Browsersphere

It’s been a while, and there’s a lot to catch up on in the browsersphere.  This time around, let’s focus on all things Konqueror:

• Rozengain.com points us to KHTML on Windows part III, which shows how you can test your web designs in the KHTML rendering engine (used by Konqueror) on Windows using VMWare and a SUSE 10 image.
• According to this post on Digg and its first comment, a patch has been created for Konqueror that would allow for “plasmoids,” which apparently are somewhat equivalent to widgets in Opera.
• Blue GNU discusses the possibility of a KHTML/WebKit merge.
• Roderick Greening beckons the KHTML and WebKit folks to make a decision that will benefit the web and web users.
• Zack Rusin responds to Harri Porten as part of a debate that I won’t pretend to understand.
• A post at The Gay Bar (?) titled “Browsers Suck” says that Konqueror “is just ridiculously hideous, lacks the features Opera has.”  Not that the post has anything nice to say about Opera either.
• SensoryMetrics released the browser stats from its visitors and revealed that Konqueror was dead last in terms of usage.  A post the next day then lamented the omission of the browser in a speed test (via Web 3.0).

Tags: KHTML, Konqueror, Links, Market Share, Opera, Performance, Safari, WebKit, Widgets

Buckle up, ’cause this one should be a doozy. There’s been a lot going on in the browsersphere lately, so I’ll try and break it down by browser.

Firefox

• The Mozilla Store relaunched a couple weeks ago and now features many more goods, just in time for the back-to-school season.
• Asa Dotzler explains the difference between the old Firefox logo and the new.
• Simon Willison links to an “idiotic campaign” called Why FireFox is Blocked (that was eventually hacked).
• According to Guardian Unlimited, 75% of the people who download Firefox don’t become active users.
• Mozilla Links gives us a look at Firefox 3’s new download manager.
• Ars Technica wrote about becoming a part of the Firefox quality assurance process.
• Kubuntu 101 explains how to install Firefox 2.0.0.6 on Kubuntu 7.04.

Internet Explorer

• TechRepublic.com shares 10 keyboard shortcuts for tabbing around in Internet Explorer 7.
• The cookies-per-domain limit has been increased from 20 to 50 in IE7.

Maxthon

• You can get a Leopard Safari skin for Maxthon 2.x.
• Maxthon was discussed at the Mozilla China open house party on Saturday.

Opera

• Already, Opera 9.5 (aka Kestrel) is getting high marks in the area of performance.
• Opera is currently building up its developer relations team.

Safari

• Dave Hyatt has posted five detailed articles on WebCore rendering.

Others

• Sunrise is “a web browser for web developers.”
• 32bit Web Browser apparently “makes browsing the web fun and profitable.”
• In the Playstation Forum you can learn how to keep your son from getting into trouble with his PSP web browser.

Tags: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Links, Maxthon, Minor Players, Mozilla, Opera, Safari

This is the first in a series of posts that will provide a laundry list of links to articles and posts around the browsersphere that you’ll hopefully find interesting and/or useful.

• How to keep up to date with the Mozilla development - Henrik Gemal tells us how he stays up-to-date with the latest happenings in Mozilla development.
• Better animations in Firefox 3 - The Mozilla Labs Blog covers some of the advantages of the Animated PNG format over traditional animated GIFs. The format is already supported in Gran Paradiso, the development version of Firefox 3, in case you’re interested in checking it out.
• Dave Winer’s take on feed reading in Firefox - Myk Melez talks about some takeaways from Dave Winer’s visit to Mozilla Headquarters (of which not everyone was impressed) in terms of future support of RSS in Firefox.
• Opera has bigger market share than Firefox in Russia - Opera Watch reports that Opera has surpassed Firefox’s market share in Russia to become the 2nd most popular browser behind Internet Explorer.
• Opera and CSS3 support compared to the other browsers - Opera Watch discusses how implementation of CSS3 support in Opera compares to the implementation in other browsers.
• I don’t think that you understand! - Firefox3 Vulnerable by Design - Planet-Websecurity argues that Mozilla’s attempts to put an end to XSS attacks in Firefox 3 are fruitless and will only “open a can of worms.”

If you spot any other useful or interesting browser-related links around the web, please feel free to send me a link at browsersphere [at] gmail.com.

Tags: Development, Elsewhere, Firefox, Links, Mozilla, Opera, RSS, Security