Tag Archives | Web browsers

Xmarks, I Hardly Knew Ye

Posted by Jared Newman on September 28, 2010 at 8:50 am

In a sad case of many users, but no business model, Xmarks announced that its free bookmark and tab sync service will shut down on January 10, 2011.

My acquaintance with Xmarks — formerly known as Foxmarks — came recently, when Mozilla announced the Firefox Home app for iPhone. The app lets Firefox users store their bookmarks and open tabs to the cloud for easy access on the iPhone. Because I regularly use Chrome, I wanted to see if any other apps provided a similar service for all browsers. Xmarks got the job done, and its iPhone app only cost a buck.

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Internet Explorer 9: Finally, a 21st Century Browser From Microsoft

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 21, 2010 at 11:13 am

My Technologizer column for TIME.com is up: It’s a look at the Internet Explorer 9 beta:

Last week, Microsoft unveiled the first beta release of Internet Explorer 9, or IE9 for short. It’s easily the most impressive browser upgrade to hail from Redmond, Wash., since the original skirmishes with Netscape. And I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that it’s the first one the company has hatched since its scariest current competitor, Google, got into the browser business by launching Chrome two years ago this month.

Read the whole column here.

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The Unwelcome Return of "Best Viewed With Internet Explorer"

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 16, 2010 at 2:09 pm

Remember the bad old days of the Internet, when it wasn’t a given that one primary objective of any Web site should be to work equally well in any modern browser? Some sites slapped “Best Viewed With Internet Explorer” or “Best Viewed With Netscape Navigator” logos (or both of them) onto their home pages, like perverse badges of honor. It was like turning onto a highway and discovering signs saying it was best driven in a Buick or a Kia.

Eventually there were sites that would only operate properly in IE, most often because they used Microsoft’s IE-only ActiveX. (I have the horrible feeling that such sites are still out there, although the last one I encountered myself belonged to a financial institution which I stopped doing business with in 2009.)

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Internet Explorer 9: Microsoft's Browser Gets Back in the Game

Posted by Harry McCracken on September 15, 2010 at 9:00 am

Apologies in advance for the mixed metaphor: For many years, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been a sleeping giant that’s marched to its own drummer. Ever since Firefox appeared in 2004, Microsoft has struggled to figure out what IE should be in the new era of browser competition; it remains the world’s default browser, but it long ago lost the hearts and minds of nearly all of the serious browser users that I know.

At first, the company simply let 2001’s IE6 calcify, as if it wasn’t certain that the world needed a major new version of Internet Explorer at all. Then it released IE7 and IE8–bland updates that felt like they existed in a parallel universe of their own rather than the one in which Firefox and Safari (and, for the last two years, Chrome) have been evolving rapidly and cribbing each others’ best new features.

And then there’s Internet Explorer 9, which is debuting in beta form today at a bash in San Francisco. (I’m attending the event, and Microsoft provided me with the beta a few days early.) It’s easily the best new version of Microsoft’s browser in…well, in this century: The last IE upgrade that was this pleasing was version 5, which shipped in 1999. In most respects that matter, IE9 finally catches up with the competition. In a few, it’s sprinted past them. It’s just plain good.

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Internet Explorer 9 and the New UI Homogeny

Posted by Jared Newman on August 25, 2010 at 10:03 am

ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley thinks she stumbled upon the user interface for Internet Explorer 9, spying a screenshot on Microsoft Russia’s press website. If this is the real deal, the next IE will look like the lovechild of Google Chrome and Firefox 4.

From Firefox 4, IE9 reportedly takes the oversized back button, translucent window and tremendous amount of wasted space above the navigation bar (seriously, it’s just an empty row with window management at the end, and the next Firefox is just as guilty). From Chrome, IE9 may derive the omnibar for search and URLs, and a series of menu icons on the right side of the screen.

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Inside Internet Explorer 8 Privacy

Posted by Harry McCracken on August 2, 2010 at 7:29 am

The Wall Street Journal’s privacy series (call it “Cookiegate”) continues with a fascinating look at Internet Explorer 8. According to reporter Nick Wingfield, IE’s designers initially wanted anti-third-party-cookie settings to be the default, but Microsoft executives involved in online advertising smashed that notion.

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