Posted 11/04/09 at 11:15:51 AM by Paul Lilly

In the grand scheme of things, October might go down as a month to remember. That's the month Mozilla's Firefox browser was finally able to catch up to, and surpass, Microsoft's still popular Internet Explorer 6.

Internet Explorer remains way out in front in market share, but it's becoming clear that Microsoft's lead isn't long for the world. From September to October, IE dropped 1.07 percentage points, settling in at 66.64 percent. At the same time, Firefox gained ground on its own accord by moving up 0.32 percentage points to end up at 24.07 percent. Those are significant numbers for such a short period of time. If the current pace were to keep up, it would take a little over 2 years for Firefox to completely catch up with IE, and could conceivably jump ahead by early 2012.

But it's not just about Firefox. Safari, Chrome, and Opera combined hold a little over 10 percent of the market. Throw Firefox into the fray and alternative browsers (non-IE) are being used by a third of all surfers. When looking at it from that angle, IE is on pace to give up its market share lead even before 2012, just not to a single browser.

Maybe then, Netscape can finally rest in peace.

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Posted 11/03/09 at 09:30:54 AM by Paul Lilly

Google's minimalistic Chrome browser continues to improve one feature at a time, and the latest release adds the ability to sync bookmarks across multiple machines. There's one caveat, however - it's a beta release, not a stable build.

If you're thinking to yourself that's not much of a caveat, then in your luck, because the new beta also purports to supercharge performance. According to the Chrome devs, you can expect the beta to run up to 30 percent faster than the current stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core tests, and about 400 percent faster than the very first stable Chrome build.

But let's get back to the bookmark syncing, because that's going to be the realy draw for most users. This essentially the same implementation as was previously available through Google's dev channel, which is geared for developers and "can be very unstable at times." And just like before, there's nothing complicated about the feature in the beta build. Just mosey over to the Wrench icon, select 'Synchronize my bookmarks...' and sign in to your Google account. All of your bookmarks will then be uploaded. When you do the same on another PC with a different set of bookmarks, Chrome will offer to merge your bookmarks. Pretty slick.

Check out the video walkthrough here.

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Posted 10/28/09 at 12:14:40 PM by Paul Lilly

For those who roll with unified browsing and emailing in a single bundle, Mozilla's SeaMonkey software, which has just been updated to version 2.0, might be just what you're looking for, provided you're a fan of Firefox and Thunderbird.

The newest version comes retooled with Firefox 3.5.4, and as a result, Mozilla says it's much closer to the the standalone browser, at least in terms of user profiles, add-ons, and functionality of UI elements. That also means it now incorporates crash recovery so you needn't lose your browser windows, tabs, and even data entered in web forms should something bad happen.

But it's not all about the browser. On the email side of things, new IMAP accounts now keep local offline copies by default, which ranks as one of the speed tweaks Mozilla implemented when working with IMAP. Tabbed mail has been added, and the mail module lets you subscribe to RSS and Atom feeds discovered by the browser on Web pages.

For a full list of changes and download instructions, see here.

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Posted 10/19/09 at 10:32:24 AM by Paul Lilly

In a blog post on Friday, Mike Shaver, Mozilla's VP of Engineering, explained why his company had decided to block Microsoft's .NET Framework Assistant add-on to the Firefox browser.

"It's recently surfaced that it has a serious security vulnerability, and Microsoft is recommending that all users disable the add-on," Shaver wrote. "Because of the difficulties some users have had entirely removing the add-on, and because of the severity of the risk it represents if not disabled, we contacted Microsoft today to indicate that we were looking to disable the extension and plugin for all users via our blocklisting mechanism."

And so Mozilla did just that, as you may have noticed over the weekend if you're a Firefox user. But as it turns out, the add-on may not be so harmful after all.

"We received confirmation from Microsoft this evening that the Framework Assistant add-on is not a mechanism for exploiting the vulnerabilities detailed in the earlier post, so we've removed it from the blocklist," Mozilla said.

Mozilla went on to say that the blocklist update propagates to clients, so if the add-on was previously disabled, it should automatically re-enable, though you'll need to restart your browser for it to take effect.

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Posted 10/15/09 at 10:35:35 AM by Paul Lilly

Those of you eager to give Firefox's next browser a release a spin can now do so, however bear in mind that this isn't the official beta launch. Instead, Mozilla today has made available for download an experimental test build of Firefox 3.6.

"A beta is indeed available, but I would like to clarify that the Beta program for Firefox 3.6 has not yet launched, this is a test build, not necessarily Firefox 3.6 Beta 1," Patrick Finch from Mozilla wrote.

If the test build status doesn't scare you off, downloading the new release gives you access to a few new goodies. Included in Firefox 3.6 is the Gecko 1.9.2 engine, tab previews (use CTRL and Tab to switch between tabs), thumbnail taskbar previews for Windows 7 users, an automated plug-in checker, and of course more improvements to the all-important JavaScript engine.

What you won't find in this early release is the orientation detection feature Mozilla recently announced. Nevertheless, you can snag a copy of the build right here.

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Posted 10/14/09 at 08:51:21 AM by Paul Lilly

Originally intended as a separate download -- or at least released that way in beta form -- Opera Unite now comes bundled with the release of Opera 10.10 beta as a standard feature.

Opera Unite is a peer-to-peer system with an API that allows developers to create feature-rich apps using only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Or as Opera describes it, a Web server in the Web browser. The software ships with six pre-installed apps, including photo sharing, an instant messenger, file sharing, a Web server, media player, and an app called "the fridge," which allows users to share notes with friends and family.

You can view a corny YouTube video of Unite here, which looks like it took a page from Microsoft's Launch Party video. If you want to give a whirl yourself, grab the download here.

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Posted 10/13/09 at 10:45:47 AM by Paul Lilly

Taking a page from the mobile market, Mozilla's upcoming Firefox 3.6 will be able to detect the orientation of your laptop and other devices equipped with accelerometers capable of discerning up from down.

"One new feature that we're including as part of Firefox 3.6 is support for webpages to access machine orientation information if it's available," wrote Christopher Blizzard, a Mozilla evangelist. "Many modern MacBooks and ThinkPads contain devices and drivers that expose this information. We've added support for Linux, Macs, and some ThinkPads where driver and devices are available."

It remains to be seen if there would be much interest for this from those who lug around 17-inch notebooks, but it could open up a whole new world of Web-based gaming for netbook owners. Given the portability and light-weight design of 8.9-inch and even 10.1-inch netbooks, along with a growing install-base, Firefox may have a leg up on the competition in the next round of browser wars.

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Posted 10/06/09 at 08:01:38 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Perhaps after seeing the lackluster selection in Blackberry App World, RIM decided to change it up a bit. The Blackberry maker has announced a new web-based Software Development Kit (SKD). The Widget SDK will utilize the Blackberry browser engine to render apps using HTML, CSS, and Javascript languages.

Existing web content can be brought to the surface easily in the form of an always-on widget. The widgets will have full access to the operating system via the Widget API. Apps would be able to take advantage of the email system to display messages, location-based services, and the Blackberry’s push notifications system, just to name a few.

The new Blackberry Widgets will be distributed via the Blackberry App World interface. Unfortunately, all the live widget running goodness will only be available on Blackberry OS 5.0 or greater. When official, 5.0 will include an enhanced browser (finally), and support for both SQlite and the Widget API.

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