Browsersphere

When I mentioned this Firefox Mobile video in the last issue of Around the Browsersphere, I also mentioned that it was a little lacking in the hands-on details department.  Little did I know at the time that testing out Fennec (the codename for the Firefox Mobile browser) was so simple to do.

Fennec, which is currently at version 1.0 alpha 1, or also referred to as M9 (a user experience alpha),  can be installed on Windows, Linux and Mac, in addition to its intended target, the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet.  To do so, simply grab the zip file or distributable associated with your OS.

I installed Fennec on Windows 7 to check it out, and the simulation works pretty well.  You can see how pages are rendered according to the smaller screen size, and you can also get a feel for how close the rendering of the page is to what you see in your normal desktop browser.  One of the things that stood out in the aforementioned YouTube video was the fact that all of the controls are hidden off to the sides of the page.  You simply “swipe” left or right to access the currently open tabs and navigation/settings, respectively.

The following is a look at Browsersphere loaded up in Fennec:

And here’s a look at ESPN.com loaded with the currently open tabs displayed off to the left:

And finally, here’s a look at the Fennec release notes page with the navigation and settings icons off to the right:

Obviously, you can’t get the best feel for what Fennec will feel like running on its intended hardware by running it on a dekstop OS, but you get a general idea for the layout of the controls, the way the pages render, etc.  Overall, I got a good impression from my quick look at Fennec, and it sounds like others have been impressed as well.

If you’re as curious as I was about how Fennec compares to some of the other mobile browsers out there, I’d recommend installing it on your desktop computer and giving it a try for yourself.

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.

There have been two new releases of the Camino browser this month.  First, back on the 5th, Camino 1.5.4 was announced.  Then, on the 11th, Camino 1.6 Alpha 1 was released.  The former was essentially a security release and the latter includes “improved tabbed browsing, better AppleScript support, and built-in software update for release builds.”  Head on over to the Camino preview site if you’re looking to try out the alpha.

Carnival (via microformatique) is “a free microformat parser for Safari. Download it, fire it up, and whenever a microformatted site is viewed in Safari, Carnival will glow green. Click on the icon to view the available data.”

According to the extension’s author, “This is an alpha, proof-of-concept release. Only hCards are supported, and you can’t actually do much with the data yet.”

Think of this as Operator Lite for Safari.

Feedback on the recently released Opera 9.5 alpha has started to roll in now that more people have had a chance to play with it. I have to admit, I haven’t played around with it yet, so I’ll tell you what some other people are saying…

Download Junkie says:

• We tested this early preview and it’s already looking superb. The performance is the best of any browser we’ve used, it was very stable and the Mac OS X version ships with a much-improved user interface that looks like a proper OS X interface.

Vorlath says:

• I really have to plug Opera 9.5 right now. It looks the same. Or at least, I made it look the same again (skins, rss feeds, plugins and such). But it feels like I have a new computer.
• Personally, everything about how Opera 9.5 renders pages rocks.
• The renderer in Opera 9.5 isn’t just fast. It’s lightning fast. Moving things on screen, scrolling, refresh, everything just flows extremely fast.

Ars Technica says:

• The new alpha does feel slightly “snappier” than its predecessor.
• While still not as full-featured as a standalone BitTorrent client, being able to download torrents with a single click on a web page is an extremely useful feature and is one that I use all the time.
• When you start typing in a URL or search term, Opera will not only auto-fill a dropdown list of previously visited pages starting with the letters you have typed, but it also searches the contents of web pages in your history and displays those matching results as well. So you can just type, say, “apple” in the URL and it will pick up not only www.apple.com but any recently visited web pages mentioning that particular fruit.

Asa Dotzler says:

• My initial use suggests some mild performance improvements on a few of the heavier pages I visit. There are quite a few rendering glitches but that’s to be expected this early in the development cycle.
• There are just too many sites that still block Opera completely. Not being able to use Google office apps and other top 1000 sites is just a deal-breaker for so many people.
• Opera today looks and feels a lot more like Firefox and IE than it did just a couple of years ago and their dev team deserves praise for those moves.

Digg users say:

• Been using for least than 5 minutes, and I already love it. most of the site specific anoyances that broke my opera 9.23 are now fixed.
• Opera once again demonstrates its prowess in innovation with the new feature list – such as the full history search.
• OMG it is fantastic! I think it is really faster on Mac now and works better with many websites, such as Plaxo and Google Calendar! Sweet.

You know there’d be at least one “OMG” in that last set

And just in case you’re looking for some testing grounds where you can put some of the alpha build’s new features to the test, you can either head on over to David Storey’s list of demos or to CSS3 . Info, which has a section dedicated to CSS3.

Oh, and Browsersphere is still kind of a comment virgin, so if you’ve had a chance to look at the Opera 9.5 alpha and have your own thoughts on it, please leave a comment

I stumbled upon a minor player tonight by the name of Wyzo. Beyond a product with a cute and clean website, Wyzo is a web browser built off of Firefox that seems to focus on BitTorrent and social sites like YouTube, Flickr and Digg.

I downloaded Wyzo to get a quick feel for it, and it became very clear that it is indeed a Firefox clone with a few added touches here and there. As someone with some skinning experience, I have to say that I am impressed with the skin they came up with. I’ve definitely seen worse. You can get a feel for what the browser looks like on first launch in the following screenshot (click it to see the full-sized version):

The bottom-line is that Wyzo doesn’t seem worth a download just yet when you can just as easily run Firefox and get the same feature set. My guess is that adding something like the AllPeers extension and the Orange-look theme would give you a similarly looking and functioning browsing experience while using the more popular of the two browsers.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Wyzo, though, check out their website or download it and play around.

I’ll let you know if I read any more about Wyzo once it matures beyond alpha quality and toward its first stable release.