Browsersphere

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

To borrow from Pink Floyd, is there anybody out there?

Ironically enough, Browsersphere has been neglecting the browsersphere a little like Microsoft neglected Internet Explorer earlier this decade.  After all, my last post was way back in June.  However, unlike Microsoft, it isn’t the competition that has jolted this site back to life.  On the contrary, sites like Avencius and Twitter accounts like @AltBrowser have actually made me feel a little bit better about the whole ordeal, knowing that at least someone is out there covering the browsersphere in my absence.  Truth is, the site went dark out of pure laziness on my part.  Well, that and the fact that I’ve been pretty consumed by another project.  Nevertheless, I’m back, and after catching up a bit on what’s been going on, my first order of business is to share a little bit about what’s been tweeted in the browsersphere lately.  So let’s get to it.

• Looks like @ryan45419 is working on his own web browser named iSurfWeb.
• @humancell points out that Firefox and Safari accounted for 79% of all web vulnerabilities in the first half of this year.
• @ByteEye appears to be working on its own web browser as well.
• @erichthewebguy is happy to be seeing Firefox used more and more on TV these days.
• As someone who appears to have given up on Firefox for Chrome on the Mac, @lee_cummings may have coined a new term: “nozilla.”
• @UKTJPR wonders if anyone is willing to give up their web browser for a week.
• @DevJonny points out SRWare Iron, a browser created with the Chromium source code that apparently doesn’t have all the privacy concerns of Chrome.
• @BemusedWolf, who has come up with some colorful names for Firefox and Internet Explorer, might be interested in SRWare Iron.
• @SuperDuperCam had some colorful words to share about Firefox as well.
• @BrowserNews, the creator of the Dolphin3D browser, is touting it as “a better web browser.”
• @mrtech points us to a blog entry about what the Firefox team is doing about crashes and startup time.
• @usingpond wonders if Blackbird, which sells itself as an African American browser, is for real.
• @msacks makes reference to the Lobo browser, which is all-Java and uses a rendering engine called Cobra.
• @waynehastings and @deanq appear to be pleased with Chrome for Mac OS X, with the later giving a parting shot to both Firefox and Safari.
• @chrispy2004 appears to be displeased, however, claiming that Chrome for Mac OS X is the slowest browser he’s used in a long time.
• @GameFreak4321 doesn’t seem all that pleased either.
• @JasonTselentis thanks the “Facebook browser” for finally taking away Internet Explorer’s market share.
• @KileyG wonders what the threshold is for the number of open tabs before someone becomes unproductive.
• @muhanov discovers and shares the fact that the Android web browser doesn’t support FTP.
• @ganetsky wonders how it’s possible that no one has created a web browser named “Bowser.”  Good question!  Though to be fair, some people have referred to IE as the “Bowser” browser.
• @Andrew_James claims to be in “web browser heaven.”  I wonder if Netscape’s there.
• Both @jamienguyenle and @jinkhet refer to Chrome using sexual terms.
• @nicnab asserts that Firefox’s remembering of per-site zoom levels is enough to keep him hooked on said browser.
• @ConduitYourSite wonders what the best Twitter lists for browsers and web-related tools are.
• As I often have, @alex_crawshaw finds it ironic that you need to use a web browser in order to download an alternative one.
• @propstm wonders if IE6 users even realize what they’re missing out on, using such an out-of-date web browser.
• @derickthemacguy says Google Chrome looks like “a Fisher Price version of a web browser.”
• @souravghosh says that Mosaic “is considered the first browser to make the Internet easily accessible to non-techies.”
• @C_Hernandez_ heard that Camino is the fastest browser for Macs and apparently is going to check it out.
• @omegatron laments, as do many I’m sure, the fact that his mom doesn’t know the difference between a web browser and a web page.
• @Allyssen points us to a split-screen browser for the iPhone called iNetDual.
• @ericylai recommends the Bolt browser, which also happens to support a split-screen mode (check out the demo), for those tired of the default Blackberry browser.
• @IHtherapies finds KidZui, a web browser targeted at kids, very cool.
• Even if it’s “a bit slow,” Firefox is still @flyfiddlesticks‘ favorite browser.
• @abhishek tweeted about the Facebooker browser, which is currently available as a release candidate.
• @juandelpozo makes reference to Infinity Web Browser, a web browser for Android.
• @va3stl gave Midori a try.
• @wordtree likes the idea of trying a text-based web browser like Lynx.
• @tr4st recommends Lunascape, the “world’s first and only triple engine browser,” to web developers.
• @sphereinabox wants to know what mobile web browsers, other than Safari, support offline storage.  If geek.com is to believed, it looks like Fennec does, too.
• And finally, @rodhilton loves that Ubuntu lets him use a web browser while the operating system is still installing.

That’s it for Twitter Watch #3.  Believe it or not, Twitter Watch #2 was so long ago that I was still using Summize to search for tweets.

Before I end this post, since we’re on the subject of Twitter, I should mention that Browsersphere is now on Twitter as well.  Just follow @Browsersphere for real-time updates, links to new site content, etc.

Tags: Android, Avencius, Blackberry, Blackbird, Bolt, Chrome, Chromium, Cobra, Dolphin3D, Facebook, Facebooker, Fennec, Firefox, Google Chrome, iNetDual, Infinity, Internet Explorer, iPhone, iSurfWeb, KidZui, Lobo, Lunascape, Lynx, Mac, Microsoft, Midori, Mosaic, Netscape, Performance, Privacy, Rendering, Rendering Engines, Safari, Split-screen, SRWare Iron, Summize, Tabs, TV, Twitter, Ubuntu, Vul, Vulnerabilities

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

As usual, web browsers are getting plenty of coverage over on Digg.  Let’s take a look at some of the hot topics over the past month.

• GStreamer brings HTML5 video support to GTK/WebKit – The GTK port of the WebKit HTML rendering engine has gained support for the HTML5 video element.
• First look: Firefox 3 beta 2 officially released – ars technica takes a look at the latest Firefox beta.
• Internet Explorer 8 passes ACID2 test! – An internal Microsoft build of the browser to be called IE8 passed the Acid2 test.
• Firefox 3.0 Beta 2 Is A Win For Linux – FOSSwire drools over the GTK support in the latest Firefox beta.
• Mozilla Announces Weave – “This project will be known as Weave and it will focus on finding ways to enhance the Firefox user experience, increase user control over personal information, and provide new opportunities for developers to build innovative online experiences.”
• Firefox 3 Beta 2 in Ubuntu 7.10 – How to get the latest, bleeding edge version of Firefox on Ubuntu without waiting for it to be distributed to you.
• Hands on with Mozilla Weave: Personalize your own cloud – links to ars technica’s take on the ambitious new project from Mozilla.
• 5 Things You’ll Love About Firefox 3 – links to ComputerWorld’s take on the latest Firefox beta.
• Sad Milestone: AOL To Discontinue Netscape Browser Development – “sad” being a very, very relative term.
• NEW! Firefox Live Support Chat! – “fill in the fields and you will be answered in less then 20 seconds.”
• How to surf the web even if Internet Explorer is disabled – “how to use the Help function from basic Windows programs to surf the internets.”
• Barclays says no to Firefox – Barclays displays yet another sad example of misinformed browser sniffing.
• Chris Mills on “Why Opera?” – Opera’s developer relationship manager on why designers and developers should consider choosing Opera.
• Mozilla Gets a New CEO ahead of Firefox 3 – Meet John Lilly – “Mozilla COO John Lilly will take over the CEO position and plans to make a strong Firefox 3 release his top priority.”

Tags: Digg, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, WebKit