Chad's News

For those who missed it, Mozilla released Firefox 4 on March 22^nd. Major features include a more streamlined and minimalist user interface (a la Google Chrome), tab groups, WebGL support, better HTML5 support, faster JavaScript processing, graphics hardware acceleration, and browser synchronization. This will be the last major release of Firefox—Mozilla is switching to the incremental update model that has worked so well for Chrome.

It’s interesting to see the significant impact Google Chrome has had on both Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4, particularly in regards to the user interface and JavaScript performance. Google’s stated goal when it first released Chrome was to force the other browser vendors to improve their products in an effort to keep up. Google has been wildly successful in this respect.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://blog.mozilla.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 9 last week, to positive reviews. Major features include a cleaner, more minimal browser interface, a la Chrome; significant speed increases, both in rendering and JavaScript execution, and the addition of hardware acceleration for graphics; better support for web standards; some HTML5 support; integration with Windows 7; and more security/privacy guards, including a private browsing mode. Unfortunately for quite a few users, however, IE9 will only work on Windows Vista or later.

Link #1: http://arstechnica.com/…

Link #2: http://lifehacker.com/…

Link #3: http://www.techrepublic.com/…

Ars Technica reviews the Internet Explorer 9 beta in the linked article. Major changes include a streamlined interface that’s highly reminiscent of Google Chrome. The new tab page also borrows from Chrome, displaying thumbnails of your most visited pages. Microsoft has added a download manager and some HTML5 support, and has increased the security, reliability, performance, and standards compliance. All in all, IE9 looks to be a contender. One real problem, however, is that it requires Windows Vista or later. Windows XP users are out of luck.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Today Microsoft released an emergency out-of-cycle patch for Internet Explorer. The vulnerability exists in IE6 and above, but so far it’s only been seen in the wild for IE6.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Firefox has reached a milestone: its market share for October beat that of Internet Explorer 6 (24.07% vs. 23.30%). What I find most amazing is that IE6 still has a 23 percent share. Security holes, standards noncompliance, and lack of features are all good reasons to upgrade to IE8. I’ve heard that much of the IE6 use is from corporate computer systems that are locked down by their system administrators, such that they can’t be upgraded.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Lifehacker performed some non-scientific speed tests on the latest versions of popular browsers. As expected, Google Chrome completely destroyed the others in the JavaScript category. This is why I use Chrome for Facebook—Firefox just can’t handle it on my underpowered machine. The only reason I stay with Firefox is because of its wide variety of extensions. Note that I was a bit surprised to see that Apple’s Safari also had very fast JavaScript processing.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

If you can get Internet Explorer 8 to work correctly, it has some nice search abilities.

Link: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

The release version of Internet Explorer is available for download. If you’re not an early adopter, it’ll be available via Windows Update in the upcoming weeks.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has dropped to a 68% market share, while Mozilla’s Firefox is at 21% and Apple’s Safari is at 8%. In this case, at least, competition leads to innovation, which is good for the user.

Link: http://www.tgdaily.com/…
(via digg)

Google has spent months working with Microsoft and modifying its latest version of Gmail to work with Internet Explorer 6. Apparently the Gmail code was too “modern” for the older browser to handle well. Does anyone else think this is hilarious?

Link: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

The linked article performs various speed tests on four different browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. There wasn’t really a clear winner, but Internet Explorer was definitely the loser.

Link: http://lifehacker.com/…

Ars Technica has a review of the new features in the beta version of IE8. The primary change is better adherence to web standards, which really only matters to developers—the other features are pretty minor.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…