Browsersphere

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

• In addition to needing an editor (”sometimes you a specialist”), Macworld may need to take a look at the latest browser market share figures.  They mention Chrome almost in passing while covering what some of the alternative browsers do better than Firefox and Safari.
• 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.
• Avencius has some interesting thoughts on the competition between Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome and suggests that, despite their lead in browser market share, the Mozilla folks should be worried.
• 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).
• Royal Pingdom takes a look at what 2010 has in store for the browsersphere.

Chrome

• 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.
• An RC1 build of Fennec, the mobile version of Firefox covered here recently, was released tonight.
• You can get a feel for some of Mozilla’s plans for Firefox in the coming year over at Mozilla Links.
• If you long for the good-old-days of Netscape, you’re crazy the new Rebrand add-on may be right up your alley.
• If you’re experiencing some jumpiness with YouTube videos, The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog has some tips on fixing the problem.
• Daniel Glazman has some thoughts on how notifications in Firefox could be improved.
• If you’re one of those “Danger is my middle name” types of folks, you can already start testing multi-process plugins in Firefox on Windows and Linux.
• As you may have heard, Firefox 3.5 is “the most popular browser in the world.”

Internet Explorer

• Tweak Internet Explorer with IE Tweaker.
• One Betanews reader wants Microsoft to “release [an] HTML5 and CCS3 compliant IE9 by June with a radically new UI.”
• FavBrowser.com points us to some videos from IE9’s JavaScript engine team, namely John Montgomery, Steve Lucco and Shanku Niyogi.

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

• SeaMonkey 2.0.1 was released as a security update this month.
• Now that Avant has been listed as one of the browsers to appear on Microsoft’s browser ballot screen, they need translation help.
• One Maxthon user thinks the browser is so cute that there should be a Windows 7 theme based on it.

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

To borrow from Pink Floyd, is there anybody out there?

Ironically enough, Browsersphere has been neglecting the browsersphere a little like Microsoft neglected Internet Explorer earlier this decade.  After all, my last post was way back in June.  However, unlike Microsoft, it isn’t the competition that has jolted this site back to life.  On the contrary, sites like Avencius and Twitter accounts like @AltBrowser have actually made me feel a little bit better about the whole ordeal, knowing that at least someone is out there covering the browsersphere in my absence.  Truth is, the site went dark out of pure laziness on my part.  Well, that and the fact that I’ve been pretty consumed by another project.  Nevertheless, I’m back, and after catching up a bit on what’s been going on, my first order of business is to share a little bit about what’s been tweeted in the browsersphere lately.  So let’s get to it.

• Looks like @ryan45419 is working on his own web browser named iSurfWeb.
• @humancell points out that Firefox and Safari accounted for 79% of all web vulnerabilities in the first half of this year.
• @ByteEye appears to be working on its own web browser as well.
• @erichthewebguy is happy to be seeing Firefox used more and more on TV these days.
• As someone who appears to have given up on Firefox for Chrome on the Mac, @lee_cummings may have coined a new term: “nozilla.”
• @UKTJPR wonders if anyone is willing to give up their web browser for a week.
• @DevJonny points out SRWare Iron, a browser created with the Chromium source code that apparently doesn’t have all the privacy concerns of Chrome.
• @BemusedWolf, who has come up with some colorful names for Firefox and Internet Explorer, might be interested in SRWare Iron.
• @SuperDuperCam had some colorful words to share about Firefox as well.
• @BrowserNews, the creator of the Dolphin3D browser, is touting it as “a better web browser.”
• @mrtech points us to a blog entry about what the Firefox team is doing about crashes and startup time.
• @usingpond wonders if Blackbird, which sells itself as an African American browser, is for real.
• @msacks makes reference to the Lobo browser, which is all-Java and uses a rendering engine called Cobra.
• @waynehastings and @deanq appear to be pleased with Chrome for Mac OS X, with the later giving a parting shot to both Firefox and Safari.
• @chrispy2004 appears to be displeased, however, claiming that Chrome for Mac OS X is the slowest browser he’s used in a long time.
• @GameFreak4321 doesn’t seem all that pleased either.
• @JasonTselentis thanks the “Facebook browser” for finally taking away Internet Explorer’s market share.
• @KileyG wonders what the threshold is for the number of open tabs before someone becomes unproductive.
• @muhanov discovers and shares the fact that the Android web browser doesn’t support FTP.
• @ganetsky wonders how it’s possible that no one has created a web browser named “Bowser.”  Good question!  Though to be fair, some people have referred to IE as the “Bowser” browser.
• @Andrew_James claims to be in “web browser heaven.”  I wonder if Netscape’s there.
• Both @jamienguyenle and @jinkhet refer to Chrome using sexual terms.
• @nicnab asserts that Firefox’s remembering of per-site zoom levels is enough to keep him hooked on said browser.
• @ConduitYourSite wonders what the best Twitter lists for browsers and web-related tools are.
• As I often have, @alex_crawshaw finds it ironic that you need to use a web browser in order to download an alternative one.
• @propstm wonders if IE6 users even realize what they’re missing out on, using such an out-of-date web browser.
• @derickthemacguy says Google Chrome looks like “a Fisher Price version of a web browser.”
• @souravghosh says that Mosaic “is considered the first browser to make the Internet easily accessible to non-techies.”
• @C_Hernandez_ heard that Camino is the fastest browser for Macs and apparently is going to check it out.
• @omegatron laments, as do many I’m sure, the fact that his mom doesn’t know the difference between a web browser and a web page.
• @Allyssen points us to a split-screen browser for the iPhone called iNetDual.
• @ericylai recommends the Bolt browser, which also happens to support a split-screen mode (check out the demo), for those tired of the default Blackberry browser.
• @IHtherapies finds KidZui, a web browser targeted at kids, very cool.
• Even if it’s “a bit slow,” Firefox is still @flyfiddlesticks‘ favorite browser.
• @abhishek tweeted about the Facebooker browser, which is currently available as a release candidate.
• @juandelpozo makes reference to Infinity Web Browser, a web browser for Android.
• @va3stl gave Midori a try.
• @wordtree likes the idea of trying a text-based web browser like Lynx.
• @tr4st recommends Lunascape, the “world’s first and only triple engine browser,” to web developers.
• @sphereinabox wants to know what mobile web browsers, other than Safari, support offline storage.  If geek.com is to believed, it looks like Fennec does, too.
• And finally, @rodhilton loves that Ubuntu lets him use a web browser while the operating system is still installing.

That’s it for Twitter Watch #3.  Believe it or not, Twitter Watch #2 was so long ago that I was still using Summize to search for tweets.

Before I end this post, since we’re on the subject of Twitter, I should mention that Browsersphere is now on Twitter as well.  Just follow @Browsersphere for real-time updates, links to new site content, etc.

Tags: Android, Avencius, Blackberry, Blackbird, Bolt, Chrome, Chromium, Cobra, Dolphin3D, Facebook, Facebooker, Fennec, Firefox, Google Chrome, iNetDual, Infinity, Internet Explorer, iPhone, iSurfWeb, KidZui, Lobo, Lunascape, Lynx, Mac, Microsoft, Midori, Mosaic, Netscape, Performance, Privacy, Rendering, Rendering Engines, Safari, Split-screen, SRWare Iron, Summize, Tabs, TV, Twitter, Ubuntu, Vul, Vulnerabilities

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

• Lifehacker recently put the major players through some browser speed tests after some boasting by the Safari 4 folks.
• In Mobile Browser Wars, Ed Hansberry takes a look at the browser alternatives available for mobile devices (via Web Browsers News and Reviews).
• Ten Web Browsers that You May Have Never Heard of covers iRider, Lunascape, Ultrabrowser and Shiira, among others.

Avant Browser

• Avant Browser 11.7 Build 22, which appears to be a minor release, was released back on the 26th.

Camino

• Camino 2.0 Beta 2 was released back on the 27th.
• If you’re interested in the Camino schedule, get updated.

Chrome

• Read about improvements in the spellchecker used in Chrome.
• It is believed that extension support is coming to Chrome this May (via Web Browsers News and Reviews).
• See the first screenshots of Chrome running on Mac.
• Full-screen browsing has come to Chrome, but apparently doesn’t live up to the way the feature is supported in Firefox and IE7.

Firefox

• Daniel Glazman takes an in-depth look at monetizing Firefox extensions.
• A new mascot, Foxmosa, was recently added to the Mozilla family.
• Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog discusses the Firefox 3.1/3.5 release schedule and how advancements in other web browsers’ JavaScript engines have impacted the schedule.
• Some interesting file uploading ideas came up at a recent Firefox design lunch.
• Jesse Ruderman sheds some insight into the issues surrounding “continuous integration,” which from what I can tell involves how and when code is checked in and how build machines and tinderbox displays are impacted.
• John Slater, Creative Director at Mozilla, is looking for an intern.
• Take a look at the Mozilla Community Calendar.
• Firefox 3.0.7 was recently released.
• At first it was under consideration, and then the decision was made to version the Shiretoko release of Firefox, formally versioned as 3.1, as version 3.5.
• Here’s a granular look at the type of minor performance improvements that eventually make a web browser faster overall.
• Gotta love bugs that are simply titled things like “Make location bar autocomplete faster” and “Make location bar autocomplete even faster.”
• There is a call “for new Web apps that can help people make a difference while browsing the Web.”
• Is Firefox faster on Windows or Linux?
• Firefox is dominating in Antarctica.

Flock

• Apparently the Flock folks thought Flock would make a good Valentine’s Day gift?  Personally, I’m glad I didn’t heed their advice for my wife’s gift this year.   Though, it looks like the Flock folks weren’t the only ones with this bright idea.
• “People using Flock’s Eco-Edition conducted 80% more searches per user as compared to Flock’s overall population of users.”

Internet Explorer

• The Cost of Internet Explorer attempts to track all the “wasted time and effort” on the part of web developers trying to make websites compatible with IE.
• IE8’s Compatibility View explained (and a recap).
• IE8 Beta testers are making a difference.
• It’s not every day anymore that you see browsers like Internet Explorer 4 and 5.5 mentioned.
• An IE8 Reliability Update has been made available for Windows 7 users (like myself) who are using IE8 (unlike myself).
• It looks like the IE team will be pretty busy at MIX09.
• Check out a video that goes into detail about IE8’s new rendering engine (via Robert O’Callahan).
• Here’s a comparison between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of IE7.
• Is the codename for IE9 “Triton?”
• Sarah Dutkiewicz wonders why Microsoft is held to a different standard when it comes to bundling IE with its operating system, Windows.

Maxthon

• Check out a chromed-out Maxthon icon.
• I think MaxthonGuy and I may have reached some kind of virtual truce.  That is, until the next time the madness reappears over at his blog.
• Learn how to use the custom search feature in Maxthon (via Maxthon Resources).
• A new version of Maxthon 2.5 was released recently.
• At least one Maxthon user is frustrated that his favorite browser isn’t included in the browser reviews found in PC magazines, etc.

Opera

• Avencius’ coverage of the Opera 9.64 release uncovers some details about some platform-specific code that should make Windows users’ browsing experiences more secure.
• Opera unveiled Opera Turbo last month at Mobile World Congress 2009 and it was later discussed at Opera Watch.
• Take a look at a speed comparison between the browsers developed for the Nintendo DS and the DSi.
• Similar to my recent post about various web browser vendors claiming ‘First!’, Choose Opera touches on the topic of whether it matters who developed a feature first or not.  Then, the very next day, they answered their own question.
• Opera Fingertouch is “a technology designed to make interacting with the Web easier and simpler on touch-based devices.”
• Apparently there is a demand out there for making Opera look like IE7 (via Daniel Glazman).
• Check out the Carakan FAQ for more information on Opera’s new JavaScript engine (via Opera Watch).
• Combining Opera with a touch UI.

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

• The first build of Orca Browser 1.1, Build 1, was released back on the 25th.

Safari

• Avencius’ review of Safari 4 Beta is a very positive one, and some details regarding branding of the new JavaScript engine are ironed out in the comments.

SeaMonkey

• Read a draft of the new SeaMonkey vision (via Mozilla Developer News).
• SeaMonkey 2.0 Alpha 3 was released this past week.

Skyfire

• Skyfire 0.9 Beta was released back on the 12th.

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