This is an exciting time for Web browsers. Google Chrome is now available in alpha for Linux, and I downloaded it for Ubuntu. Despite the fact that I was running it on my rather underpowered Dell Mini 9, it started in the blink of an eye. Additionally, any JavaScript-heavy sites like Gmail or Google Docs were so responsive that it's almost unbelievable.Does that sound familiar? That's right. It's just like how Firefox used to be.Run Chrome and Firefox side-by-side, and Firefox is embarrassingly slow. It's not even in the same league. It's an old man on the running track trying to compete against a sprightly 20-year-old.I think Firefox has lost the plot. This is a British phrase, and I'm not sure it's used widely in the US, so perhaps it requires some explanation. But it's not hard to work out. It implies a blind dedication to something questionable. If a car owner becomes obsessed with tricking out his vehicle, to the extent of wiping out his kids' college fund to raise the cash, then he might be described as losing the plot. Yeah, he's admirably determined, and the car does look very cool. But he's lost all concept of what's actually important.Mozilla have several grand aims, and there's much to be admired, but they've forgotten how to make a decent browser. I feel plenty of loyalty for them, because they've done more than anybody else to further the cause of open source software in the real world. But when I tried Chrome, as incomplete as it was, I realized I'd found a replacement for Firefox. As soon as it gets to beta under Linux, I will switch to Chrome. No question. It's just infinitely better. It's like when we all switched from Alta Vista (or Yahoo!) to Google back in the early noughties. The king is dead! Long live the king!One thing is certain: Firefox is no longer the darling of the Internet digerati. Take a look at the comments on this Slashdot thread. There's a surprising amount of vitriol out there nowadays.I'm just one guy, so why should Mozilla care? Why should they even care if a million people stop using their browser? After all, this is open source, and open source software is technology driven. That's why it's better than proprietary software. There's no pressing need to keep users sweet.The problem for Mozilla is that its income comes from end-users. Every time you search using Firefox's built-in search, Mozilla gets a small cut. Multiply that by millions of searches every day and it adds up. Effectively, Google pays for Mozilla's continued existence, but without any of us using Firefox, Mozilla is up a creek without a paddle.I fear that the Firefox project is a juggernaut that can't stop. It's got too much momentum and is determined to head in the direction it has chosen. In short, I honestly think it's too late. Despite the fact it's not really ready for human consumption, Chrome has won. Firefox is already dead. The only way the situation can be altered is for Mozilla to slam on the brakes, lean out of the window of the truck, apologize for going the wrong way, and turn around. But that's unimaginable.You might disagree with me. But will you do me a favor? In two or three years time, when you're using Chrome (or maybe a forked project), will you come back here and admit I was right?
August 2009 browser stats: IE continues its slow declineInternet Explorer dropped a significant 0.71 percentage points (from 67.68 percent to 66.97 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.51 percentage points (from 22.47 percent to 22.98 percent). Safari remained steady at 4.07 percent while Chrome once again moved further away from Opera: it gained a worthy 0.25 percentage points (from 2.59 percent to 2.84 percent).
You can see the market share pie for August 2009, according to Net Applications, at the top of this post. The graph just above shows how things at Ars are very different: Firefox continues to dominate, but the default browsers for Windows and Mac OS X still show their strength. Chrome's lead over Opera is much more significant at Ars. With Safari 4's release, the browser has managed to finally surpass Internet Explorer on our site, despite having one sixteenth of IE's share worldwide.
AdBlock+ [click to install]Probably the most frequent reason users say they won't switch from Firefox is "No ABP for Chrome." Check again. It's available, and while it doesn't have quite the same amount of element-blocking-fu that the Firefox version does, ABP for Chrome is still awesome. There are two things you need to know: 1. The button may be blank. As you can see in my screenshot, there's no visible icon. If this happens, just mouse around to the left of the wrench menu icon until the AdBlock+ tooltip appears. 2. Ads aren't blocked until you subscribe to a list. 3. To subscribe click the icon and select preferences, pick a list, check the box marked convert and use blocking rules, press the subscribe button, then click save under the global filters textbox. All done, click close at the bottom (or close the tab itself).FlashBlock [click to install]My personal preference is to not use adblockers. After all, those adverts allow us to pay writers for the content you read here on AOL. I do, however, roll with FlashBlock - because I don't like have page load times killed by oversized Flash animations. Add FlashBlock and Flash elements won't play unless you click them.LastPass [click to install]LastPass was one of my favorite extensions for Firefox, so I was thrilled when Joe Siegrist at LastPass told me he had a Chrome Extension ready to test.LastPass is, simply put, one of the best secure password managers and generators around. You can see the Chrome extension in action in my previous post. It rocks, and I wouldn't surf without it.Xmarks [visit the Xmarks beta site to register & download]Xmarks has become an incredibly popular bookmark syncing tool. It's a longtime favorite of Firefox users and the Chrome version - though only in alpha testing - looks like it will be every bit as good.Two options worth knowing about: 1. Encryption: by default, Xmarks only encrypts logins. In the options screen, you can tell it to encrypt all communication. 2. Automatic sync: want your extension to periodically update changes in the background? Set this option so you don't have to perform manual syncs.Eleven more worth trying out!SmoothScroll [click to install] Yet another Firefox favorite that users demanded for Chrome. If you find Chrome's default scrolling a bit too choppy, this extension will be a welcome addition.Session Saver [click to install]Sure, Chrome can automatically restore the tabs from your last bit of web browsing, but what if you want the ability to restore a sets of tabs from a specific session? Session Saver allows you to manually save an entire set of Chrome windows and tabs (or just the current window) for easy restoration at any time.Google Reader Checker [click to install] [Chrome 4/developer only]For the sake of productivity, I do my best to keep Google Reader closed until I have a minimum number of unread items. Otherwise, I find myself checking it all too often. Google Reader Checker adds a button with an unread count to Chrome - making it easy for me to see when I need to catch up on feed reading.Minimize to Tray (Windows only) [click to install]Want some extra room on your taskbar when you don't need Chrome front and center? Install Minimize to Tray and the Chrome is discretely tucked away in the system tray.Vince's Clock [click to install]The browser in Google Chrome OS is going to have a clock somewhere on its interface. Want one in Chrome right now? Vince's Clock adds one to your bookmarks toolbar. This is also useful if you set your taskbar to autohide but still want the time displayed somewhere prominent. Hover over the analog clock, and the extension also displays the current date.With certain themes the clock is a bit hard to see -- hopefully the developer will add an option to customize the font color.gPDF [click to install]Another feature of Chrome OS is that the browser will intercept certain document types and display them using Google's own web-based viewer. gPDF can add that functionality right now -- at least for Adobe Acrobat files.The extension looks at links on your current web page and rewrites the links to add the necessary bits to open them Google Viewer. This actually adds a bit of security to your browser -- since you're not opening files locally using a potentially vulnerable app like Adobe Reader.Mouse Stroke [click to install]Wish Chrome had mouse gesture support? Wish no more! Grab this extension and you can perform a variety of browsing maneuvers using only your mouse.Tablet and touchscreen users: you may also want to take a look at ChromeTouch. It's made to let you take advantage of your screen's touch fu.Click & Clean [click to install]HotCleaner provides browser add-ons for Firefox, IE, and now Chrome that add 1-click cleanup of your cookies, browsing and history. Click & Clean sports several options, including the ability to launch an external application when you click the TP roll icon.Bubble Translate [click to install]A number of the blogs I read link to non-English sites. Unfortunately, like Corbin Dallas my linguistic skills are mostly limited to English and Bad English. Well, that and Spanish.Bubble Translate taps into Google's multilingual conversion engine and translates selected text on any web page into your selected native tongue (set it in the extension's options screen). You can also customize the bubble and text color to your liking.WOT/ WebOfTrust [click to install]This is another extension I was glad to see arrive on Chrome. WOT provides community-powered trust and safety ratings for web pages. Not only will WOT mark links for you as safe and unsafe, it'll also block potentially harmful pages with a large, red warning screen if you happen to wind up on one.Tabs to the Front [click to install]You can always just hold down shift + control + click to force links in a new tab to load in the foreground, or you can install this extension. If keyboard-free browsing is your style, Tabs to the Front is a nice extension to add.Want to try out some more? Chromeextensions.org is a great resource. Until Google sets up something official, it's the best place to find new extensions for Chrome.
Caesar Sengupta, Product Management Director of Google Inc, was at the media session to demo the new Chrome operating system."While we were doing Chrome (browser), we saw some major technological changes taking place in the industry, The first is large number of users are starting to spend most of their lives and computing experience on the web. The second big trend we noticed was netbooks which people are using primarily as a web access device for chat, email, web games etc. The third thing was that laptops, netbooks, tablets and phones are all starting to look alike - laptops and netbooks have 3G card slots for data connectivity; phones and tablets are becoming bigger. So all these convince us that we need to relook at the computing experience. If you think about it, almost all your computing experience is one icon (web browser) on your desktop. We wanted to change that as your computing experience should be in the web. And that's when we started designing the Google Chrome OS."The Google Chrome OS looks no different to the Chrome web browser with very similar user interface. Besides the various web applications, the OS also plays video and music files when you plug in a USB thumbdrive or SD card with the multimedia files. There is no hassle and no need to install apps on the netbook as most webs you need are on the web, although there may be a possibility for those who want to do so.According to Sengupta, the netbook with Google Chrome OS will have a boot up time of just seven seconds. The netbook will be using Intel Pinetrail platform or Arm processor (depending on the manufacturer), but there's no news of one with AMD processor yet. It would also not have a giant hard disk, but a sufficient-sized solid state drive for storage (16GB or 32GB depending). Battery life is also expected to last up to seven or eight hours.However, because it relies on the web applications with no offline applications installed, this mean you would need to have constant Internet access. While the Google Chrome OS looks fairly appealing, you can basically do the same (and more) with conventional netbooks and laptops since the apps are all on the web; and despite Google Chrome OS being able to boot up a lot faster and probably more secured. But the pricing could be the deciding factor as to how well received the Google Chrome OS will be when its out later this year.
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Topic: Browser (Read 5038 times)
