Browsersphere

The following comes from CSS3.info:

Dave Hyatt has recently checked in to the WebKit repository some basic support for using the ClearType text rendering system, which uses a different algorithm for subpixel anti-aliasing than the current CoreGraphics libraries do. Windows users will find that this makes text in Safari look similar to text in other web browsers and elsewhere on the system.

For more information on some of the caveats of the new feature and how you can try it out yourself, be sure to read ClearType rendering forthcoming for Safari on Windows? in its entirety.

If you’ll recall, I covered Wyzo back in September.  Martin over at gHacks has posted a review of the browser titled “Wyzo an alternative to Bittorrent clients?“  He basically came to the same conclusion that I did in that it might be useful to some, but its feature set is also relatively easily achievable via Firefox add-ons.

We’ll continue to track Wyzo and see if it gains any popularity as its development progresses.

I caught this back in September and it took me until now to post it. Nice.

Anyway, without further ado, Dwight Silverman offers up his take on IE7Pro and how it brings parity with Firefox’s “Restore Session” feature to IE7. He also lists several other advantages to using IE7Pro, including built-in spell checking, an ad blocker, support for mouse gestures and a feature that sounds similar to Greasemonkey support in Firefox.

A couple of articles were written recently discussing the relative silence from the Internet Explorer team regarding the next version of the web browser, Internet Explorer 8.

Internet Explorer 8 Buried and Asphyxiated in Microsoft Utero takes the approach that Internet Explorer is losing ground to Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0, and that being silent about the future of IE8 isn’t helping things.

A Seattle P.I. article on the subject focuses entirely on the Internet Explorer team and how their silence has started to alienate web developers dependent on development-related news to make sure their websites will continue to work in Internet Explorer with the next release, whenever it may happen.

I’m a little surprised to see that the Internet Explorer team isn’t a little more sensitive to the whole going AWOL thing, given that they all but vanished from the face of the earth for several years before finally deciding to work on Internet Explorer 7.

It’s also a shame that they haven’t really made an effort to become more transparent now that IE7 is out in the wild and getting so much feedback from the web development community.  The Seattle P.I article says “it’s not like an open-source project, where features are determined in a largely transparent process.”  But why not?  I remember before IE7 was released, the Internet Explorer team was soliciting feedback from everybody about the types of CSS support they would be adding and what major bugs they’d be fixing.  Even if they can’t reveal the big features in an open forum at this juncture, it seems like they could throw a bone or two in developers’ direction by discussing things like CSS support that are well-known, well documented, and waiting to be implemented by anyone and any team that so chooses to implement them.

Anyway, given that the Internet Explorer team has decided to remain tight-lipped about its next browser release, we can put IE8 in the “vaporware” category, somewhere in between Duke Nukem Forever and the Phantom.

I stumbled upon CSS Contents and Browser Compatibility today via etc..  It has a side-by-side comparison of web browser support of CSS features broken down by selectors, pseudo-classes, declarations and experimental declarations.  The web browsers compared are IE 5.5, IE 6, IE 7, Firefox 2.0, Safari 3.0 (Windows), Opera 9.5 Beta, iCab 3.0 and Konqueror 3.5.7.

It’s not surprising to see that as you scroll down the page semi-quickly, a majority of the red shows up in the Internet Explorer and iCab columns.  Beyond that, it looks like Firefox and Opera deserve some props for having only one red box each for the features in the first three categories.  Konqueror’s not far behind with about two-and-a-half, depending on how you count the “Incorrect” implementation for background-attachment.

What stands out, though, is the support for experimental features.  Konqueror leads in that category with support for three features, Safari’s next with support for two-and-a-half, and then Firefox and Opera with two each.  The other browsers fail to even register in this area (again, not surprisingly).

See anything else interesting in the stats?  Post a comment.

The folks over at the Maxthon Blog have explained why the answer to the question of whether or not Greasemonkey scripts work in Maxthon is both “yes” and “no.”  However, after you read the post, you realize the real answer is “no.”  They just support similar functionality.

I just spotted 10 web browsers that aren’t IE, Firefox or Opera, and other than the fact that some of the “minor players” listed there actually kinda are IE and the fact that they put Netscape Navigator in their list, overall the list is a pretty good read, so check it out.

Firefox 3: Preview of the User Interface is almost two months old at this point, but it covers some of the upcoming UI changes in Firefox 3, otherwise known as “Gran Paradiso.”

Discontinuous selections allow you to select text from various parts on a page without respect for continuity, all at the same time. Private browsing allows you to put the browser into a state where none of the details of your browsing activities are stored locally on your computer. The bookmark overhaul will allow things like tagging, extended meta data search, synchronization and export into various formats. Furthermore, microformat detection will bring Operator-like functionality to the base browser.

For the full list along with some screenshots, be sure to head on over to Firefox 3: Preview of the User Interface.

It was a big week for web browsers. Let’s get caught up on the little stuff…

• Vince Liu recommends using IEs4Linux if you’re looking to install Internet Explorer on Linux.
• HTTPOnly cookie support has been added to Firefox.
• The Opera Desktop Team explains My Opera synchronization.
• Firefox 3 will resume downloads across sessions.
• The Register interviewed Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner (via Opera Watch) and CSS3 . Info interviewed Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie — see part 1 and part 2.
• Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World claims that Opera’s only real competitors at this point are Konqueror and Safari.
• A Fedora Forum user refers to Konqueror as ‘the soup nazi in terms of [code] compliance'.
• Opera Watch explains how to enable single key shortcuts in Opera.
• Hisham explains how to install an Internet Explorer warning infobar.
• az Sports Hub found an Arizona Cardinals theme for Firefox.
• Kathy Hughes explains how to avoid being prompted to login when browsing SharePoint sites in Firefox.
• NetSkinner can 'theme' almost any Palm OS web browser.
• NetSurf is an open-source web browser for RISC OS.
• Bryan Clark follows-up on his web browser home page findings.
• Web Browser CSS Support has a complete rundown on the CSS support of some of the major web browsers.

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