Around the Browsersphere #13
Posted on December 17th, 2009 | 1 Comment »
I debated whether or not I should skip ahead to #14, but I’m not really that superstitious.
General
- SitePoint mentions Firefox, IE and Chrome as “three important browsers to watch” heading into 2010.
- The Windows Club lists 25 (or 26?) web browsers for Windows, many of which have been covered here to some extent.
- Someone important in the history of web browsers, rendering engines, etc., has retired.
- Apparently IE and Firefox users are more likely to click on ads than Safari and Chrome users.
Chrome
- The stable version of Chrome was recently updated to address some crashes.
- As previously mentioned on Twitter, Chrome has overtaken Safari in browser market share, moving into 3rd place overall.
- Though not surprising at all, Chrome extensions are popular with users and developers.
- Google wants you to give Chrome for Christmas.
Firefox
- Apparently envious of Firefox’s use of national park names as codenames, the Thunderbird team has started using the names of beaches as codenames. No telling if they’ll take their codenames as seriously as Firefox does, though.
- Firefox 3.5.6 was released this week.
- You can take a look at some of Firefox’s top startup bugs, which, once fixed, could improve startup time by 10% in some cases, and up to 25% in at least one case.
- Someone at Mozilla Links has a conspiracy theory about the Red Panda that recently showed up on Bing.
- There’s a Firefox Mobile video on YouTube that needs a little less talk and a little more action, but it’s interesting nonetheless (via Web Browser News and Reviews).
Internet Explorer
Opera
- Opera’s CEO has some thoughts on the way things played out with Microsoft’s antitrust case in Europe.
- Opera Mini 5 beta 2 is now available in 26 languages.
The Minor Players
- Avant Browser 11.7 Build 42 was released on Friday.
- AOL Explorer, Maxthon, K-Meleon, Flock, Avant, Sleipnir, and Slim Browser are among the IE alternatives listed in Browsing the browsers: Internet Explorer’s rivals (most likely based on this news).
- TheWorld Browser features a “multi-threaded frame” and “web page mute,” which allows you to disable all sound on a web page via one button.
- Someone made a Korean “translation” for Maxthon.
- This thread clears up why you might see multiple processes running when you use Maxthon (though you can probably guess).
- A YouTube video brought my attention to CometBird, which appears to be a close cousin of Firefox that not many people know about.
- Sunrise, a “web browser for web developers,” has reached version 2.0.2.
- A browser named Vinageer is claimed to be the “third most used web browser in Australia,” and yet the only articles I can find on it appear to be written in French.
- As one might expect, the Flock folks are excited to be included in Microsoft’s coming “browser ballot.”
- Maxthon reached the 300 million download milestone on November 28th.
- Skyfire Mobile Browser 1.5 was released last week with improvements made to their video support. You can see a short video explaining the new improvements on Vimeo.