Browsersphere

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

• Any web browser review that uses phrases like “donkey’s years,” “boffins” and “heebie-jeebies” is worth a read, isn’t it?
• Jeremy Keith has written a good summary of some of the more recent innovations in web browsers, including support for CSS3, HTML 5, ARIA, etc.
• TechRadar.com has compiled a list of the top eight alternative web browsers, which includes a few interesting minor players I hadn’t heard of before.
• The Washington Post reports that hackers are starting to focus their sights on Firefox and Safari rather than their usual victim, Internet Explorer (via Digg).

Avant

• One user thinks Avant is brilliant; another thinks it’s the worst browser.

Firefox

• Andy Atkinson demonstrates how CSS3 rounded corner rendering has improved from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3.
• Something for those who like mozzarrella on their Firefox…I guess?
• Be mindful of your warranty in Firefox 3.
• The Firefox Extension Guru’s Blog, which just celebrated its 2nd birthday, has some tips on how to remove stuff from the Firefox 3 UI.
• Michael Kaply shares his thoughts on Firefox branding.
• A Firefox screencast contest will kick off on May 19th (via Mozilla Developer News).
• The Firefox 3 themes now have names.
• Firefox had an encounter with Tron Guy at ROFLcon.
• The Firefox team is currently accepting last-minute changes to and suggestions for the Firefox 3 credits.
• Work on the next version of Gecko appears to be starting to pick up steam.
• Asa Dotzler cleared up some misconceptions about a Vietnamese Language Pack at the For the Record blog.
• Read up on site identification in Firefox 3.
• Firefox pulled in quite a win in LinuxJournal’s Readers’ Choice Awards.
• An Opera user believes that “Mozilla has vastly improved their product [in Firefox 3 Beta 5].”
• Firefox market share continues to climb in Europe (via Digg).

Flock

• “Flock is the baddest ass browser for internet losers.”
• Flock won a webby for social networking.

Internet Explorer

• One user got some help implementing a liquid faux column layout in IE7.
• Dariusz Siedlecki thinks that IE8’s “rendering model is…too precise.”
• IE8 will feature per-user ActiveX.
• Lifehacker walks you through how to get Firefox’s “best” features in Internet Explorer.
• Security researcher Aviv Raff has uncovered a 0day vulnerability in Internet Explorer but has hidden it somewhere on his blog rather than disclosing its details outright (via Digg).

Konqueror

• KDelicious adds del.icio.us functionality to the right-click menu in Konqueror.
• Don’t confuse Konqueror with Conkeror.
• Some information on running Python scripts directly from Konqueror.
• Apparently the WordPress visual editor doesn’t work correctly in Konqueror.
• It sounds like the spellchecking in Konqueror (and KDE) leaves something to be desired.
• Perhaps it goes without saying, but some KHTML and Konqueror bugs have been being dealt with.
• There are some comparisons between Konqueror and Firefox over in an Ubuntu forum.
• Neither Opera nor Konqueror got much love in the Readers’ Choice Awards 2008 (Linux).
• One user claims that Konqueror is excellent for dealing with cookies.
• Epiphany will be following in the footsteps of Konqueror and switching to WebKit.

Maxthon

• One user ponders why there are so many more Firefox ads than Maxthon ads.
• Disabling Ad Hunter can help with cookie-related problems in Maxthon and maybe others as well.
• It sounds like, in some cases at least, Maxthon’s ad-blocking may be too good.
• Maxthon’s support for cached images may not have parity with Opera.
• If you’re interested in the history of Maxthon, one blog has a pretty good synopsis.

Opera

• The latest Opera snapshots have gotten more efficient thanks to something called profile-guided optimization.
• Opera announced a specification for File I/O access in widgets.
• Opera 9.5 Beta 2 was recently reviewed by ars technica (via Digg).

Opera Mini

• The Opera Mini 4 servers were recently upgraded with some improvements, specifically around RSS feed support.
• Opera Mini 4.1 is scheduled to be released this coming week (and there’s a summary of the new features listed at Opera Watch).

Safari

• Safari tripled its market share on Windows in April (although the statistics in question have been brought up for debate).

Minor Players

• A forum post points to two lightweight browsers, Scope and NetWorker, the former of which claims to take up only 250k of disk space.
• HydraBrowser is another IE shell that apparently utilizes user interface elements similar to those in Office 2007 products.
• Watch the ACE browser as its implemented in Visual Studio 2008.
• There’s a heated debate on whether a Zune browser would be possible or usable.
• Leet Browser allows you to multitask with non-gaming applications from within your game (via Digg).
• GeneNET Web Browser is “hack-proof” and there is a screenshot available.
• Sunrise is billed as a web browser for web developers and utilizes the KHTML rendering engine (see screenshot).
• BigScreenLive is geared toward the elderly and “computer-phobics.”
• WebGoo 4 is 70% faster.  Than what?  I couldn’t tell you.
• Have a look at the web browser on the HTC Touch Diamond (Blip.tv video).
• OWB is a web browser for CE devices that is based on KHTML.
• Midori is another browser billed as “lightweight” and it utilizes WebKit under the hood.  There’s a pretty good review of the browser and its potential over at Associated Content.
• Read about how Shiira has plans to overtake Safari on Macs.
• Someone spotted a browser called DeepFish in a YouTube video.
• IBM is working on a voice-controlled web browser called Spoken Web.

Web Standards

• The WHATWG wiki has a list (or an attempt at a list) of all known implementations of HTML 5 in today’s web browsers.
• Writing web browsers can apparently lead you to hate the W3C with a “purple throbbing passion.”
• Dave Hyatt implemented support for CSS Gradients in WebKit in about four days (via Daniel Glazman).  Support for CSS Reflections (web developers are going to go nuts with this one) and CSS Masks has been implemented as well.
• Read a bit about “CSS Qualified Selectors” and why they’re a pain in the butt (via CSS3 . Info).
• Mark Pilgrim wrote a particularly scathing article concerning Mozilla’s approach to the Acid3 test, which is perhaps best observed in blog posts from Mike Shaver and David Baron.  It’s an interesting read; form opinions as you will.

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

I watched as the counter at the Opera Dragonfly website slowly counted down toward zero this morning.  At around 9am Pacific time, the site was transformed to include all the details about Opera Dragonfly.  From what I’ve read so far, it sounds like Dragonfly is definitely alpha quality, but certain features, such as its ability to debug phones or TVs remotely, have made the release notable nonetheless.

There are many more features still planned for the new developer tools, according to the new site:

The initial alpha release is just the beginning. Opera Dragonfly has a fully featured road map, including support for editing of CSS, JavaScript and the DOM, a single window mode, improved JavaScript thread handling, XHR and HTTP monitoring, improved keyboard navigation, and translation into a number of languages.

Head on over to the Opera Dragonfly site for all the details.

Tags: Add-ons, Opera, Releases, Tools

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?

• Trevor Manternach is amused that Firefox 3’s Crash Reporter crashed.
• Sean Marler (naturally) switched photo sharing apps before switching browsers.
• Bob K Mertz doesn’t regret switching from Firefox to Opera.
• Christine Taylor hasn’t had the best of luck with Firefox’s password management.
• timbevil installed a Twitter add-on for Maxthon.
• Jean-Pierre Avakian insists that Twitter sucks with Konqueror.
• Macluvaosx is splitting browser duties between the Blackberry browser and Opera Mini.
• Corvida claims to have uninstalled IE8 10 minutes after upgrading to it.
• Darren Woodley notes that Netflix’s entire site is broken in IE8.
• Nathan Clark is annoyed that Safari keeps losing (eating?) his cookies.

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

This comes verbatim from Anne van Kesteren, a web standards guru who is currently employed by Opera:

Is your (mobile) browser ready for the Web? The W3C “Mobile Web Test Suites Working Group” has been working on a Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers that tests technologies they expect to be relevant in the next two years or so. The test is in spirit similar to the Acid tests, though it contains tests for features that are already widely supported, but are still in draft status from a specification perspective. Think of XMLHttpRequest, the HTML canvas element, Media Queries, Selectors, contenteditable, et cetera.

As mentioned in their blog post, they are also still accepting test input from everyone who’d like to write a test. So if you didn’t get your pet bug/feature in Acid3, now might be the time.

For more information, head on over to the W3C Questions and Answers Blog, or take a look at the actual Web Compatibility Test for Mobile Browsers.

Tags: Mobile, Opera, Web Standards

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

From The Opera Team, via email today:

Hi Folks,

We are pleased to announce the release of Opera 9.5 beta 2. This is a culmination of many hours of engineering and QA work improving the browser and rendering engine.  We have also improved compatibility on many major Web sites through a combination of rendering improvements and developer support work.

Here’s an overview of some of the latest improvements:
- Faster – Our new beta is quicker to start, faster at loading Web pages, and better at running your favorite Web applications.
- Quick Find – Now you can quickly and easily search the text on any site you’ve visited before by typing a few words from the site into the address bar.
- Opera Link ready – Use Opera Link technology <http://link.opera.com>  to connect your Opera Speed Dial, Bookmarks and Personal Bar between Opera 9.5 beta and Opera Mini 4 or 4.1 beta <http://www.operamini.com> — the free browser for your mobile phone.

You can download Opera 9.5 beta 2 at <http://www.opera.com/products/desktop/next/> to try out the above features and other new features in this release.

Regards,

The Opera team

Some of the more technical information about the release is available at the Desktop Team’s blog.

Tags: Beta, Opera, Releases

Thanks to Twitter, I just noticed that the Opera Dragonfly website now has some additional information about what it is and when it will be released:

Bug control, accelerated

Dragonflies are highly evolved and efficient predators. This was perfect inspiration for our new developer tools.

Opera Dragonfly, coming on May 6th, 2008

The site even has a counter that counts down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until Opera Dragonfly’s release.

If you’ll recall, Opera Dragonfly was initially covered here back in February, when we were all still wondering (and guessing) what the heck it is.

Tags: Opera, Releases

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

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

I caught wind of this over at CSS3 . Info tonight:  at Slightly Ajar, David Storey has posted a bit of a teaser about something coming out of Opera called Opera Dragonfly:

So what exactly is Opera Dragonfly? I wont say quite yet, but I do think that, in my opinion, it is the most important project we have on going at the moment, and probably since I’ve been at the company. It wont directly affect everybody, but will hopefully become invaluable for those that it does. We’ll likely have more to say about it at SxSW in Austin Texas.

Could it be Opera’s answer to Firebug, a new rendering engine or perhaps a complete shift in an entirely new direction?  While we wait to find out, what do you think it is?

Tags: Opera, Previews