Browser history

Digg drew my attention to an interesting bit of Web history - Surfing Since 1991: The Evolution of Web Browsers by Paul Lilly. It made me reflect on my own use of browsers over the years. I think that the first one I used was Mosaic - which I guess is true for many people. Mosaic became Netscape, of course, and I used that for quite a while, more or less until it seemed to die quietly away as Microsoft got into the business with Internet Explorer. I used IE but was never a great fan and when Opera came along I switched to that, but not for long, because Phoenix came along in about 2003. Phoenix? - yes, later to be called Firebird and then Firefox - and I've stayed with this browser ever since. I've occasionally taken a look at various versions of Opera and I've toyed recently with Google Chrome and, following a switch to the Mac, Safari but I find that, overall, Firefox gives me what I need. I occasionally use Google Chrome, just to keep an eye on how it is developing, but it doesn't have a fully released Mac version at this point. However, it is fast and, because of the lack of add-ins, doesn't delay launching to check for add-in updates. So, unless something remarkable happens (and, of course, the Web being the kind of animal it is, something will) I'll probably be sticking with the flaming fox.

A vote for Opera

In Thursday's issue of the Technology supplement to the Guardian newspaper, Andrew Brown promotes Opera as his browser-of-choice over Firefox. Brown likes the fact that:

"It does the two things that I really need in any browser, which are tab management and ad-blocking, very well indeed. It has a crude but effective note facility which can be synchronised across computers. The bookmarks and the history are both indexed and can be searched almost instantaneously"

He also likes the mail client incorporated into Opera and, from his description, if you want to keep your e-mails on your own hard disc, Opera would seem to have things to recommend it.

Before Firefox came along, I often used Opera in preference to IE, and, of course, Opera introduced a number of features (such as tabs) which many now associate with Firefox. However, I'm now permanently hooked to Firefox and, although I have tried out the latest version (Opera 9.5) I think I'm pretty unlikely to go over to it now. But, you never do know...

Firefox screen territory

For those for whom Firefox is the browser of choice (and what sensible person uses anything else? ;-), there's a bunch of good ideas on shrinking various menus, etc. at Makeuseof.com

Firefox 3 Beta 3

I'm now using the newly released Beta 3 of Firefox and it seems to be doing well. One of the gains reported is better memory management and that seems to be working. I haven't done a comparative test, but a quick look at test manager tells me that the seven tabs I have open are consuming 85 Mb of memory and that is much less than was the case with earlier versions.

There's a long (four-page) article about the new release on the Mozilla.org site - it has the curious title of "Firefox 3 Beta 4 The Review" - so I imagine that there'll be another beta release before too long :-)

Another article on ZD Net tells us that the main gain in Beta 4 is on speed - Firefox runs five times faster than IE7

More on Firefox

The news site, Ars Technica reports on a study by a French Web survey firm, XiTi Monitor, to the effect that across Europe, Firefox now has more than 25% market share. The country differences are interesting: Firefox has 45.4% of the market in Finland, but only 14.7% in the Netherlands. The UK is also low down on use of Firefox, with 17.2% - who knows why?

Firefox 3.0 beta 2

For the past couple of weeks I've been using the latest beta of Firefox 3.0 and, for a beta, it has been pretty well trouble-free. Firefox 3.0 is built on a new version of the Gecko engine and the changes that are likely to affect the average user are listed as:

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming from.
* Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

The production version is due some time soon, so watch out for announcements.

Firefox 3.0 now in testable beta

Firefox 3.0 is on its way and the brave and developers can now test it. Well, I'm not particularly brave in the use of beta software, but I downloaded it anyway. On the surface, nothing much seems to have changed. However, 'under the hood' as they say, the rewriting of 2,000 lines of code has resulted in a lot of changes - too many to list in this Weblog.

However, one development:

"One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed."

The comic thing is that, when you click on the Mozilla icon in the address bar the pop says: "Identity unknown. This Website does not supply identity information". In fact, so far, I haven't found a site that does supply such information - perhaps that feature is there just for Web developers to take advantage of in the future

21 Nov: There's an enthusiastic review at Ars Technica

Firefox 3.0

There's news around about the imminent release of Firefox 3.0 and a nice article about it, with screenshots, on Lifehacker.