I’m hesitant to make any bold predictions about what 2009 will hold for technology, but this one seems profoundly safe: a lot of Web browser upgrades will ship. That’s because new versions of the current big five–Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, and Safari–are all in various stages of progress. And prerelease versions all except Safari are available for download right now. After the jump, a quick guide to what’s up with each of them. If you’ve been using any (or all!) of them, let us know what you think…
Tag Archives | Firefox
Mac’s Internet Share Rises, Firefox Above 20%
Internet research firm Net Applications has somewhat stunning news: Windows share of the operating system has fallen below 90 percent according to the company for the first time since the mid 1990s. Furthermore, its share of the browser market has also fallen, now below 70 percent for the first time in nearly a decade.
IE now stands at 69.77 percent, down 1.5 percent or so from the previous month. Contrast this with Firefox, who now has about 20.8 percent of the market, up about .8 percent from the last month.
This has to have Redmond worried. I clearly remember pinging my Microsoft sources back a year or two ago when Mozilla really began to pick up market share. The response was “oh, they only expect them to peak at 15 or 20 percent and that will be it,” or something to that effect.
Well, we’ve now blown through that, and look to be poised for more gains. Firefox is beginning to move from the alternative to the competitor catagory when it comes to browsers. That’s something many — including Microsoft — did not expect.
The bad news doesn’t end there. Apple’s Mac OS is resurgent. It’s share is now up to 8.9 percent, the highest market share ever recorded by the firm for Apple. Contrast this with Microsoft, whos .8 percent drop to 89.6 percent was the biggest drop in over two years.
Vista’s adoption is still awful: only one in five users use it two years after it was released. While it has generally grown by about a percentage point each of the past few months, this shows that the computing public has generally given Microsoft’s latest OS the Windows Me treatment.
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Firefox Simplifies Browser Customization
Firefox’s extensibility is the primary reason why I have stuck with it. The browser extensions I’ve installed do what I want and significantly improve my Internet experience. The folks at Mozilla are playing to that strength with a new browser customization Web site called “Fashion Your Firefox.”
The site simplifies Firefox add-on discovery by having users select from a menu of nine categories that are geared toward various browsing scenarios such as “Shutterbug” for photo aficionados and “Rock Star” for music lovers. Users simply check the box next to add-ons that interest them, and install them as a batch.
For Firefox, add-ons are a good hedge against a reinvigorated Microsoft Internet Explorer and new competition from Google Chome. (I was tempted to switch to Google’s Chrome browser to get a good feel for it, but found myself missing my add-ons.)
Microsoft has revamped its own add-on Web site to coincide with the launch of IE 8, but I do not know anyone that uses IE for its add-ons. Google also supports some add-ons, but like Microsoft, it lacks the depth of choices that Firefox has to offer.
The Mozilla Foundation is wise to showcase its add-ons to differentiate Firefox. In doing so, it also keeps its base of developers happy and firmly in its camp.
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Firefox 3.1: Lookin’ Good Under the Hood
It’s a busy day for browsers–not only is there a new version of Flock, but the browser it’s based on, Firefox, has popped out beta 1 of Firefox 3.1. As usual, Mozilla says it’s meant for developers and testers and that it may break add-ons. As usual, I’ve ignored the warnings and downloaded and installed it.
Most of what’s significant about 3.1 doesn’t hit you in the face the moment you launch the browser. In fact, you might not notice it at all–but it’s there, and it will pay dividends long term. That’s because it focuses on under-the-hood technical improvements, including improved support for Web standards. It also implements geolocation, which will let Web sites such as mapping services determine your location via GPS or other methods. And it runs the JavaScript that many Web services use to create their user interfaces faster (ZDNet’s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes ran some benchmarks to compare Firefox 3.1 to other browsers, and it was the quickest browser in two out of three tests.)
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Flock: My Favorite Browser Officially Turns 2.0
A year ago, I declared Flock–the “social browser” built on top of Firefox–to be my favorite Web browser. I’m still a happy user, and am happy to report that the official, final version 2.0 is now available for download at the Flock site.
As before, Flock is a browser for folks who are major fans of social networking and media sites: It’s got built-in support for Facebook, Twitter, Digg, YouTube, Flickr, and other services that let you do things like update your Facebook status and check your friends’ statuses without going to Facebook, Digging stories without going to Digg, viewing your buddies’ Flickr streams, and so forth. Much of this is done through Flock’s People sidebar, which sits to the left of the Web page you’re on so your social tools are always available:
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Operation Foxbook: The Wrap-Up
The experiment known as Operation Foxbook–in which I dumped my fancy MacBook Pro and desktop apps like Microsoft Office and Photoshop for an HP Mini-Note netbook and Web apps running in Foxbook–is officially over. Actually, I wrapped it up about a week ago, but I thought it made sense to take the time to reflect a bit about what went right, what went wrong, and what I learned.
Here are previous installments of this series, in case you want some background:
Introducing Operation Foxbook
Operation Foxbook: Life Inside the Browser, So Far
Operation Foxbook: Livin’ Small With the HP Mini-Note
Operation Foxbook: More Fun With Web Apps
And here (after the jump) are some overall lessons…
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Picnik: Even Neater Than I Thought
In my last Operation Foxbook post, I said that when I edited screen images in the browser, I cheated on my Web-only regimen and saved them in Windows Paint first to get them on my hard drive for uploading into Picnik. Turns out that I could have done it and remained true to the spirit of Operation Foxbook–the Picnik folks wrote to tell me about their Firefox extension, which lets you grab images, screens, and even whole Web pages (including regions that aren’t on screen) for editing with one click. I stand happily corrected.
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Operation Foxbook: More Fun With Web Apps
The experiment known–by me, anyhow–as Operation Foxbook is winding down. By tomorrow, I’ll have packed up the HP Mini-Note I’ve been using as a dedicated Firefox machine, and I’ll allow myself to use desktop applications instead of relying on Web apps whenever possible. Already, I’m weaning myself off of my Web-only regimen–I may allow myself access to Photoshop later tonight.
But I’m still learning things from this project, and need to catch up on sharing them with you. Some notes on the last few days:
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Operation Foxbook: Livin’ Small With the HP Mini-Note
Operation Foxbook–my experiment of dumping my MacBook Pro and desktop apps for an HP Mini-Note netbook and Web-based apps within Firefox–continues apace. And the hardware side of things is turning out to have as big an impact on the experience as the software aspect.
The MacBook Pro I use most of the time is relatively thin and light given how powerful it is, but it’s no subnotebook. And it’s the largest, heaviest machine I’ve carried in years. I used to be addicted to subnotebooks like the Fujitsu Lifebook B112 and Fujitsu P-1000, but in 2004 I had an epiphany and bought my first Mac in years–the 12-inch PowerBook, which was a bit larger and heavier. Then I replaced that with the even larger, heavier 13-inch MacBook. And when I started Technologizer, I decided I wanted more screen space and resolution, and bought the MacBook Pro.
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Introducing Operation Foxbook
I do most of my Technologizer work these days on a 15-inch MacBook Pro laptop that runs three operating systems (OS X, Windows Vista, and Windows XP) and a full complement of applications for wrangling words, pictures, and Web sites (Microsoft Office, Photoshop, CorelDraw, Dreamweaver, and whatever else I need at any given moment). It’s a great tool for the job.
But tomorrow I’m going to set it aside for a few days and launch what I’m calling Operation Foxbook–an experiment that involves doing as much of my work on the Web and inside the browser (a specific browser–Firefox) as I possibly can. I’ve wanted to try this for a while–I wrote about the idea of a “Firefox PC” back in this post. But when I was at PC World, I couldn’t truly go cold turkey from desktop software, since we used Adobe InDesign, a decidedly local application, to crank out the magazine.
Technologizer, however, is all Web all the time–and I know of nothing I do for the site that simply can’t be done with a Web app. And the notion of computers that serve largely as containers for a Web browser has hit the big time–there’s a whole class of inexpensive, small notebook known as netbooks. So I’ll use one such machine, HP’s Mini-Note, to do my Technologizer stuff, and will blog about the experience. I know some of the browser-based apps I’ll use: parts of both Google Docs and Zoho, for sure, and the excellent Picnik photo editor. And Gmail, too, even though I continue to both love it and hate it. I’m sure I’ll need to seek out other apps as I need them, too.
Stay tuned–I may need your advice and patience to get through to the weekend without grabbing the MacBook…