Browsersphere

Just caught wind of this via Twitter:

Thanks to all the hard work of the Mozilla community as of 9:15 AM PDT today we are code complete for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). New nightly builds are available - if you are a nightly tester/Minefield user you can help test these builds by selecting “Check for Updates” from your help menu.

Assuming no new issues are found today the build team will start official prep work for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) tomorrow. QA will start their extensive RC1 test pass on Monday. If all goes well we should have the Release Candidate publicly available in late May.

RC1 is intended for wider scale public testing. Our 1.2M+ active beta users will automatically get updated to RC1 when it is released. If no new showstopper issues are found in RC1 it will become Firefox 3 final. If we find any critical issues we will continue to release new Release Candidates until we are ready for final ship.

Source: Mozilla Developer News

Tags: Development, Firefox, Releases, Twitter

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

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

Flock announced earlier this week the release of an Eco-Edition of their “social browser:”

With the growing interest in environmental topics, Flock’s Eco-Edition browser is the best of Green Content across the Internet, bundled into one single download, continuing to deliver fresh and relevant content daily. Flock will donate 10% of the proceeds of the Eco-Edition browser at the end of 2008, and as a recognition of the power of community to create change, will allow users of the Eco-Edition to select the recipient of this donation.

The environmentally-conscious version of the browser is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and can be downloaded directly from the Eco-Edition website.

Tags: Customized, Flock, Releases

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

I’m back!

For those who didn’t catch the news elsewhere already, both Firefox 3 Beta 5 and Opera Mini 4.1 Beta were released yesterday.  There is some more information on the releases here and here, respectively.

Tags: Beta, Firefox, Opera Mini, Releases

The following comes via MozillaZine:

Mozilla Firefox 3 Beta 4 has been released for testing. The fourth beta of the next major Firefox version offers over 900 bug fixes over Beta 3, including improvements in download manager, full page zoom, better integration with Vista, Mac OS X and Linux, and significant improvements in speed and memory usage.

A developer-focused list of new features is available at Mozilla Developer News, and you can go grab the download right now from the Firefox Beta Downloads page.

Tags: Beta, Firefox, Linux, Mac, Releases

I just caught this over at David Naylor’s blog:  Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for developers is now available to download.  The seven main points the IEBlog had to share with news of the release were:

1. Our goal is to deliver complete, full CSS 2.1 support in the final IE8 product.
2. We’ve contributed over 700 test cases to the W3C CSS working group.
3. We’ve delivered better scripting performance.
4. We’ve started delivering support for HTML5.
5. We’ve delivered the first installment of great, built-in developer tools.
6. We’ve delivered a better way for web services to integrate into the user’s workflow.
7. We’ve delivered a better way for web services to enable their users to keep an eye on interesting parts of a webpage within the browser.

I’ve just downloaded the beta and am in the process of installing it.  I’ll likely have more feedback later.  If you’re interested in trying it out, head on over to the download page.

Tags: Beta, Internet Explorer, Releases