safari 3.0 - OS X - version 3.2.3
• Safari 4.0 - OS X - version 4.0.3
• Firefox 2.0 - OS X - version 2.0.0.18
• Firefox 3.0 - OS X - version 3.0.4