Posted on July 11th, 2008 | No Comments »
Since my last installment of Around the Browsersphere was posted back toward the beginning of May, there’s simply way too much going on to get all caught up without breaking things up a bit. Therefore, this eleventh edition will focus solely on the “minor players,” or the web browsers not named Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera or Safari.
Avant
Flock
Konqueror
Maxthon
SeaMonkey
Others
I’m hoping to catch up on the major players soon, so stay tuned.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Avant,
Ben Goodger,
Deepnet Explorer,
Extensions,
Features,
Firefox 2,
Firefox 3,
Flock,
Gecko,
Gecko 1.9,
IE7,
Internet Explorer,
Konqueror,
Linux,
Localization,
Mac,
Maxthon,
Maxthon 2,
Minor Players,
Off By One,
Opinion,
OS X,
Phishing,
Releases,
SeaMonkey,
Trident,
Ubuntu
Posted on July 9th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
In a few blog posts I’ve read recently, I’ve witnessed at least two backers of separate web browsers claiming that their respective browsers have an edge over Firefox because they don’t require all the add-ons Firefox does in order to behave the way a user expects them to.
First off, over at the Maxthon Blog last week, a Maxthon user was quoted as having said the following about Firefox 3:
I’m sure Firefox has add-ons that can compensate for its apparent lack of features but…my hard drive says it was nice knowing you but you have to go.
Given that the Maxthon Blog reminds me of a certain other source of information, I took the opinions there with a grain of salt. However, I soon spotted a similar refrain at a much more trustworthy source.
Opera Watch has an article titled Guardian: Forget Firefox - I’m going back to Opera for browsing and email which quotes The Guardian columnist Andrew Brown as having said the following of Firefox 3:
With the release of Firefox 3, I mounted a private celebration: I went back to using Opera 9.5 as my main browser. This wasn’t just perversity. Firefox without its add-ons is clearly inferior to Opera. Firefox with enough add-ons to make it really useful is very much slower.
Although the reasoning behind Firefox’s add-on architecture has been well-publicized by Firefox spokesmen like Asa Dotzler and there are obviously those out there who appreciate that architecture, it appears that the latest approach by those supporting other web browsers is to suggest that the add-ons approach to feature support contributes to both a lackluster default set of features and excessive bloat once the desired features have been added.
So what’s your take? Is Firefox’s add-on approach the right approach, or is it better to try and target a larger set of features out-of-the-box?
Tags:
Add-ons,
Asa Dotzler,
Comparisons,
Extensions,
Firefox,
Firefox 3,
Maxthon,
Maxthon Blog,
Opera,
Opera 9.5,
Opinion,
The Guardian,
Twitter
Posted on May 11th, 2008 | No Comments »
An interesting article over at Mobinode sheds some light on the current state of the browser wars in China. The following is an excerpt:
There is no doubt that Maxthon is still the No.1 Chinese browser in the market, but we can see that the competition is getting more intense. Tencent has its so called TT browser bundled with QQ for a long time, Firefox is more and more accepted by high educated Internet users; If you search for ["Browser" in Chinese], there are a couple of Chinese browsers which are good alternatives. I have tried one called EnjoyIE developed by a team based in Beijing. Even though the founder told me that he was doing this for his own interest, but the fact is that this browser has already got 2 millions users and for me it is working even faster than Maxthon.
The article also goes on to discuss the mobile space, in which an up-and-coming browser called UCWeb is showing promise with upwards of 25 million users.
Be sure to read the entire article, because it’s certainly interesting to see how the browser wars are shaping up overseas.
Tags:
Browser Wars,
China,
Competition,
EnjoyIE,
Firefox,
Maxthon,
Mobile,
TT Browser,
UCWeb
Posted on May 11th, 2008 | 5 Comments »
There are some rumblings in the browsersphere as of late with a Firefox 3 RC1 release right around the corner, news that the latest service pack for XP isn’t compatible with a pre-installed IE8 Beta 1, etc. So let’s get caught up.
General
Avant
Firefox
Flock
Internet Explorer
Konqueror
Maxthon
Opera
Opera Mini
Safari
Minor Players
Web Standards
Holy cow. That’s a lot of information. The browsersphere is a bustling place. Hopefully you found something useful in all that.
Tags:
Acid3,
Avant,
BigScreenLive,
Branding,
CSS3,
Dave Hyatt,
Deepfish,
Epiphany,
Extensions,
Firefox,
Flock,
GeneNET,
History,
HTML 5,
Hydra Browser,
IE7,
IE8,
KHTML,
Konqueror,
Leet Browser,
Linux,
Mac,
Maxthon,
NetWorker,
Opera,
OWB,
Reviews,
Safari,
Scope,
Security,
Shiira,
Spoken Web,
Sunrise,
Vulnerabilities,
W3C,
WebGoo,
WebKit
Posted on May 11th, 2008 | No Comments »
Maxthon 2.1 (officially version 2.1.0.1870) was released on Thursday, May 8th. The new release features improved stability, better performance and “hundreds of bug fixes,” according to Maxthon Resources.
If you’re interested in the full rundown on all the changes in the new release, TechConnect Magazine has a pretty good summary.
You can download the new release from maxthon.com.
Tags:
Maxthon,
Releases
Posted on April 28th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Thanks to Tweet Scan, I can get a semi-real time feel for what’s going on in the browsersphere. So what are people Tweeting about?
And just as a heads-up, I’m interested in following folks on Twitter that are browserphiles like myself, so drop a comment (or email at browsersphere [at] gmail [dot] com) and let me know who you are on there if you don’t mind being “followed.” And I’m Bernzilla on there, for anyone who might be interested.
Tags:
Beta,
Firefox,
Internet Explorer,
Konqueror,
Maxthon,
Opera,
Opera Mini,
Safari,
Twitter
Posted on April 28th, 2008 | No Comments »
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
Flock
Internet Explorer
Konqueror
Maxthon
Mozilla
Opera and Opera Mini
Safari
SeaMonkey
Minor Players
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
Posted on March 9th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
With at least a couple more Firefox 3 betas on the way, the release of IE8 Beta 1 and the official release of the Acid3 test, there’s a lot going on in the browsersphere these days. Let’s jump right into it…
- First off, it’s now March, so Netscape Navigator is officially dead (but do you really believe that?).
- The Opera Desktop Team has released what they are calling a Plugin Milestone Build.
- I think this guy may be more into web browsers than I am.
- Mozilla’s been getting some fan mail.
- Opera has made the switch back to Google for search in Opera Mini and Opera Mobile (see a screenshot of the new Opera Mini start page). There’s more on this over at TechCrunch as well.
- Sebastiaan de With (remember him?) thinks that the Firefox 3 interface is going nowhere.
- A forum post pointed me toward another minor player called Acoo Browser, which is another browser built on Trident.
- CyberNet claims that Avant Browser 11 will be the best version of the browser yet.
- Ben Moore seems to have mixed feelings about some of the changes made between Maxthon v1 and v2.
- sKatterBrainZ claims that “there’s nothing in Safari that is truly innovative or unique to the world of web browsing.”
- Somewhat contradictory to that, Ian Hixie, the author of the Acid3 test, seems pretty impressed with how quickly the Safari/WebKit team has responded to the issues uncovered by Acid3 (I’ve covered this here as well).
- Ian Clifton had some interesting points to make about the Internet Explorer team’s original stance on standards support in the forthcoming IE8.
- microformatique points out that the IE team has used the hAtom microformat to implement their WebSlices feature.
- CyberNet says the SpaceTime 3D Browser is “mostly for fun” and shows off a video demo of the interesting browser.
- Firefox 3 Beta 3 has replaced Firefox 2 as the default browser in Alpha 6 of Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
- Opera Mini users browsed over 1.8 million web pages back in January.
- Kevin Yank says that table-based layouts will be “the next big thing” (via Simon Willison).
- Daniel Glazman wrote a CSS3 Selector test suite and posted the results for Firefox 3.0b4pre (Minefield), Safari 3.0.4 for Windows, Opera 9.23 and Internet Explorer 7. He was impressed to see that the latest builds of Opera pass all of his tests.
- Opera Twitters (via Opera Watch).
- Myk Melez talks about what it’s like to sheriff for Mozilla.
- Opera Mini users can now zoom images.
- Mitchell Baker has posted about the Mozilla Steering Committee.
- Jesse Ruderman created a Greasemonkey script for those who spend a lot of time looking at the Firefox tinderbox.
- Opera’s Charles McCathieNevile, Mozilla’s Brendan Eich and Microsoft’s Chris Wilson will square off at SXSW tomorrow in a panel called “Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again?”
- It doesn’t look like many CSS3 features have made their way into IE8 yet.
- Konqueror 4 for Windows has been reviewed.
- Someone decided to show off how they made a web browser with Visual Basic 2008 in under three minutes on YouTube.
- Okiwi is a free web browser for the Nintendo DS.
- An online poll asking what the greatest web browser ever is has some interesting options from which to choose.
- A C|Net podcast covers, among other things, BMWs that feature full-blown in-dash web browsers.
- Dan Gayle digs Lynx.
- Auto Web Browser “will consult the search engines from a user defined list, download the pages to your computer, filter and analyze them and then it will automatically surf further, downloading other potentially interesting pages using the links from the meaningful part of the relevant documents.”
- The Off By One Web Browser “may be the world’s smallest and fastest web browser with full HTML 3.2 support.”
- The WorldWideWeb browser (which was later renamed Nexus) turned 17 years old last month.
- You can view your Firefox web browser history visually with ThumbStrip.
- Firefox, Flock, Internet Explorer, Maxthon, Opera and Safari are nominated in the Browsing category of the Webware 100.
- Anne van Kesteren covers some of the “evil” things about IE8.
Amazingly enough, there’s a lot more to post about, but that should hold you over for a little bit. I’m interested in hearing if Browsersphere visitors are more interested in somewhat random links like this or if it would be preferable to have the links broken down by the web browser to which they correspond. If you have any thoughts on that, please leave a comment.
Tags:
Acid3,
Add-ons,
Avant,
Beta,
CSS,
Extensions,
Firefox,
Flock,
Internet Explorer,
Konqueror,
Linux,
Lynx,
Maxthon,
Microformats,
Minor Players,
Mozilla,
Netscape,
Opera,
Opera Mini,
Safari,
Trident,
Ubuntu,
Video,
Web Standards,
YouTube
Posted on February 19th, 2008 | 1 Comment »
Believe it or not it’s been over three months since the last edition of Around the Browsersphere, so we’re long overdue. Let’s get to it…
- Mozilla turned ten last month.
- Camino 1.5.5, a maintenance release, was made available a couple weeks ago, and Camino 1.6 Beta 2 was released a couple weeks before that.
- Add-on developers need to get their butts in gear and start updating their extensions to work with Firefox 3, primarily because the browser will be out in a couple months and secondarily because I don’t like using the Minefield builds without my favorite extensions
- The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog points out that over 600 million Firefox add-ons have been downloaded, and that in anticipation of the release of Firefox 3, addons.mozilla.org is being redesigned.
- The Opera Desktop Team has been experimenting with document.all cloaking and is giving users more control over tab-related behavior (more on that here) in the latest builds.
- SeaMonkey 1.1.8 was released earlier this month.
- The Safari team has added support for the new W3C Selectors API and appears to be busy chipping away at bugs related to the Acid3 test.
- The WebKit team has been spending some time focused on SVG performance improvements and a native, Cairo-based Windows port of the rendering engine.
- The forthcoming Opera Mobile 9.5 (not 9.0) is twice as fast as Opera Mobile 8.65 and four times faster than Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile. Screenshots and videos of the new release have been appearing quite a bit.
- Alex Faaborg has provided a second glimpse at the icons to be used in Firefox 3 (you can see the full sheet of icons here). Apparently the throbber is still up in the air.
- Firefox has about:config, now Opera Mini has opera:config.
- Glubble is a parental controls suite for the Firefox browser (via Asa Dotzler).
- Will IE8 really pass the Acid2 test?
- Cross-window messaging is coming to Firefox 3 (via Simon Willison).
- VnTutor has a list of 10 hidden features of Konqueror.
- The creator of KHTML, Lars Knoll, has been promoted to VP of engineering at Trolltech.
- Everyone has a pet feature.
- Take a look at Maxthon’s split-view feature in action.
Tags:
Add-ons,
Camino,
Extensions,
Firefox,
Internet Explorer,
KHTML,
Konqueror,
Maxthon,
Mozilla,
Opera,
Opera Mini,
Previews,
Releases,
Safari,
SeaMonkey,
Web Standards,
WebKit
Posted on November 11th, 2007 | No Comments »
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