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

Let’s take a look at what web browser news has surfaced over at Digg over the past month:

• Firefox sails past 20% market share, IE drops below 70% – “Mozilla achieved an important milestone in November, sailing past 20% market share over an entire month for the first time since its release in November 2004.”
• Google Chrome Browser To Support Customization – A step in Firefox’s direction.
• Safari Tops 7% Of Browser Market Share, Mac OS X On The Rise – Not quite Firefox’s gain, but movement upward nonetheless.
• Firefox Beats Chrome And Webkit Eats Them For Breakfast – Links to some SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark results for bleeding edge builds of Chrome, Firefox and WebKit.
• Opera 10 alpha – The alpha release of Opera 10 features the Presto 2.2 rendering engine.
• Second Firefox 3.1 Beta Due ‘Very Shortly’ – A reference to the since-released Firefox 3.1 Beta 2.
• New trojan targets Firefox, masquerades as Greasemonkey
• Opera 10 Aces Acid3 Browser Test, Boosts Performance by 30% – More on the Opera 10 alpha release.
• Webkit Still The Best And Rips Opera 10 Alpha A New One – Perhaps the hidden gem in this one is the ground Chrome gained on the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark since the aforementioned link’s resulMozilla to pull the plug on Firefox 2 “soon”ts.
• Mozilla to pull the plug on Firefox 2 “soon” – no complaints here.
• First look: Firefox 3.1 beta 2, now with private browsing – The feature appears to be implemented very similarly to Chrome’s implementation.
• Firefox Adds Multitouch Gestures for Macs
• Google Chrome Comes Out of Beta
• Google anticipates a bright and shiny future for Chrome – Links to an interesting ars technica article covering the challenges Chrome faces in trying to catch up with Firefox and IE.
• Google’s Browser Sheds Its ‘Beta’ Label – One post just wasn’t enough.
• Mozilla reverse-engineers OSX to enhance Firefox 3.1 for Mac
• Google grants outsider Chrome-coding privileges – Given the requirements of becoming a Chrome “insider,” I’m not surprised to read that only one outsider has been granted permissions thus far.
• Internet Explorer security alert
• Exclusive: First look at Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 RC1 – RC1, “which is believed to be the first feature-complete version of the browser, will lack in compatibility with web standards and will not match the JavaScript performance of all other major browsers.”
• Has Internet Explorer ever been safe?
• Firefox Issues Eight Patches for Web Browser
• FireTorrent Brings BitTorrent to Firefox
• Google pushing users away from IE?
• 7 Things Google Chrome Needs – Now That It’s Out of Beta – Links to a pretty good wishlist of Chrome improvements and enhancements.
• Firefox is most vulnerable Windows software in 2008 (PDF)
• Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 on Linux uses less memory
• Which sites will make the IE8 Compatibility Hall of Shame? – Apparently the Compatibility Mode feature of IE8 is one of its most critical.
• Firefox picks up 2 out of 3 users IE loses
• Mozilla releases second alpha of Fennec mobile browser – I haven’t covered Fennec here yet, but apparently it’s a descendant of Minimo.
• Mozilla’s mobile browser gets closer to prime time – By the way, a Fennec Fox is “a small nocturnal fox found in the Sahara Desert of North Africa.”

And now for some bonus coverage from Slashdot:

• Too Good To Ignore — 6 Alternative Browsers – Really, it ends up being five alternative browsers with the Mac and PC versions of Opera counting as two.
• A Cheat Sheet To All the Browser Betas
• Firefox 2.0 Update To Remove Phishing Detection
• Safari and Chrome: Tied For the Worst Password Manager
• Chrome Complicates Mozilla/Google Love-In

Happy New Year, everybody.

Tags: Acid3, Ars Technica, Benchmarks, Beta, BitTorrent, Chrome, Compatibility Mode, Competition, Digg, Extensions, Features, Fennec, Firefox, Firefox 2, Firefox 3.1, FireTorrent, Google, Greasemonkey, IE, IE8, Internet Explorer, JavaScript, Linux, Mac, Market Share, Minimo, Minor Players, Opera 10, OS X, Performance, Phishing, Presto, Private Browsing, Rendering Engines, Safari, Security, Slashdot, SunSpider, WebKit

An interesting article over at Mobinode sheds some light on the current state of the browser wars in China.  The following is an excerpt:

There is no doubt that Maxthon is still the No.1 Chinese browser in the market, but we can see that the competition is getting more intense. Tencent has its so called TT browser bundled with QQ for a long time, Firefox is more and more accepted by high educated Internet users; If you search for ["Browser" in Chinese], there are a couple of Chinese browsers which are good alternatives. I have tried one called EnjoyIE developed by a team based in Beijing. Even though the founder told me that he was doing this for his own interest, but the fact is that this browser has already got 2 millions users and for me it is working even faster than Maxthon.

The article also goes on to discuss the mobile space, in which an up-and-coming browser called UCWeb is showing promise with upwards of 25 million users.

Be sure to read the entire article, because it’s certainly interesting to see how the browser wars are shaping up overseas.

Tags: Browser Wars, China, Competition, EnjoyIE, Firefox, Maxthon, Mobile, TT Browser, UCWeb