To those using Google Chrome on Linux, extensions are enabled on the beta channel. And for those using Google Chrome for Mac, hang tight — we’re working on bringing extensions, bookmark sync and more to the beta soon.
If you’re on Windows, you can either wait to be updated to the new build automatically over the course of the next week, or you can manually upgrade if you want to get your hands on the new features right away.
Once you’ve got the new build, you can head over to Google Chrome Extensions to start extending your browser. Or you can head on over to the Google Chrome Blog to find out more about what’s included in the new build.
If you haven’t already heard, Firefox 3.6 will be officially released today. If you’re interested in what goes into a Firefox release, you can follow along live with the release of Firefox 3.6 over at Air Mozilla. As I write this, several Mozilla employees are introducing themselves to those who are watching. There appear to be two groups, one from Mountainview, California, and the other from Toronto, Canada, participating in the live video feed, at least at the time being. Several minutes ago, Mike Beltzner, Mozilla’s Director of Firefox, appeared to announce that Firefox 3.6 will go live on the website around 8:25 to 8:40 Eastern time. Given the current time, I’m guessing that’s PM. That being said, firefox.com currently redirects to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/upgrade.html which officially points to the Firefox 3.6 download and reports that the new version has already been downloaded over 37,500 times.
Head on over to Air Mozilla to follow along with the release day proceedings.
emoko is a web browser just like FireFox or Internet Explorer, with one big difference - emoko is built using video game technology.
The browser apparently renders pages in a “3D world,” and users’ avatars in that 3D world can interact (via text and voice chat, or drawing on the page) with one another, as long as they are visiting the same web page. The version at the time of writing is version 0.9.6225, and it is the second major update according to the browser’s website.
The following video demonstrates emoko’s vision of how the browser works:
Now that we’ve seen the video, I have to admit that I’ve actually installed and played around with emoko a bit. Unfortunately, my experience wasn’t anything like what you see in the video. The browser felt more like a Java app to me than it did a video game. Even on my fairly powerful computer, things felt a bit slow and jittery. If it’s possible to tilt web pages, create avatars and find other users in emoko, I couldn’t figure out how to do it. The best I could do is get a feel for the interface, which in itself is a bit different than what is offered up in the video:
Don’t let me be the judge, though. If you’re into trying new things, give emoko a spin yourself and definitely let me know if you have a different experience than I did. Regardless, it’s good to see people thinking outside of the box with web browser development. This one may just be a little too far out of the box for my liking.
We’re covering everything from the difference between Yahoo! Answers and Stack Overflow, to Firefox sabotage against IE8 add-ons, to Taco Bell marketing campaigns in this trip around the browsersphere. Are you ready?
“Digia @Web is a modern, fully finger touch controllable, web browser for mobile. @Web is currently available for S60 5th Edition and Maemo mobile devices free of charge.” Techie Buzz has a review, which includes a screenshot.
Honza Pokorny, who you can follow on Twitter, has created his own browser, appropriately named Honza’s Browser, which you can try out on Linux or Windows. He has also made the source code available.
No it’s not available yet. What you are seeing is the first candidate build of RC1…very very close but not quite there. It doesn’t help Mozilla either to point to direct FTP links instead of the mirrored links (HTTP) that will be published when it is finally released.
You are of course free to install the candidate builds if you’d like, but you won’t be using the actual RC1 build unless things go very smoothly with the build and there isn’t a need for another candidate. That being said, as I pointed out to start this post, the actual RC1 build is expected to be announced on Friday, so you won’t have to wait very long to get the real deal either way.
Even though we’re venturing into edge case territory here, it’s nonetheless interesting to see how the four main web browsers compare when reduced to their minimum chrome, or browser window, size on Windows 7:
I’m not sure what’s more surprising, how large IE is at its most-minimized state, or how small Chrome is.
You can read more about the differences over at Softpedia.
I’ve been doing my best to keep my finger on the pulse of the browsersphere over on Twitter, but you know you’re not getting the real deal until we go “around the browsersphere.”
At a WebKit hackfest recently, some improvements were made to context menu handling, including the ability to hold the CTRL key while right-clicking to see the default context menu instead of any custom context menu provided by the current website. Additionally, some include- and linking-related improvements were made to decrease the overall WebCore build time, which should come as good news to those 80 active WebKit committers.
Some videos from Add-on-Con feature representatives for Chrome, Firefox and Safari and delve into topics such as browser security and mobile add-ons (via Dan Moore).
In a LinuxCrunch review of the Linux version of Chrome (via Slashdot), it is touted as being “stable and fast,” but downsides such as lacking extension and RSS support are mentioned as well. Additionally, there’s an interesting note about a KDE-related bug that Google has opted not to fix.
Firefox
An article at TG Daily (via Digg) calls Firefox “clunky-looking” and says that the news Firefox 4 may not ship until 2011 “comes as some embarrassment for Mozilla.” It goes even further to claim that Microsoft will now have a “clear advantage” over Mozilla and “bit-players” Chrome and Safari.
Even though I think it’s a cool feature (which admittedly takes some getting used to), FavBrowser.com lends a hand to those who want to turn off Opera 10.5’s tab thumbnails in Windows 7 (I’m sure this approach works for Safari as well).
In Carakan Revisited, improvements made to the Carakan JavaScript engine over the previous Furthark engine are discussed, mainly focusing on garbage collection and caching. The post also touches on some of the plans for future improvements.
An article written nine months ago, The genius behind Google’s browser, goes in-depth with the main programmer behind Google Chrome’sv8 JavaScript engine, Lars Bak. Although the article’s title and certain parts of the story perhaps give a little too much credit to one man (there’s a lot more to Google’s browser than its JavaScript engine), it’s a very interesting read nonetheless. The following is a short excerpt from the article:
Many computer programs are built using previous versions, or related code, but V8 was started from scratch – a blank slate. When I meet [Kasper] Lund later in my Denmark trip, he takes great delight in underscoring this fact: “It’s the purest form of coding there is.” [Lars] Bak clearly agrees – as Lund speaks, he can’t stop smiling.
Beyond detailing the story behind v8’s development in Denmark, the article gives a personal glimpse at its key creator, something his Wikipedia article doesn’t quite achieve.
If you’re interested in the developers behind the browsers or browser-related technology you probably take for granted on a daily basis, I’d definitely give the well-written The genius behind Google’s browser a read.
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