Browsersphere

Google has unleashed extensions and their bookmark sync feature on stable builds of Google Chrome today.  If you’ll remember, the bookmark sync feature was enabled in Windows beta builds back in November, and support for extensions was announced for both Windows and Linux beta builds last month.  It looks like users of stable Chrome builds on Linux and Mac may need to wait a bit, still, however:

To those using Google Chrome on Linux, extensions are enabled on the beta channel. And for those using Google Chrome for Mac, hang tight — we’re working on bringing extensions, bookmark sync and more to the beta soon.

If you’re on Windows, you can either wait to be updated to the new build automatically over the course of the next week, or you can manually upgrade if you want to get your hands on the new features right away.

Once you’ve got the new build, you can head over to Google Chrome Extensions to start extending your browser.  Or you can head on over to the Google Chrome Blog to find out more about what’s included in the new build.

Tags: Beta, Bookmark Sync, Chrome, Extensions, Features, Google, Google Chrome, Linux, Mac, Releases

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

An article written nine months ago, The genius behind Google’s browser, goes in-depth with the main programmer behind Google Chrome’s v8 JavaScript engine, Lars Bak.  Although the article’s title and certain parts of the story perhaps give a little too much credit to one man (there’s a lot more to Google’s browser than its JavaScript engine), it’s a very interesting read nonetheless.  The following is a short excerpt from the article:

Many computer programs are built using previous versions, or related code, but V8 was started from scratch – a blank slate. When I meet [Kasper] Lund later in my Denmark trip, he takes great delight in underscoring this fact: “It’s the purest form of coding there is.” [Lars] Bak clearly agrees – as Lund speaks, he can’t stop smiling.

Beyond detailing the story behind v8’s development in Denmark, the article gives a personal glimpse at its key creator, something his Wikipedia article doesn’t quite achieve.

If you’re interested in the developers behind the browsers or browser-related technology you probably take for granted on a daily basis, I’d definitely give the well-written The genius behind Google’s browser a read.

Tags: Chrome, Developers, Development, Google, Google Chrome, JavaScript Engines, Kasper Lund, Lars Bak, V8

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

Over at the Official Google Blog, Google announced today that they are releasing “a fresh take on the browser” tomorrow which they have dubbed Google Chrome.  Here are the choice tidbits from the article (at least from my perspective):

• The release will be a beta version and will be released in more than 100 countries.
• Google “started from scratch” and used the “best elements out there.”
• The browser is apparently clean and fast.
• The browser supports tabs, and each tab is isolated in such a way that a crash in one shouldn’t affect the others.
• Google created a new JavaScript engine for the browser, which they call “V8.”
• Google is working on versions for Mac and Linux, but it doesn’t sound like they will be ready to download tomorrow.
• The browser is based off of both WebKit and Firefox, and will be released as open source, just like they are.

There are a few other details already available on Wikipedia:

• The address bar will have auto-completion features (apparently called “omnibox”).
• Web apps can be launched in their own web browser window with very little surrounding chrome.
• It is integrated with Google Gears.

Be sure to drop by the Official Google Blog tomorrow if you feel like giving the beta a test drive.  Not that I really needed to tell you that, since I’m sure every single browserphile running Windows will be downloading it tomorrow and seeing what it’s all about.

Tags: Beta, Features, Firefox, Google, Google Chrome, JavaScript, Open Source, V8, WebKit

Google Doctype was released on Wednesday.  It has been described as follows:

Google Doctype is an open encyclopedia and reference library. Written by web developers, for web developers. It includes articles on web security, JavaScript DOM manipulation, CSS tips and tricks, and more. The reference section includes a growing library of test cases for checking cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility.

This is certainly relevant to web browser compatibility, web development, etc., so I figured I’d post it here.  The corresponding video, which features Mark Pilgrim, is full of interesting info as well.  Toward the end, he mentions that the main browsers on which they focus their attention are the “tier 1″ browsers, namely Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera.

Tags: Compatibility, Firefox, Google, Internet Explorer, Mark Pilgrim, Opera, Safari, Web Development

I fired up Firefox 3 Beta 5 this morning to find that a new version, version 0.47, of the useful (to me, anyway) Google Reader Notifier extension was available.  As reported in the changelog, it is compatible with the latest Firefox 3 beta.

Tags: Add-ons, Beta, Extensions, Firefox, Google

I’m back to using Firefox 2 for the time being, but I just noticed via the changelog for the Google Reader Notifier extension for Firefox that it is now compatible with the latest Firefox 3 beta, Beta 3:

The extension is now firefox3 3.0b3 compatible. Thanks for Ethan Breder for his great help.

Be sure and grab the update if you haven’t been notified of the new version automatically.

Tags: Add-ons, Extensions, Firefox, Google

I ran across two lists of Firefox alternatives tonight, the first of which is War of the Web Browsers: The Underdogs.  It covers Avant, Flock and Opera, while Download Dispatch, Weekend Edition covers those plus Maxthon and a browser I hadn’t yet heard of: Slim Browser.

Mozilla needn’t be too worried, though.  As this Digg post points out, Firefox still tops Google’s list.

Tags: Avant, Digg, Firefox, Flock, Google, Maxthon, Minor Players, Mozilla, Opera

In an article titled What Are Google’s Browser Plans?, TechCrunch touches on Google’s tie to Maxthon, the browser in which Google invested nearly a million dollars earlier this year.

The main reason I mention this is that Maxthon is among the many browsers I intend to cover here at Browsersphere (and it’s always interesting to think about where the shoe will drop when it comes to Google and the web browser market).

To get us started thinking about Maxthon in particular, I should point out that users of that browser can now download Microformats Button, the Maxthon equivalent of Firefox’s Operator extension.

I should also point out that there is apparently a Maxthon Lovers Group on Facebook, and that there will be a worldwide Maxthon skin contest starting in the coming weeks.

Tags: Extensions, Google, Maxthon, Rumors, Themes and Skins