The browser wars are heating up. As some of you might know, the European Commission has mandated that PC users are given a choice over which web browser gets installed in their computers. Statistics from a trial currently underway has shown that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has lost between 1% to 2.5% share in various European countries. Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome are said to be the big winners in the ballot.
It seems quite surprising to me to learn about this. After all, didn’t Firefox try to market itself as the safer, more secure alternative to browse the web than Microsoft Internet Explorer? Furthermore, considering that hackers tend to focus their exploit efforts on the most popular web browser for maximum impact, and Microsoft Internet Explorer still takes top place in the browser market share, you wouldn’t expect Firefox to take the number one spot for being most vulnerable.
After my last post on the Microsoft browser ballot, where I criticized the kind of descriptions that were used, I thought why not run a trial ballot to see what sort of results we would get. So here it is. If you have not read my last post, don’t, at least not until you’re done with this vote. I will tell you enough about it in here so you know what this ballot is all about.
European PC users are going to have to make a unique choice when they install their next Windows PC: Choose a web browser. This comes about because of their anti anti-competitiveness stance, and their objection against Microsoft’s integration of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. So installing Windows PC in Europe, in future, users are going to be presented with a selection of five choices of browsers to install.
It’s something many people have speculated for some time. Google’s secret agenda is to take over the world. First, the Google Chrome browser. Now the cat is out of the bag: Google is embarking on the Google Chrome Operating System. They describe this as a natural extension of their browser project. Perhaps so.
The Safari 4 web browser has been officially launched and can be downloaded through your Mac’s Software Updates. The Safari 4 release also fixed one important bug that affected me enough that I gave up on the beta and downgraded back to Safari 3: yes, the various user interface bugs with Safari 4 beta and WordPress / TinyMCE has finally been squashed.
Apple recently announced the availability of Safari 4 Beta for public download, which they claimed to be the world’s fastest browser. This is so, according to CNet’s benchmark of JavaScript rendering performance, using the SunSpider suite of JavaScript tests. Oddly enough, ComputerWorld’s testing using the same benchmark suite found Google’s Chrome to be just marginally faster. But certainly, the new Safari 4 Beta is running circles around IE8 and Firefox.
The browsers war is heating up again. It’s not Internet Explorer vs Mozilla anymore. There are many now many new players. Hot the heels of the recently announced Google’s Chrome, we now have Stainless from Mesa Dynamics. Yes, it seems the name and the browser is inspired by Chrome. While Chrome does not currently run on Mac OS X, Stainless seems to be the Chrome answer for Mac OS X users.
Apple recently released a new version of their Safari browser, version 3.1. Apple describes the new Safari as blazingly fast, and significantly outperforms the other popular browsers (Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9). Okay, cool. I’m ready to try. Particularly since it runs on both Mac and Windows. I regularly use both operating systems, it would be nice to have the same browsing experience.
I think we had 11 oysters each, from The Line restaurant at Shangri-la Hotel. It's a big buffet with plenty of food.
Lunch at Lerk Thai some weekends ago.
