Posted 10/13/09 at 07:23:15 PM by Ryan Whitwam

The Internet was just beginning to find a mainstream audience in 1994. It could be said that the introduction of Netscape Navigator on October 13th of that year had a lot to do with increasing internet adoption. Netscape was a huge leap forward, easily leapfrogging other graphical browsers. It supported colored backgrounds, text styling, JavaScript, and media embedding. In many ways, it was the first modern web browser.

By 1996, Netscape had captured 80% market share. Development was rapid, seeing the incorporation of CSS and table layout features as time passed. Microsoft put out the first version of Internet Explorer a year after Netscape, but found little success.

The good times couldn’t last forever, though. Microsoft released IE 4 in 1998. Thanks to some advanced features, IE captured the number one spot in only 12 months. A series of poor decisions left the Netscape browser in the hands of AOL, and we all know how that went. Development slowed, and the once great browser languished. Support was finally completely dropped in 2008.

Amid all the dark times, one great thing did happen with Netscape. The browser code was open-sourced in February 1998. It wouldn’t become apparent until years later how well that worked out for the web. From Netscape, the Mozilla Foundation built Firefox. Many feel that the Firefox browser is the best available, and it enjoys a healthy 27% market share. Let’s all have a moment of silence to remember Netscape on, this, its 15th birthday. Was Netscape your first browser? Any fond memories of those dial-up days?

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Posted 10/08/09 at 03:29:00 PM by Bart Salisbury

Google is taking steps to make viewing PDF files that appear in search results a whole lot easier. With “Quick View” PDF files can be viewed directly from the search results page, rather than having to visit the originating site, load the page as HTML, or use a third-party plug-in.

PDF has the advantage of displaying material as originally formatted. This is invaluable for forms or other complexly formatted documents which HTML is a poor substitute. This feature, which Google has been testing since July, is now available.

For search results that are PDF files Google will include a “Quick View” link. Clicking this opens up the original PDF file in Google Docs, where it can be reviewed or downloaded. (A plain HTML display option is also available, for those who can’t live without.) The only downside, so far, is that Google has connected Quick View to about half of the PDF files in their index. Unindexed PDFs will still have to be handled old-school.

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Posted 09/14/09 at 08:04:58 PM by Ryan Whitwam

A big WebGL patch has recently been released, bringing us a step closer to 3D gaming in the browser. WebGL is a project attempting to bring a few new features to HTML5 allowing JavaScript binding to OpenGL ES 2.0. When complete, this could mean fairly complex 3D games running in a WebKit browser with no plugins required.

It may even be possible to see support for WebGL in native WebKit browsers in as little as 6 months. Safari and Chrome are probably on the forefront of this technology, as they are based on WebKit. Firefox, while based on the Gecko engine, has an extension capable of displaying a WebGL 3D canvas. As for Internet Explorer, don’t hold your breath. Microsoft still has yet to implement HTML5, let alone upcoming technologies.

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Posted 02/25/09 at 03:03:36 PM by Andy Salisbury

Upon the release of the Safari 4 Beta, Apple was boasting some mighty impressive speeds. Now, thanks to some extensive testing, it looks like the boys down in Cupertino deserve a pat on the back, with their browser clocking in at a staggering 42 times faster than Internet Explorer 7.

Most surprising, is that Apple’s latest addition was able to beat out Google’s Chrome (the proclaimed “Speed King”) in testing, along with Firefox 3, Opera 9.6 and Mozilla’s developmental Minefield. The tests were conducted on both a PC running XP SP2, and a Mac running OS X 10.6 with all of the latest updates applied.

If you’re looking to check out the full results of the speed testing, check them out here.

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Posted 12/28/08 at 11:03:17 PM by Justin Kerr

Outside of mobile Safari, and perhaps to a lesser extent Opera Mini, the mobile browser experience can be somewhat unsatisfying. Poor page rendering, or completely unusable interfaces seem to plague the mobile experience. That’s where Mozilla has seen an opportunity to expand its browser platform, and a market that is still relatively untapped. With the launch of Fennec Alpha 2, Mozilla is one step closer to its goal of a mobile Firefox. Alpha 2 seems to address many of the performance issues that hindered the previous version, and these complaints were clearly acknowledged in a blog posting by Mozilla’s Mark Finkle.

“While we focused much of the previous alpha on getting the user experience how we wanted, we’ve spent much of the time since focused on improving performance. We’ve made major strides improving startup performance, panning and zooming performance, and responsiveness while pages are loading.”

My somewhat unscientific testing seems to backup these claims and performance has defiantly improved. Currently support is limited to Nokia's Maemo based N800 and N810, but compatibility with Windows Mobile and Symbian is apparently well underway. These platforms could defiantly use a bit more choice when it comes to browsers, and many are hoping it will finally give the power enjoyed by mobile Safari users to those who prefer non Apple hardware.

Do you think Fennec has what it takes?

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Posted 09/12/08 at 02:29:52 AM by Pulkit Chandna

In the last few months there have been a couple of pompous browser launches – FF3 and Chrome. But the launch of Opera 9.6 beta went largely unnoticed. In fact, Opera’s latest browser version failed to elicit any interest whatsoever. Its Opera 9.6 announcement felt like an inaudible whisper compared to Google’s bellowing Chrome marketing campaign. But Opera Software’s PR manager, Thomas Ford, offered a sanguine view of the entire situation to DailyTech. He took pride in the fact that Opera had managed to stay in business, despite the challenge offered by new entrants like Chrome. Ford pointed that Opera’s usage grew by 3% after Chrome’s launch.

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Posted 06/04/08 at 03:00:55 PM by Mark Soper

Firefox 3 RC2 has been rolled out and you can download it right now. It's just two clicks away!

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Posted 03/26/08 at 10:36:00 PM by Mark Soper

Find out who's king of the browser rendering sweepstakes, and which browser-come-lately has an "impossible" end-user license agreement - not to mention a couple of serious security flaws.

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