Browsersphere

Wired’s This Day In Tech remembers the release of Mozilla 1.0 seven years ago today.  Here’s an excerpt:

Months after launch, the browser had only captured a minuscule percentage of the market. The goal was to beat Microsoft with open source. Netscape couldn’t do it. And, according to [Asa] Dotzler, “we realized Mozilla couldn’t do it, either.”

While Mozilla 1.0 wasn’t a success, what followed certainly was. Two Mozilla contributors, Ben Goodger and Blake Ross, proposed taking things back to basics. The Mozilla source code was stripped down and rewritten once again, and all of the extraneous features were canned.

In late 2004, a faster, slimmer and easier-to-use browser emerged: Mozilla Firefox.

Hat-tip to @firefox and @mitchellbaker on Twitter.

Tags: Asa Dotzler, Ben Goodger, Blake Ross, Competition, Firefox, History, Lineage, Mitchell Baker, Mozilla 1.0, Releases, This Day In Tech, Twitter, Wired

Opera 10 beta, codenamed “Peregrine,” was released today.  The high-level features touted on the Opera 10 website are:

• “Opera Turbo for fast browsing on slow connections” – this is essentially the same technology used by Opera Mini to compress content, saving bandwidth and time.
• “New visual tabs and sleek design” – the new design was previously covered here.
• “Speed Dial your way” – users now have the option of customizing the number of websites displayed or the background.
• “Web integration” – tell Opera to use your web-based email client or feed reader as the default for email and feeds, respectively, and it will.
• “Resizable search field”
• “40% faster engine and cutting-edge Web standards support”

While the bulk of those features are notable, it’s pretty obvious that the new visual changes will get the most immediate attention, followed by reviews of the underlying rendering engine, Presto 2.2, once people get some subjective and objective experience with it (does anyone still use a slow connection on their desktop anymore?).

For more on the web standards support added to Presto 2.2, check out Standards support in Opera Presto 2.2 and Opera 10 beta, which among other things, confirms that Opera 10 beta passes the Acid3 test.

To kick the tires on this latest release from Opera, download Opera 10 beta today.

Tags: Acid3, Beta, Features, Opera, Opera 10, Opera 10 Beta, Opera Mini, Opera Turbo, Peregrine, Presto, Presto 2.2, Releases, Web Standards

Sorry folks, but when my wife passes these along, I can’t resist:

Tags: Firefox, Funny, Humor, Mascots, Photos

I learned via Twitter last Thursday that Google Chrome 2 had shipped, though you’d never know it from visiting the Chrome website.  As noted on the Google Chrome Blog on the day of release, “we’re referring to this as Chrome 2, but that’s mainly a metric to help us keep track of changes internally. We don’t give too much weight to version numbers and will continue to roll out useful updates as often as possible.”

However, with version changes come lofty expectations, and the release of Chrome 2 left at least one reviewer underwhelmed.  The good news is, hot on the heels of the release of version 2 to the general public, it was announced earlier today (hat-tip to Ryan Parman) that Chrome 3 has been made available to Chrome users on the “Dev channel” (which I’ve covered here previously).  However, with version changes come lofty expectations, and even users who are supposed to understand that “Dev channel” releases could potentially set your CPU on fire have been complaining about the audacity of Google to unleash a build with known issues on the “masses.”

I guess the Google Chrome team can’t win.  Regardless, if you’re like me and you like getting your hands on new web browsers that inherently seem to showcase improvements both under the hood and on the surface, you should be happy to learn that versions 2 and 3, if your stomach can handle it, are now available for public consumption.

Tags: Chrome, Chrome 2, Chrome 3, Google Chrome, Previews, Releases, Reviews, Twitter

A preview of the new default skin in Opera 10 was unveiled today:

A post from the Opera Desktop Team clarifies that this is not the final version of the skin and that there will be more iterations.  A preview build with the new skin is available via links at the bottom of that same post.

I haven’t tested the preview build myself, but from the screenshot, I can say that I like the new look.  What do you think?

Tags: Opera, Opera 10, Previews, Screenshots, Skins, Themes and Skins

Did you know that Namoroka is the name of a national park in Madagascar?  Furthermore, and more appropriate to readers of Browsersphere, it has also been chosen as the codename for the next version of Firefox after Firefox 3.5.  While the initial version number is planned to be 3.6, that will most likely change depending on the scope of the changes slated for that particular version.  Based on the fact that the version, also being referred to as “Firefox.next,” is scheduled to be released in “early-to-mid 2010,” my best guess would be that Namoroka will eventually turn into Firefox 4.

The following notes on Namoroka stood out to me upon reading the release’s wiki page:

• Improving performance is one of the key goals (though, I’m pretty sure this is always the case).
• Personalization will be a focus:  “Act in the user’s interests, leveraging existing knowledge about their identity and browsing habits.”
• Certain aspects of the browsing experience may be baked into the browser itself instead of requiring interaction with the associated web page:  “Provide support for executing common web-based tasks, mash-up style, without having to visit a website.”
• There will be a focus on providing a shell for desktop-like web apps, likely similar to the Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) feature that Fluid enables:  “Act as the intermediary between web applications and the user’s OS desktop.”
• The release will be based on Gecko 1.9.2, a later version of the branch that was originally released with the first Firefox 3 alpha (Gran Paradiso) back in December of 2006.

Obviously, the version of Firefox in the limelight right now is version 3.5, but it is still interesting to look ahead every now and then and see what type of road is being paved for our collective web browsing future.  And yes, I know this post is very Firefox-centric, but I’ll certainly post with similar “glances ahead” for other browsers if I can just get my hands on the material.

Tags: Codenames, Features, Firefox, Firefox 3.5, Fluid, Future, Gecko, Gecko 1.9, Gran Paradiso, Namoroka, Site Specific Browsers

While doing some web design brainstorming earlier today, I wondered if any progress had been made on adding support for CSS Gradients beyond WebKit, for which support was first introduced a little over a year ago.  Via MozillaZine, I realized I’m not the only one wondering this, and ended up stumbling upon the Bugzilla bug tracking the progress of CSS Gradients support in Firefox.  Reading through some of the commentary there, it gave me a newfound appreciation for just how fluid the implementation of these kinds of features really is.  For example, it’s somewhat obvious that the original support as announced at Surfin’ Safari was based on some of the canvas documentation related to HTML 5.

Paraphrasing the HTML5 spec and adjusting the language slightly to not be canvas-specific:

“The color of the gradient at each stop is the color specified for that stop. Between each such stop, the colors and the alpha component must be linearly interpolated over the RGBA space without premultiplying the alpha value to find the color to use at that offset. Before the first stop, the color must be the color of the first stop. After the last stop, the color must be the color of the last stop. When there are no stops, the gradient is transparent black…”

Furthermore, it’s obvious that not everyone completely agreed with the initial implementation, and it’s clear that Firefox developers collaborated with WebKit developers to hone in on a more logical implementation.

All of that being said, the reality is that CSS Gradients are not supported widely enough at the moment to be considered tools in the common web developer’s tool belt.  As aforementioned, Firefox support is still in progress (as of yesterday, in fact) and support in Internet Explorer 8 and Opera 10 appears to be non-existent, based on visits to this demo in those browsers.  The demo only seems to work as expected in Safari and Chrome (the latest “Dev” version, at least), which makes sense, since those are the major players that sport WebKit under the hood.

We’ll be keeping an eye on the progress of CSS Gradients support and several other, similar implementations over the coming year.

Tags: Bugzilla, Canvas, Chrome, CSS, CSS Gradients, Development, Features, Firefox, Google Chrome, HTML 5, IE8, Internet Explorer, Opera 10, Opera 10 Alpha, Parity, Safari, Safari 4 Beta, Web Development, Web Standards, WebKit

As I mentioned on my personal blog recently, I’ve made the switch to 64-bit Windows 7 on my main home computer.  As someone who is used to using Google Chrome as his secondary browser, I was greatly disappointed when I found that Chrome doesn’t work on 64-bit Windows 7 out of the box.  Since making the switch to 64-bit back in March, I’ve been making do with Firefox, which I use as my primary browser, and Safari 4 Beta as Chrome’s replacement.  Both of those browsers work fine on 64-bit Windows 7, and in fact, there is even an x64 build of Firefox available, though I don’t use it personally because it feels too unofficial.

I decided to catch up on the issue today, though, hoping that maybe some progress had been made in getting Chrome working on 64-bit Windows 7.  A Google search on the subject led me to How to Run Google Chrome on Windows 7 64 bit Version, a post from the beginning of this year that apparently recommends opening up a security hole in order to get the browser to run correctly.  Luckily, though, since then, a couple of commenters have mentioned a much cleaner approach.  Paul, one of the site’s commenters, for example, recommends following the instructions in the Chromium Developer Documentation for updating to the latest “dev” version of the browser.

Upgrading to the latest “dev” build of the browser isn’t without its cons either, though.  In doing so, you are opening yourself up to any bugs or ill-conceived features that wouldn’t ever make their way into a normal, end user-oriented build.  However, for someone like myself who doesn’t mind playing around with risky builds, this is a small, acceptable price to pay for being able to run Chrome on my main computer.

Google refers to the upgrade process as “changing channels,” and the three available channels to choose from, using their Google Chrome Channel Changer, are:

• Stable: Official Google Chrome releases (~ quarterly updates)
• Beta: More stable releases (~ monthly updates)
• Dev: The latest features and bugfixes (~ weekly updates)

After using the Google Chrome Channel Changer to change my channel to “Dev,” the next step involved opening the web browser, selecting the “wrench” dropdown, and going to About Google Chrome.  Initially, though, I didn’t see anything about upgrading to a new version in that dialog.  I ended up having to leave Chrome open and idle for quite a few minutes, with the About Google Chrome dialog closed (though I’m not positive this was a requirement), before I opened it again and found that the browser had upgraded itself to the latest “Dev” version (2.0.177.1 at the time of writing).

To my delight, despite the fact that I’m still unable to run the default version of Chrome on 64-bit Windows 7, I am now running Chrome on my main computer without any issues.  In fact, I’m posting this from Chrome.

If you’ve found yourself in the same position and your mileage has varied, or even if it’s been similar, drop a note here and let us know.

Tags: 64-bit, Architectures, Chrome, Firefox, Google Chrome, Google Chrome Channel Changer, Safari 4 Beta, Troubleshooting, Windows 7, x64

A couple weeks back, Opera made headlines when it released a browser build supporting the Geolocation API as specified by the W3C.  That prompted Ars Technica to write an article summarizing current Geolocation API support, which mentioned that both Opera and Mozilla (more on the Firefox implementation can be found at Mozilla Links) have released browsers supporting the API.

Now it appears that Safari will soon be supporting the Geolocation API as well.  In documentation that appears to have gone out to iPhone developers regarding new features in iPhone OS 3.0, the following appears:

Safari…supports the Geolocation JavaScript classes, which work with the onboard location services to retrieve the current location of the device.

A Google search for “safari geolocation” doesn’t really turn up much useful information, but it’s obvious from existing WebKit bugs that the feature has been getting some attention as of late.

It’s going to be interesting to see how prevalent the use of this API by web developers becomes as more of the major web browsers add support for its functions.

Tags: Ars Technica, Features, Firefox, Geolocation API, iPhone, JavaScript, Mozilla, Mozilla Links, Opera, Safari, W3C, WebKit

A post at Tombuntu uncovers the fact, for me anyway, that there is a pre-alpha version of Chromium already available for use on Linux.  The following is an excerpt of the author’s review:

Chromium for Linux is pre-alpha software, but farther along in development than I expected. The GTK-based Linux interface looks and works just like Windows interface. The browser rendered sites I tested it with just fine, and I haven’t been able to crash the it yet. Lots of features, such as bookmarks, the options window, and even the about window, are simply…not implemented yet.

The review goes on to say that the tab bar is also missing, making it difficult to do anything with tabbed web pages, but that, like on the Google Chrome Windows counterpart, each tab runs in its own process.

Apparently getting the pre-alpha build is as simple as issuing the following from the command line:

sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

You can read much more about the Chromium build(s) in question over at Chromium on Ubuntu.

Hap-tip to Lim Chee Aun.

Tags: Alpha, Chrome, Chromium, Google Chrome, Lim Chee Aun, Linux, Reviews, Ubuntu, Windows