If you frequent Gadgetsteria, two things should be common knowledge. (1) We love Gadgets. (2) We love infographs. Put the two together and you’ve struck gold. Today’s humorous gadget-related infograph casts our favorite browsers as celebrities. Because we’ve all wondered at some point. Click through for the full size image.
I never thought I’d utter the words, “Microsoft’s IEx is faster than Chrome, Opera, and on par with Firefox. Such things just don’t sound right in a world where we constantly mock Microsoft for their sub standard browser offering. But the IE9 preview is changing those past misconceptions.
When thrown head to head with Firefox 3.7 and latest version of Chrome and Opera, IE9 actually topped all but Firefox in pure HTML5 speed. That’s pretty huge considering the web is racing towards HTML5 as the next go-to standard of standards.
Of course, you have to keep in mind the history of each browser as well. Microsoft IE9 may eventually top everyone when it’s officially released, but look at how often Microsoft actually upgrades their browsers. While Chrome, Opera, and Firefox can be measured in months between upgrades, Microsoft can stretch the time between major upgrades by years.
They may be the fastest now, but that will all change come 4-5 months down the line when everyone else in the browser party picks up and moves on, leaving IE9 to wallow in self pity and irrelevance once again.
With that, hop inside and check out a video showing the four browsers dukin’ it out…
Safe you think, safe we’re not. Leave it to the exceptionally daft minds at Pwn2own for revealing just how vulnerable we really are when navigating the online world. A rouge link here, a hidden background download there — it’s pretty treacherous. The point of Pwn2own is not to steal however, but instead inform and help browser devs to better code their products. Rewards help too. And let me tell ya, legally hacking and compromising various browsers can be quite the side business. So far this year four people have won $10,000 for cracking various browsers. The winners and their victims:
Oddly enough, Chrome is absent from today’s fallen victims, though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time if it hasn’t fallen already.
All of the men above are $10k richer today after their hard work. What’s interesting to note is that while here at the event it took minutes — and in some cases, seconds — these hackers spend weeks on their exploits. I’m sure a fair share of these guys have day jobs. Just think what a team of hackers who eat and breathe this stuff are capable of…?
Enough filling your heads with horror stories. So I have to ask: Do you still feel as safe surfin’ the web now?
iPhone/iPod Touch users who spend a pretty good minute on the web, today is a day to remember, for it is the day in which Opera submitted their iPhone version of Opera Mini to the App Store. The reason for the whole show is simply because, there’s a fair chance that the ever so intelligent and common sense filled (/sarcasm) App Store approvers will reject the app. The reasoning if Apple does in fact do so isn’t anything new. They’ll simply label it as “duplicating functionality” of an app already present on the iPhone (made by Apple).
Personally I feel a bit of competition in the form of “duplicate apps” is a god send. I guess a little choice is too much. Oh well. If things go south the legitimate route, Opera can always make an even bigger statement by putting Opera Mini up on Cydia for download. That would turn some heads and piss off Apple no less.
How Apple handles this will be pretty big either way. If they accept Opera Mini, it will be a monumental change from previous claims of “duplicate functionality” and the ensuing rejections that followed. If they deny it, well, the App Store will be dead to me. Denying a clearly helpful, useful, and all around great app just because they don’t want any competition with their in-house apps is bullshit.
Back in November, Verizon spent a truckload of money on marketing their new hot baby, the Motorola DROID. Several months later, we can see that the marketing paid off relatively well with Motorola enjoying some of the best income they’ve seen since the RAZR days with Verizon seeing an equally nice share of added income. Around that same time, a somewhat humorous though useless app called “DROID does” was submitted to Apple for sale in the App Store. The app did nothing, instead acting more as a “behind enemy lines” advertising billboard for the DROID and Verizon. No surprise here — Apple rejected it.
Forget the third time, the second attempt is the real charm. The “DROID” moniker has finally made it’s way to the iPhone ecosystem thanks to a new browser app called “iDroid Mini Browser”. While this browser replacement is rather light on features, it still manages to knock the socks off of the previous DROID themed app. Seeing as how the first Droid iPhone app was nothing more than a joke, this isn’t all too surprising.
Upon firing up iDroid, users will be greeted with a “Quick Links” screen with available slots for up to (9) favorite sites. Adding sites is a tad inconvenient however, requiring users to navigate away from the quick links screen to enter their web URL’s, http://xxxx and all.
One other thing that bugs me: People are calling it “the first tabbed iPhone browser”. Umm, the iPhone has had tabbed browsing since 2007. Because of the way the iPhone OS and Mobile Safari are designed, even thought the sudo tabs are separate windows without actual browser tabs being displayed onscreen at all times, the little window/tab button on the bottom right of Mobile Safari allows quick and easy window/tab browsing across multiple sites at the same time — the same exact thing a desktop-like “tabbed browser” does as well. Is it the first multi-tasking/tabbed browser? No.
Personal nitpicks aside, no matter the lengths Apple has gone through so far to keep “DROID” references from entering the iPhone ecosystem, it looks like they’ve finally been infiltrated.
According to Microsoft, Chrome is nothing more than a “rounding error”. Though as we continually watch Internet Explorers grip on the internet slip further and further down the totem pole (thank god) we can easily pass such comments off as comments made out of fear and uncertainty. It doesn’t matter how Microsoft feels however as Google Chrome has officially moved from #4 to #3 in the browser world, unseating Apple’ Safari.
On my Mac I used to use Safari as my main browser as it was crazy fast and got the job done. I’m not a big plugin/extension user so Firefox’s vast library of add-ons simply doesn’t appeal to me that much. On that note, Chrome appealed to me from the start as I’ve always been a sucker for new things and startups. Even though Chrome isn’t the newcomer it once was, it still has my attention and has effectively rendered Safari on my Mac nothing more than a secondary browser on the rare occurrence that I encounter an issue with Chrome for Mac.
Apple is one of the most competitive tech companies around so don’t expect them to take this dethroning too lightly. Future Safari updates will no doubt match or surpass Chrome’s current offerings further driving the friendly spirit of competition amongst the big four.
What’s your browser of choice and why? Do you see Chrome ever pushing Firefox out of the way for a silver medal finish? If you answered yes to the previous question, how long do you think it will take?
Are you an plugin person? Users of Firefox no doubt know about and/or use one or many of the countless plugins available for Mozilla’s mobile crawler. Everything from easily finding torrents to listing email messages in the browser title bar can be had with these browser add-ons. On the Google/Chrome side, end users have been clamoring for plugins (“extensions” on Google’s side) since the browsers release a little over a year ago. As is customary, Google has been working at break neck pace, though it doesn’t always seem that way. But that’s all water under the bridge as they say because Google officially announced and released “extensions” for Chrome.
For the grand unveiling, 300 extensions were primed and ready for consumer consumption with today’s total to eclipse 500. So they’re moving fast — very fast. Should Mozilla and Firefox be worried? In a nutshell, they should at least be checking over their shoulder every couple of hours. You see, Google’s extensions are more or less simple web pages shrunk down and formatted to fit whatever icon/page/or pop-up the develop chooses. The benefit of course is small footprint and minimal impact on browser speed. One other crucial point to mention is that the installation of extensions in Chrome does not require a restart of the browser — something that has always bugged me about Firefox. In regards to speed, I’m sure it’s something Firefox power users will appreciate as we all know how sluggish FF can get when it’s bags are full of plugins all vying for some one-on-one time with your processor.
What’s the state of affairs for Mac users? I mean, it did take an extra long time for said users to get their own “official/beta” product. According to one software engineer, Erik Kay, extensions for Mac will go live by “this weekend” — now that’s more like it. One thing to note however is that extensions for Mac will only be available for the time being on the developer channel of Chrome — not the beta channel. Even still, that last month or two of using developer builds of Chrome Mac was pretty painless and uneventful for me. Uneventful in the sense that I didn’t have any problems. As always though, if you’re a “beginner” in this whole computer world, maybe sticking to the Chrome beta for a while longer is your best bet.
One slightly humorous thing to highlight is that Chromium (the open source core that Chrome is comprised of) for Mac developer builds already feature extension support. When the browser was going through the inner confines of Google software engineer cubicles and offices, somewhere along the way the ability to install extensions was turned off. It’s still fully supported to run them, it’s just that you’re presented with a greyed-out box if you try to install an extension at the moment. But there’s a super easy way to enable the Chrome extension install button if you simply can’t wait until Friday.
Now that you’ve had a few days to spend with Google’s new Chrome for Mac baby, how do you like it? I’ve received a few tweets so far that several aren’t too impressed by it. That’s understandable when comparing it against Firefox and Safari both of which have a much larger feature set and are just as fast if not faster. But give it a little time folks. Chrome 1.0 was fast. Well, we thought it was until we saw charts comparing Chrome 1, 2, and 3. The point is, it will take a little bit longer to truly wring out the performance and features for the Mac version. But if Chrome for Mac can become anything like it’s Windows counterpart, the wait will be well worth it. Feel the same?
TechCrunch
If there were ever a more telling, more truthful, or more fitting t-shirt depicting the horrors and evil of Internet Explorer 6, the IE 666 shirt is by far at the top of the list. Web developers know of the absolute nightmare induced headaches caused by “Microsoft’s finest” and end users know of the countless improperly rendered sites, slow navigation, and all around levels of suck that are prevalent. So have a good laugh at Microsoft’s expense. Think Geek has the threads as always…
Those who frequent not only Gadgetsteria but many other tech blogs, with a feed reader list in the triple digits, don’t sit back and wait for even official beta products. No sir/mam. As soon as a developer build, alpha, or some other unofficial “you-probably-shouldn’t-use-this-yet-but-you-will-anyway” build becomes available, we jump on it. What can I say, if you’re like me, you love living life on the edge. Digital edge that is. I’ve been keeping close to the Mac Chrome beta for many, many weeks and have watched it mature from an unusable proof of concept to a now nearly fully functioning browser. Mind you it’s still a decent ways away from release as performance isn’t nearly as fast the windows counter parts. And what’s the point of releasing a “light weight” browser if it isn’t very “lite” on it’s feet?
So how do we know that Chrome for Mac is set to launch (as a beta) in mid-December? It all has to do with browser actions. Currently the Windows and Linux versions are the only versions that support said feature. Wipe the building tears from your eyes and don’t turn around heading for home just yet. Nick Baum, Google Chrome’s Product Manager had this to say in regards to browser extensions and delaying the Mac version so that it wasn’t the lone duck, sitting between it’s two sister browsers lacking the aforementioned feature.
We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that,” Baum said. “If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we’ll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!
So could it be ready now? More than likely if you get a developer or nightly build now, you’re pretty close to the final beta product. But I’m a stickler for having the latest numbers and even a .0.0.1 change will somehow seem all that much better in my mind. December isn’t far at all. Excited yet?
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