The world as frankps sees it!
Posts tagged Browsers
Sad, but true
0Just before the weekend I heard that the European Commission (EC) was to demand that Microsoft stop bundling Internet Explorer (IE) in Windows, and that was after Norwegian Opera Software ASA complained to the EU about the software giant’s bundling practices and alleged undermining of Web standards. If I am not mistaken the complain was delivered in 2007. I must admit I am very surprised, and I once again share the thoughts of Paul Thurrot at WindowsITPro:
That IE has been consistently losing market share to its number one rival, Mozilla Firefox, seems to have made little impression on the EC, which has consistently proven to be more interested in shoring up Microsoft’s competition than worry about market realities. And that’s especially true is the competition that complains about Microsoft happens to be from an EU country.
“Microsoft’s tying of Internet Explorer to the Windows operating system harms competition between web browsers, undermines product innovation and ultimately reduces consumer choice,” the EC said in a prepared statement. The statement arrives just a week after market researchers announced that IE fell from 74 percent of the market in 2007 to 68 percent by the end of 2008. The main beneficiary of that gap was Firefox, which jumped to over 21 percent of the market during the same time frame …
… However, Opera is unique among non-Microsoft browser makers in that it did not make market share gains in 2008. Firefox, Apple Safari, and Google Chrome all gained on IE during this time period. Perhaps the problem is Opera, not Microsoft’s business practices. After all, consumers do have choice; they’re just not choosing Opera.
If that wasn’t enough, Chief Development Officer Christen Krogh told CNET News that the fact that “There has been more competition before“, referring to the Netscape and pre-Netscape days. Wake up (våkn opp!), the battle has never been bigger, and the Opera browser is the only one not taking part in it. He continues with even if IE’s market share drops to below 60 percent in Europe, “we think that is sufficiently high to be concerned.”
The amusement continues: “Opera noted that it follows the same principles applied by the EU in 2004, when it held that Microsoft could not tie its media player to Windows and ordered the software maker to offer a version with the media player stripped out”. Yepp, and that was a huge success? We all now buy Windows without the media player? ha-ha-ha. Well, also here Microsoft is doing things different with Windows 7, it will not include Windows Mail, Messenger and a few other applications. That is not caused by EU or Opera Software.
And regarding Microsoft not following standards: Surprise, surprise, with Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft has changed practice (Again, Opera goes far in claiming that they forced Microsoft to reconsider its position on standards in IE8). The browser will have full support for CSS 2.1 and gets full score on the ACID 2 test. Other great improvements are done in the area of accessibility, as for instance W3C’s ARIA standard. And I guess that is not the only standard they have chosen to follow!
After I read the news, I got fed up and uninstalled the Opera 10 Alpha. From now on I will stick to Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer, and play a little bit with Google Chrome. I wonder if Firefox actually has an even bigger market share in EU?
First release of next generation of the Opera desktop browser
0The gap between Opera and Firefox seems to become bigger and bigger. I have been on and off on Opera, but lately I have been more or less just on. Opera 9.5 gives simply gives the best browsing experience, and now it gives us even more.
In a blog entry the desktop team is explaining why they still are using to different installers for the installation under Windows, as well as giving access to the latest build.
The release is with the latest desktop plus:
- Video (Ogg Theora) – used by Wikipedia and others. There are HTML5 examples based on working drafts of the HTML 5 specification being developed at W3C, and Erik Dahlström’s video in SVG article. I have been looking in to HTML 5 a bit this spring, and I am not sure that Ogg Theora will be part of it, and I am more or less sure that Opera will loose a battle against Apple and Nokia! Having said that, it’s about time that we get standards for audio and video on the net, that is for me more important then what file formats are chosen. And needless to say, these formats should be open.
- 3D canvas – is according to Opera the most experimental feature in this build. At least Opera and Mozilla have been thinking about how to provide 3D rendering in a way they can implement cross-platform even on proprietary systems. 3D canvas, like its 2D cousin, gives developers a javascript-based approach.
- File I/O – yepp, the browser is about to become the operating system. File I/O was originally announced by Opera back in May, and proposed to W3C for development as a standard, and gives you a way to interact with the filesystem from within your application. In this build, Opera has only enabled this feature for widgets, which can now ask the user to enable them to use an area in the filesystem — either to work with their existing content (manage photos that other applications also work on, for example) or a new clean sandbox for storage.
- eBook widget: Opera is brilliant at supporting standards, and with this widget you can read books published in the Epub format. This is one of the demo widgets released for this new build of the browser, and will not work in regular Opera builds as it needs the File I/O functionality.
And this time Opera is not only coming with a special build for Windows, the build is also available for us Linux and Mac users. Now we can all have a peek at what HTML 5 will bring us. I can hardly wait!
Acid test and why I am using Opera and Konqueror
05 years ago
I have lately stopped using Firefox and gone over/back to use Opera and Konqueror. I like browsers being more or less just a browser. I find extensions to be rather a big flop. Most of the extensions are rather useless, something that you will also see from the winners of the Extend Firefox Contest. Most of them are really nothing that people really need. Well, that is also one of the reasons why they are extensions. Having had a look at some of the winners of the contest, I found many of them to be extensions that allow you to see thumbnails of pages that you have visited. Was that the best people could come up with? But there were excepsions: Forecastfox and Sage. If you want to run something using the Gecko rendering engine and have a Mac, then consider Camino.
Worse is the message you get when running DeerPark (developer versions of Firefox) or upgrade your Firefox, as you will most likely get a message like: “Reveal 1.0.6 could not be installed because it is not compatible with Deer Park 1.6a1. (Reveal 1.0.6 will only work with Deer Park versions from 1.5 to 1.5.0.*)“. Why this incompitability between the versions of Firefox? This is everything else then userfriendly.
Well, even when it comes to meeting web standards Firefox shouldn’t be your obvious choice. Smaller lightweight competitors are often doing a far better job in rendering pages correctly: Safari, Konqueror and Opera are all examples of that:
What you see is the Acid2 Browser Test from the The Web Standards Project. Don’t laugh of the screenshot, Acid2 is a complex web page. It uses features that are not in common use yet and it crams many tests into one page. The aim has been to make it simple for developers and users to check if a browser passes the test. If it does, the smiley face as in the Konqueror and Opera browser will appear. If something is wrong, the face will be distorted and/or shown partly in red (Firefox browser). Acid2 assumes basic support for HTML4, CSS1, PNG, and Data URLs. The first three items on the list are included for obvious reasons: They are form the backbone of web content standards. Data URLs are described in HTML4 but is less used due to lack of support. Notice that the test isn’t even included CSS2 tests!
Ask yourself why you are using browsers that don’t support basic standards and often don’t show sites as they were ment to be.
Tried out Opera 9 TP2 today
0Opera Software today made available their second technical preview of the upcoming version of the Opera browser. The two most fronted news seem to be support for AJAX widgets and bittorrent. A few widgets can be downloaded from a new section from the My Opera Community. There are not to many of them, but 2-3 of them are really good. The finale version of Opera 9 is not expected before the summer, so there should be plenty of time to get a decent amount of widgets ready, both for Opera and for third part developers.
I found it just as important to see that CSS support had improved. Opera 9 TP 2 now almost passes the Web Standards Project‘s ACID 2 test, something it will surely do in it’s finale version.
Together with the new technical preview Opera today also opened http://labs.opera.com, and a list over the changes in the release can be found there. There will hopefully be lots of information added.
Verdict: Übercool!
Flock – A New Browser On It’s Way
06 years ago
There seems to be a new browser coming for MacOS X, Windows and Linux that clearly must be based on the Mozilla Foundations work. Flock basically looks like a beautified Firefox, but with extra features: Integrated with del.icio.us, Flickr (my choice for sharing photos), and other tools such as writing to your blog. Sort of a “social browser”. Here are some screenshots.
Fun, /me wants to test …