Browsersphere

It’s that time again.  Since the last update, major versions of both Opera and Firefox have been released.  Only one of the two has been dominating in terms of Digg presence, though.

• Top 5 Web Browsers That Aren’t IE, Safari or Firefox - A site called OMGLists covers five web browsers that aren’t in what they consider the top three.  However, I’m not sure if I’d agree with calling a media player a web browser.
• Clarification about Firefox 3 system-killing performance - Some misunderstandings about Firefox 3 performance on Linux are addressed.
• Mozilla Firefox 3 Guinness World Record (Actual Page) - News of Mozilla’s attempt at a world record hits Digg.
• Ah, the Irony! Microsoft says Safari isn’t Safe on Windows - Discussion of a “carpet bombing” flaw in Safari.
• Safari Flaw Worse Than First Thought, Microsoft Warns - Moderate flaws in IE and Safari combine to make one critical flaw.
• Firefox to pass 20% before July? - Early speculation about Download Day’s impact on Firefox’s market share.
• Why Firefox 3 matters - Speed, memory use, phishing and malware protection and bookmark management are among the new features of Firefox 3 that make the browser “matter,” according to the target article.
• WSJ’s MOSSBERG: Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Is the Best Browser - Walt Mossberg gives a glowing review of the latest Firefox release.
• What’s new in Firefox 3? Check out this demo! - An overview of some of the new features in Firefox 3.
• Best Firefox Addon Ever?
• Beautiful glyphs - font rendering improvements in Firefox 3 - The system that renders text has been completely reworked in Firefox 3.
• Firefox 3 Download Day Pledges Hit 1 million
• Mozilla Announces Release Date for Firefox 3 — June 17th
• Opera 9.5 released
• Firefox 3 and Safari 4 in browser speed race
• Third Firefox 3 Release Candidate available for download
• A Field Guide to Firefox 3: A Full Inventory of the Goodness
• Web Browsers: Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers - Lifehacker tests the latest major web browsers on Windows (informally) and Firefox, Safari and Opera all win in various categories.
• Don’t forget to be part of Firefox’s Download Day!
• IE8 development: Microsoft should learn from Apple, Mozilla - The article argues that due to Microsoft’s “closed” approach to developing its browser, IE will always be trailing the other major players in terms of development.
• Mozilla prepares for Firefox 3 release and plans for 3.1 - ars technica covers add-on compatability in Firefox 3 and gives a quick preview of what’s in store for Firefox 3.1, codenamed “Shiretoko.”
• 15 Browser Add Ons. No One Knows Them All!
• The History of Firefox 1.0 to 3.0 in Screenshots
• Why You Should Download Firefox 3 Right Now - Over 10,000 diggs on this one.
• Power User’s Guide to Firefox 3
• Firefox Download counter
• Forbes: Why Firefox Matters
• The cake is a lie: IE team bakes a treat for Mozilla
• Firefox 3 launch a success: 8 million downloads in 24 hours
• Mozilla Hits Its Firefox 3 Download Goal…and then some!
• Firefox 3 mentioned on the Colbert Report
• And the fastest browser is… - A quick post on CNET News relays information from Zimbra that Safari is the fastest browser with Firefox not far behind.

Tags: Add-ons, Apple, Bugs, Comparisons, Digg, Digg Watch, Download Day, Extensions, Features, Firefox, Firefox 3, Firefox 3.1, Fonts, Forbes, History, Hybrids, IE8, Internet Explorer, Linux, Lists, Market Share, Microsoft, Opera, Performance, Previews, Rendering, Reviews, Safari, Screenshots, Security, Shiretoko, Walt Mossberg

Last time around, I didn’t get any feedback on the format of these “Around the Browsersphere” posts, so I’ll give a slightly more organized approach a try and we’ll see how it goes.

Camino

• Camino 1.6, which features a customizable toolbar search field, software update capabilities, a scrolling tab bar, etc., was released on the 17th.

Firefox

• Fuzzbot is a Firefox extention that is “useful for detecting embedded semantic information in web pages and performing actions on that semantic data” (via Microformats).
• Firefox Mastery discusses changing the fonts in Firefox.
• Asa Dotzler attempts to clear up some confusion around add-on installations and required logins.
• Chris Beard gives an update on what’s going on at Mozilla Labs.
• Popular extension Adblock Plus is now compatible with the Firefox 3 betas.
• Deb Richardson gave an excellent overview of bookmarks in Firefox 3 (and did a little damage once her post showed up on Digg).
• Find out how you can help beta test the new Mozilla.com redesign.
• Daniel Glazman figured out how to avoid extension version compatability in Firefox.
• Take a look at the Firefox 3 t-shirt design contest winner.
• Firefox’s market share continues to rise in Europe.
• Paul Kim discusses marketing plans as the release of Firefox 3 nears.
• Robert O’Callahan on the turned-off-by-default ActiveX hosting support in Firefox.
• Firefox was apparently spotted in outer space.

Flock

• Flock is apparently delivering on promises.

Internet Explorer

• IEBlog gives some tips on improving performance in Internet Explorer add-ons.
• Read up on HTML and DOM standards compliance in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1.

Konqueror

• Some improvements are being made to the error pages in Konqueror.

Maxthon

• Read up on the Maxthon Downloader.
• There’s a new IRC channel for Maxthon enthusiasts.
• Some felt there was perhaps some foul play involved when Maxthon won a Webware 100 award, but the Maxthon Blog certainly didn’t think so.
• One user’s in-depth tale of a switch from Maxthon to Firefox.

Mozilla

• You can download some really old Mozilla versions from the Mozilla Archive.
• Mozilla celebrated its 10th birthday last month (more here and here).

Opera and Opera Mini

• Opera was the first to 106 in the Acid3 test
• A version of Opera Mini has been created to work on Google’s Android platform.
• Indexing and searching in Opera 9.5 explained.
• With Daniel Goldman moving on to bigger and better things, the Opera Watch team is changing.
• David Storey has shed a little more light on Opera Dragonfly.

Safari

• Non-Safari users were none too pleased about some of Apple’s recent software update techniques (more links to evidence at Asa Dotzler’s blog).
• It looks like HTML5’s client-side database storage may be coming to Safari and the iPhone.
• Safari 3 was compared to Firefox 3 (from a Mac user’s perspective) over at Daring Fireball.
• WebKit hackers will be busy in this year’s Summer of Code.
• PayPal says they won’t be blocking Safari users from accessing their site.
• Some Safari-related stats would be better served more carefully worded

SeaMonkey

• Some SeaMonkey contributors recently got together for a Hack’n'Cook.

Minor Players

• There is a whole bunch of minor players (and the major ones, too) listed in “A wealth of browsers.”
• GreenBrowser is “lightest on resources” of the IE clones, according to one forum post.
• Interesting abstract about a tactile web browser for the visually disabled.
• Interested in a little web browser history trivia?

Tags: Add-ons, Beta, Camino, Digg, Extensions, Firefox, Flock, Internet Explorer, iPhone, Konqueror, Mac, Market Share, Maxthon, Microformats, Minor Players, Mozilla, Opera, Opera Mini, Releases, Safari, SeaMonkey, Stats, Web Standards, WebKit

It’s been a few months since we caught up with the popular web browser-related submissions on Digg, so let’s do something about that:

• John’s Blog: Apple Software Update and Safari - People didn’t take too kindly to Apple’s decision to bundle Safari with a recent iTunes update.
• Mozilla CEO says Apple’s Safari auto-update ‘wrong’ - Mozilla’s CEO was among them.
• Three Powerful Safari Features That Few People Use - The features include browsing and search snapback, URL path navigation and Web Inspector.
• Safari 3.1 on Windows: a true competitor arrives (seriously) - The post claims that Safari 3.1 on Windows has improved greatly over the Safari 3 beta that came out last summer.
• Apple Forbids Windows Users from Installing Safari - Some interesting licensing terms were found in the Safari license.
• Mozilla: Final Version of Firefox 3 Will Ship in June - This one speaks for itself.
• WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build - Announcement regarding WebKit’s race toward Acid3 compliance.
• 100% Organic Software -Your New “Green” Firefox Browser - Worth the read, even if only for the image of the Firefox chomping on the IE logo.
• Opera releases experimental public build that passes Acid3 - Yet more evidence of the race toward Acid3 compliance.
• When in Rome: engineering the Firefox 3 user experience - ars technica discusses some of the usability/visual identity-related changes in Firefox 3 with Alex Faaborg.
• Internet Explorer: A Browser Breaks - Some market share statistics regarding IE and Enterprise.
• Firefox Gains On Internet Explorer In Businesses - Along the same lines as the previous, only with a Firefox slant.
• Firefox 3 Beta 5 (Final beta) released! - News of the release of the latest Firefox 3 beta.
• Samsung Instinct: Browse Web Pages with Tilt Navigation - A look (in video form) at a web browser that lets you navigate using tilt movements.
• Opera Mini 4.1 beta is out - News of the release of the Opera Mini 4.1 beta.
• Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 faster on Mac OS X than Safari 3.1 - When it comes to JavaScript, at least.
• Incredible Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts You May Not Know About
• Latest iPhone Firmware Saves Pictures from Safari - Apparently you can save pictures directly from the iPhone browser as of the 1.2.0 beta firmware.
• Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best? - A review from PC World.

Tags: Acid3, Digg, Features, Firefox, Mac, Market Share, Minor Players, Mobile, Opera, Opera Mini, Releases, Reviews, Safari, Web Standards, WebKit

While I’ll still consider it one of the minor players in the browsersphere, given its popularity in other areas, it seems worthwhile to mention that according to Net Applications (via TechCrunch), the iPhone apparently now has a 0.09% web browser market share.

If we compare that number to the numbers I covered last month, that puts the iPhone at around nine-tenths of a percentage point behind Opera.

Tags: Market Share, Minor Players, Opera, Safari

Reza.com reports that according to recently released web browser statistics from Net Applications, all of the major web browsers seem to be at a standstill in terms of market share.  According to the stats, which cover the last couple of months, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari have all seen very slight losses in their share of the market.  The lone standout seems to be Opera, which apparently saw an increase from 0.87% to 0.99% from September to October of this year.

Tags: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Market Share, Opera, Safari, Stats

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

According to YugaTech, Internet Explorer will remaing king of the browsers.  Several of the reasons given hold water, such as the fact that IE comes bundled with all computers that ship with a Windows operating system installed.  However, there are a couple that are flat-out wrong, like:

You want online banking? More or less, you’ll need to fire up IE. You want to pay utility bills with your credit card online? IE again.

I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t remember the last time I had to use Internet Explorer for anything that required security, a credit card or paying a bill.

Maybe things are different in the Philippines.

Tags: Elsewhere, Internet Explorer, Market Share, Parity, Security

Firefox reached 400 million downloads today. Coverage on the milestone is available at Asa Dotzler’s blog, Mozilla Links, Spread Firefox and News.com.

Update: Coverage is now available on TechCrunch and Digg as well.

Tags: Firefox, Market Share, Stats

I found the following chart over at DesktopLinux.com (via Asa Dotzler):

According to their 2007 survey, Firefox is the far-and-away leader on desktop Linux, with 60% of the survey’s participants claiming the open source browser as their web browser of choice. Konqueror is a distant 2nd at 14%, followed by Opera at 12% and then all other browsers combined.

Tags: Firefox, Konqueror, Linux, Market Share, Opera, Stats

Opera Mini seems to be dominating the mobile web browser space these days (and even creeping up on some of the major players in the desktop market). Therefore, it seems fitting to dedicate a post to some of the coverage the little browser that could has gotten lately:

• The Opera Mini 4 beta was listed as part of PC Magazine’s “Cheap, Cool Campus Tech” (via Opera Watch).
• Russell Beattie calls the latest beta Opera’s “best yet” and even goes so far as to suggest that companies like MySpace, Facebook, Amazon.com and eBay could benefit from buying Opera outright.
• Phones with Opera Mini pre-installed, distribution partners, and more gives a complete rundown on the operators and carriers, handset manufacturers and distribution partners that have Opera Mini deals in one form or another.
• Opera Mini is now serving up over a billion pages per month.

For all the latest and greatest Opera Mini news, be sure to keep an eye on Opera Watch and the Opera Mini Blog. With all the buzz around the latest beta, you’re sure to get the latest coverage the quickest there, and in the greatest detail.

Tags: Market Share, Mobile, Opera Mini, Reviews, Stats