Posted on January 7th, 2010 | 6 Comments »
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?
General
Chrome
Fennec
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Opera
The Minor Players
- “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.
- SRWare Iron Browser, which was mentioned here last month, has been reviewed, along with screenshots, over at GadgetMix.
- China is making some big investments in free software which could end up benefiting Maxthon.
- Flock 2.5.6 was released this week, fixing some integration issues with Flickr and Twitter.
- Reports from CES say that Ford has developed its own Web browser, which can be operated only while the car is parked (there’s more on the safety implications of related innovations in The New York Times today). Left Lane reports that Ford’s browser is WebKit-based.
- This review of the Orca browser has plenty of screenshots for anyone who’s curious about the browser.
- 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.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Awards,
Bookmarks,
Bugs,
CEO,
China,
Chrome,
Digia @Web,
Fennec,
Firefox,
Firefox 3.7,
Firefox 4,
Flickr,
Flock,
Ford,
Gavin Sharp,
Google Chrome,
Harry Parsonage,
Honza's Browser,
IE8,
Internet Explorer,
JavaScript,
John Lilly,
John Slater,
Mac,
Marketing,
Maxthon,
Microsoft,
MIX10,
Multi-processor,
Opera,
Orca,
Performance,
Releases,
Safety,
Session Restore,
SRWare Iron,
Stack Overflow,
Statistics,
SVG Working Group,
The New York Times,
Themes,
Twitter,
Ubuntu,
WebKit,
Windows 7,
Windows CE
Posted on January 1st, 2010 | 2 Comments »
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.”
General
Chrome
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Opera
- In its coverage of Opera’s added support for CSS3 Transitions and 2D Transforms in the pre-alpha build of Opera 10.5, CSS3 . Info mentions that “Opera is the first browser to offer support for Backgrounds and Borders without the need for a vendor prefix, with Firefox and Safari still requiring ‘-moz’ and ‘-webkit’ [respectively].”
- With the pre-alpha release of Opera 10.5, Anne van Kesteren says “we are getting a little better at this iteration stuff.”
- A couple of articles (via Slashdot), Opera 10.50 Unveiled: Opera Is Once Again the Fastest Browser on Earth and Opera 10.5’s new Carakan Javascript engine is fast – Google Chrome fast, go into detail about the impressive performance of Opera’s new Carakan JavaScript engine (which I’ve mentioned here a few times in the past).
- True to form, Opera Watch has a solid rundown on Opera 10.5 pre-alpha as well.
- In reporting on Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report from November, TechCrunch relays that Russia is the top country for Opera Mini usage, but that usage is really growing in Asia and Africa.
- 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).
- The Opera Core Concerns blog provides some details on Opera’s native support for JSON, including performance comparisons against the other main browsers.
- 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.
- A New Year’s Eve post unveils a newer pre-alpha build of Opera 10.5 and discusses Opera’s new support for HTML5’s <video> tag.
- Introduce yourself to mouse gestures in Opera.
- If you’re excited about the pre-alpha builds of Opera 10.5, you can show it off with some wallpaper.
Minor Players
There’s a lot more to cover, but that should hold you over until 2010.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Tags:
2D Transforms,
Add-on-Con,
Add-ons,
Africa,
Alternatives,
Anne van Kesteren,
Asia,
Avant,
Avencius,
Carakan,
Chrome,
Comparisons,
CSS,
CSS3,
CSS3 Transitions,
Daniel Glazman,
Delays,
Development,
Digg,
Fennec,
Firefox,
Firefox 4,
Furthark,
Google,
Google Chrome,
HTML5,
IE Tweaker,
IE9,
Internet Explorer,
John Montgomery,
JSON,
Localization,
Macworld,
Maxthon,
Microsoft,
Mouse Gestures,
Mozilla,
Multi-process,
Netscape,
Notifications,
Opera 10.5,
Opera Mini,
Performance,
Reviews,
Russia,
Safari,
SeaMonkey,
Shanku Niyogi,
Slashdot,
State of the Mobile Web,
Steve Lucco,
TechCrunch,
Twitter,
Vendor Prefixes,
Videos,
Wallpapers,
WebKit,
Windows 7,
YouTube
Posted on December 17th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I debated whether or not I should skip ahead to #14, but I’m not really that superstitious.
General
Chrome
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Opera
The Minor Players
- Avant Browser 11.7 Build 42 was released on Friday.
- AOL Explorer, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant, Sleipnir, and Slim Browser are among the IE alternatives listed in Browsing the browsers: Internet Explorer’s rivals (most likely based on this news).
- TheWorld Browser features a “multi-threaded frame” and “web page mute,” which allows you to disable all sound on a web page via one button.
- Someone made a Korean “translation” for Maxthon.
- This thread clears up why you might see multiple processes running when you use Maxthon (though you can probably guess).
- A YouTube video brought my attention to CometBird, which appears to be a close cousin of Firefox that not many people know about.
- Sunrise, a “web browser for web developers,” has reached version 2.0.2.
- A browser named Vinageer is claimed to be the “third most used web browser in Australia,” and yet the only articles I can find on it appear to be written in French.
- As one might expect, the Flock folks are excited to be included in Microsoft’s coming “browser ballot.”
- Maxthon reached the 300 million download milestone on November 28th.
- Skyfire Mobile Browser 1.5 was released last week with improvements made to their video support. You can see a short video explaining the new improvements on Vimeo.
Tags:
Add-ons,
AOL Explorer,
Avant,
Bing,
Christmas,
Chrome,
Codenames,
CometBird,
Crashes,
Extensions,
Features,
Firefox,
Firefox Mobile,
Flock,
HTML5,
IE,
IE8,
Jon von Tetzchner,
K-Meleon,
Korean,
Localization,
Market Share,
Maxthon,
Microsoft,
Multi-process,
Opera,
Opera Mini,
Performance,
Red Panda,
Releases,
Retirement,
Skyfire,
Sleipnir,
Slim Browser,
Sunrise,
TheWorld Browser,
Thunderbird,
Users,
Vinageer
Posted on March 7th, 2009 | No Comments »
Whoa. Has it really been like eight months since the last time we went around the browsersphere? Not good. I guess we should do something about it…
General
Avant Browser
Camino
Chrome
Firefox
Flock
Internet Explorer
Maxthon
Opera
Opera Mini
- Armenia, a country with around three million people, saw its Opera Mini usage grow by 2800% last year. See this and other interesting statistics in the State of the Mobile Web report (via Choose Opera).
- “Yahoo! is expected to begin distributing Opera Mini via Yahoo! Mobile and also as a standalone download from Yahoo!’s mobile Web sites in the near future.”
Orca Browser
Safari
SeaMonkey
Skyfire
There was a lot to cover this time around, and there’s much more I haven’t yet covered. Hopefully that means we’ll see the 13th installment of “Around the Browsersphere” sooner than November.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Avant,
Avencius,
Beta,
Bugs,
Camino,
Carakan,
Chrome,
Compatibility,
Compatibility View,
Daniel Glazman,
Design,
Extensions,
Features,
Firefox,
Flock,
IE7,
IE8,
IE9,
Internet Explorer,
Internet Explorer 4,
Internet Explorer 5.5,
iRider,
Jesse Ruderman,
John Slater,
Linux,
Lunascape,
Mac,
Market Share,
Mascots,
Maxthon,
Maxthon 2.5,
MaxthonGuy,
Minor Players,
MIX09,
Mobile,
Monetizing,
Mozilla,
Nintendo,
Opera,
Opera 9.64,
Opera Fingertouch,
Opera Mini,
Opera Turbo,
Orca,
Performance,
Releases,
Rendering Engines,
Safari 4 Beta,
Schedules,
Screenshots,
SeaMonkey,
SeaMonkey 2.0,
Security,
Shiira,
Shiretoko,
Skins,
Skyfire,
State of the Mobile Web,
Themes,
Touch,
Triton,
Ultrabrowser,
Windows 7
Posted on July 12th, 2008 | 2 Comments »
An article titled Check the Security Status of Browsers with Opera Widget reads a bit like something coming directly out of the Opera marketing department. The article covers an Opera widget called Stay Secure that refreshes based on the latest data from Secunia every hour to show you a graph like the following indicating the security levels of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Konqueror:

I say the article reads a bit like a release from the Opera marketing department, because assuming Opera views Firefox as a competitor, the widget screenshot shown in the article and statements like “the test showed that Firefox 3 was [the] most vulnerable one and Opera the least” seem a little biased. Was this actually a test, or did it happen to be the state of security at that moment the screenshot was taken? For example, above it looks like Internet Explorer and Konqueror are the two most vulnerable.
Regardless, it seems like a neat little widget for those who like to follow web browser security closely, as long as you’re willing to use Opera to track it, since the widget is Opera-only at present. For those like me who dabble among various browsers, this isn’t an issue.
Anyone know of similar features/extensions for other web browsers?
Tags:
Add-ons,
Extensions,
Firefox,
Firefox 3,
Internet Explorer,
Konqueror,
Marketing,
Opera,
Safari,
Secunia,
Security,
Stay Secure,
Widgets
Posted on July 11th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Since my last installment of Around the Browsersphere was posted back toward the beginning of May, there’s simply way too much going on to get all caught up without breaking things up a bit. Therefore, this eleventh edition will focus solely on the “minor players,” or the web browsers not named Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari.
Avant
Flock
Konqueror
Maxthon
SeaMonkey
Others
I’m hoping to catch up on the major players soon, so stay tuned.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Avant,
Ben Goodger,
Deepnet Explorer,
Extensions,
Features,
Firefox 2,
Firefox 3,
Flock,
Gecko,
Gecko 1.9,
IE7,
Internet Explorer,
Konqueror,
Linux,
Localization,
Mac,
Maxthon,
Maxthon 2,
Minor Players,
Off By One,
Opinion,
OS X,
Phishing,
Releases,
SeaMonkey,
Trident,
Ubuntu
Posted on July 9th, 2008 | No Comments »
A couple weeks ago I posted to Twitter about how my wife’s first impression of Firefox 3’s Awesomebar was that she hated it. Tonight, I got a reply from the @awesomebarhate Twitter account letting me know that Awesomebar “hate feedback [is] welcome” over at Get Satisfaction.
I’m pretty sure my wife has adjusted at this point, but if you haven’t, now you know where you can go to vent some frustration or, better yet, take care of the problem.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Awesomebar,
Extensions,
Features,
Firefox,
Firefox 3,
Get Satisfaction,
Opinion,
Twitter
Posted on July 9th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
In a few blog posts I’ve read recently, I’ve witnessed at least two backers of separate web browsers claiming that their respective browsers have an edge over Firefox because they don’t require all the add-ons Firefox does in order to behave the way a user expects them to.
First off, over at the Maxthon Blog last week, a Maxthon user was quoted as having said the following about Firefox 3:
I’m sure Firefox has add-ons that can compensate for its apparent lack of features but…my hard drive says it was nice knowing you but you have to go.
Given that the Maxthon Blog reminds me of a certain other source of information, I took the opinions there with a grain of salt. However, I soon spotted a similar refrain at a much more trustworthy source.
Opera Watch has an article titled Guardian: Forget Firefox – I’m going back to Opera for browsing and email which quotes The Guardian columnist Andrew Brown as having said the following of Firefox 3:
With the release of Firefox 3, I mounted a private celebration: I went back to using Opera 9.5 as my main browser. This wasn’t just perversity. Firefox without its add-ons is clearly inferior to Opera. Firefox with enough add-ons to make it really useful is very much slower.
Although the reasoning behind Firefox’s add-on architecture has been well-publicized by Firefox spokesmen like Asa Dotzler and there are obviously those out there who appreciate that architecture, it appears that the latest approach by those supporting other web browsers is to suggest that the add-ons approach to feature support contributes to both a lackluster default set of features and excessive bloat once the desired features have been added.
So what’s your take? Is Firefox’s add-on approach the right approach, or is it better to try and target a larger set of features out-of-the-box?
Tags:
Add-ons,
Asa Dotzler,
Comparisons,
Extensions,
Firefox,
Firefox 3,
Maxthon,
Maxthon Blog,
Opera,
Opera 9.5,
Opinion,
The Guardian,
Twitter
Posted on June 22nd, 2008 | No Comments »
It’s that time again. Since the last update, major versions of both Opera and Firefox have been released. Only one of the two has been dominating in terms of Digg presence, though.
- Top 5 Web Browsers That Aren’t IE, Safari or Firefox – A site called OMGLists covers five web browsers that aren’t in what they consider the top three. However, I’m not sure if I’d agree with calling a media player a web browser.
- Clarification about Firefox 3 system-killing performance – Some misunderstandings about Firefox 3 performance on Linux are addressed.
- Mozilla Firefox 3 Guinness World Record (Actual Page) – News of Mozilla’s attempt at a world record hits Digg.
- Ah, the Irony! Microsoft says Safari isn’t Safe on Windows – Discussion of a “carpet bombing” flaw in Safari.
- Safari Flaw Worse Than First Thought, Microsoft Warns – Moderate flaws in IE and Safari combine to make one critical flaw.
- Firefox to pass 20% before July? – Early speculation about Download Day’s impact on Firefox’s market share.
- Why Firefox 3 matters – Speed, memory use, phishing and malware protection and bookmark management are among the new features of Firefox 3 that make the browser “matter,” according to the target article.
- WSJ’s MOSSBERG: Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Is the Best Browser – Walt Mossberg gives a glowing review of the latest Firefox release.
- What’s new in Firefox 3? Check out this demo! – An overview of some of the new features in Firefox 3.
- Best Firefox Addon Ever?
- Beautiful glyphs – font rendering improvements in Firefox 3 – The system that renders text has been completely reworked in Firefox 3.
- Firefox 3 Download Day Pledges Hit 1 million
- Mozilla Announces Release Date for Firefox 3 — June 17th
- Opera 9.5 released
- Firefox 3 and Safari 4 in browser speed race
- Third Firefox 3 Release Candidate available for download
- A Field Guide to Firefox 3: A Full Inventory of the Goodness
- Web Browsers: Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers – Lifehacker tests the latest major web browsers on Windows (informally) and Firefox, Safari and Opera all win in various categories.
- Don’t forget to be part of Firefox’s Download Day!
- IE8 development: Microsoft should learn from Apple, Mozilla – The article argues that due to Microsoft’s “closed” approach to developing its browser, IE will always be trailing the other major players in terms of development.
- Mozilla prepares for Firefox 3 release and plans for 3.1 – ars technica covers add-on compatability in Firefox 3 and gives a quick preview of what’s in store for Firefox 3.1, codenamed “Shiretoko.”
- 15 Browser Add Ons. No One Knows Them All!
- The History of Firefox 1.0 to 3.0 in Screenshots
- Why You Should Download Firefox 3 Right Now – Over 10,000 diggs on this one.
- Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3
- Firefox Download counter
- Forbes: Why Firefox Matters
- The cake is a lie: IE team bakes a treat for Mozilla
- Firefox 3 launch a success: 8 million downloads in 24 hours
- Mozilla Hits Its Firefox 3 Download Goal…and then some!
- Firefox 3 mentioned on the Colbert Report
- And the fastest browser is… – A quick post on CNET News relays information from Zimbra that Safari is the fastest browser with Firefox not far behind.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Apple,
Bugs,
Comparisons,
Digg,
Digg Watch,
Download Day,
Extensions,
Features,
Firefox,
Firefox 3,
Firefox 3.1,
Fonts,
Forbes,
History,
Hybrids,
IE8,
Internet Explorer,
Linux,
Lists,
Market Share,
Microsoft,
Opera,
Performance,
Previews,
Rendering,
Reviews,
Safari,
Screenshots,
Security,
Shiretoko,
Walt Mossberg
I watched as the counter at the Opera Dragonfly website slowly counted down toward zero this morning. At around 9am Pacific time, the site was transformed to include all the details about Opera Dragonfly. From what I’ve read so far, it sounds like Dragonfly is definitely alpha quality, but certain features, such as its ability to debug phones or TVs remotely, have made the release notable nonetheless.
There are many more features still planned for the new developer tools, according to the new site:
The initial alpha release is just the beginning. Opera Dragonfly has a fully featured road map, including support for editing of CSS, JavaScript and the DOM, a single window mode, improved JavaScript thread handling, XHR and HTTP monitoring, improved keyboard navigation, and translation into a number of languages.
Head on over to the Opera Dragonfly site for all the details.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Opera,
Releases,
Tools