Browsers
Chrome beats IE Usage on Sundays
Google’s Chrome browser has been beating out IE usage on weekends since March 18. People are choosing Chrome for their home browser, while being forced to use IE at work during the week.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share
Due to Chrome’s automatic updates, more people are using Chrome 18 now, than any other browser version. It’s a delight for developers to know people are automatically going to be using the most recent version of a browser. Probably why I’d expect it to be the most recommended browser by web developers. The graph is amazing to see how quickly use of the “old” (Chrome 17) browser drops off and the new browser jumps up. Compare that to the IE8 and IE9 graphs. They are slowly switching (over years, not days).
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share
Chrome has been experiencing slow but unstoppable growth in browser usage.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share
Thanks to StatCounter for the cool graphs.
Google Chrome 17 Released
You probably have it already, as it was released yesterday. That’s the nice thing about Chrome, no more old browser versions.
Changes seem minimal:
- Pre-fetching and rendering of URLs as you type them
- Safer browser downloading (downloaded files are not only checked against bad files, but against a white list, with a likely warning)
- Minor UI tweaks (the plus icon is missing from the new tab window
Otherwise … it’s just a minor release in my opinion.
Google Chrome 15
Google released Google Chrome version 15.
The only real change, is the addition of a New Tab page.
At the bottom of your New Tab page you’ll see some “bars” (not sure what the official name is yet). By default it’s split into two options, “Most Visited” and “Apps”.
You can drag apps / websites to create new tabs. If you want to rename a new tab you double click on the tab and you can give it a name.
The release coincides with an update to the Google App Store.
Here’s a video showing the new features:
Firefox: How People Use New Tabs
Over at Boriss’ Blog, an informative article was posted, How People Use New Tabs in Firefox:
As the web evolves, so does the way people interact with the web. Firefox’s user experience and research teams have been eager to learn about our users’ browsing habits so that we can better design for our users. Lately, Mozillians like Lilian Weng and Jono X have been running some fascinating studies using Test Pilot to determine how, when, and why Firefox users open new tabs. I wanted to note a few key takeaways from their recent study that give us a glimpse into how our users browse (full studies are linked at the bottom of this post).
He includes this helpful graph:
Silk: Amazon’s new Kindle Browser
Most of us heard of the new Amazon tablet, the Kindle Fire being priced at $199.
Did you developers happen to catch that new browser Jeff Bezos also introduced?
The new Amazon browser, Silk.
Yup, this is going to be a bitch to troubleshoot.
The Pending Browser Hell – On IE Half Life
Paul Irish, wrote Browser Market Pollution: IE[x] is the new IE6, which details the complexities we have coming up for us as web developers.
I’m glad to see someone fully thought this through. Browser half life is a significant issue for website accessibility.
When was the last time someone asked you to get your site working in Chrome 9? Well, that was 3 releases ago, as was IE6 (I’m even ignoring the fact that Chrome 9 was February 2011, and not August of 2001 for IE6). I’m constantly hearing that a client is asking for IE6 support. I do all I can to dissuade them (logic, reasoning, and finally .. a 30% surcharge as it requires much more time to debug and handle), but IE6 support is still an issue. Why?
Because of the half life of Microsoft browsers.
Firefox 7 Released: 50% reduction in memory
Mozilla released Firefox 7 yesterday to the general public.
Don’t think of Firefox 7 as a totally new browser, they are just adopting the Chrome release number system (much more frequent releases, more minor upgrades).
The biggest gain in Firefox 7 is in that it can reduce memory usage by up to 50%, along with other performance optimizations.
Relevant to developers, the updated browser now includes support for the W3C navigation timing spec API, and a new Canvas renderer that is hardware-accelerated.
Firefox 4 Released
The official release of Firefox 4 is today.
Slightly late to join the pack with some of the features.
Since the last major update of Firefox there have been 10 releases of Chrome.
Some of the new features have already been released in other browsers:
- Bookmark sync (Chrome even has a more thorough sync feature)
- Faster JS engine – every browser now sports a “faster” javascript engine with every release
- Partial hardware acceleration – other browsers have better hardware support
- Simplified interface – everyone has it, welcome to the club. It just doesn’t feel as cleanly done as Chrome.
Chrome – Holding Steady
I had posted earlier that I had setup Google’s new Chrome browser.
Now it’s been at least a week that I’ve been using it and I wanted to post some comments.
First of all, I don’t consider a “beta” browser. I know whenever I test out a new browser it feels like it’s almost unusable for a period of time. It’s been getting much better since the IE4 days, but there’s still always a sense of “this isn’t ready yet”.
Being a web developer, I dread new browsers because … thats just one more environment you have to test in.
With this browser, I feel like it is already a final product. Already I’m excited about the integration of “Gears”, the slim application like interface when you “Create application shortcut”, how fast it seems to run, and the possibilities it introduces for Javascript and AJAX online.
Some minor issues I would, however, like to raise are:
- I had a tab freeze, and the other tab froze as well — I had thought each tab was supposed to be entirely independent from one another in processor space and prevent this. Maybe I’m misunderstood?
- It seems the great “V8” team that Google had put together is in competition with SquirrelFish Extreme in terms of pure performance. Needless to say, I’m no expert in this, and it’s probably one of those benchmarks that highly favors a browser, or isn’t indicative of the complete functionality of an engine.
- This is entirely a subjective point, but I don’t like the way the Taskbar icons look. I know I’m tuned into Firefox and IE’s icons for the web, but I always get confused with the 3 colors in the Chrome taskbar icons.
- Whos’ taking advantage of the new functionality the most? I remember years ago seeing links to who was taking advantage to IE4′s new capabilities, does anyone have a list of site’s that are built to embrace Chrome? (maybe an idea for a future project)
Google Chrome!
Along with all the geek’s around the world, today I got a hands on impression of Google Chrome.
First off — the rationale behind the browser is exactly what it should be. Clean, quick, and flexible.
Using it quickly, I already want to start creating a web application to take advantage of it’s multi threading, javascript sandboxing, simple “OS” like interface.
When I click on a tab, it finally creates a new window!
The best part, any advances made in development on Chrome, are open source and can be integrated with Firefox down the line.
Highly recommended.
Update – Great article over at wired on the story behind Chrome
Update #2 – Arsetechnica has just published an article reviewing Chrome
Update #3 – Security flaws in Google Chrome found, based on old webkit flaw.
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