Tag Archives: browser wars
Video: Chrome 6 vs Firefox 4 vs Opera 10.6 vs Safari 5
Posted on 21. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 
6 Comments
Here’s another installment of browser comparisons with some of the newest generation browsers tested. Sadly, Internet Explorer is not included. I guess I’ll have to find some time later to weep about that fact.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 8/12/10
Posted on 12. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Chrome is not the only one launching a beta; all of the top three are doing so at the same time.
Chrome to Phone is now officially part of Android Market.
Roy Tancks asks in light of Android’s popularity if Chrome OS still makes sense.
Here is the opinion on net neutrality from the “Father of the Internet“, even though he now works at Google.
The need for cloud-based testing is there, and Sauce Labs is here to fill the demand.
Chrome Browser Market Share Tails Off, Depending on Data Source
Posted on 06. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
It’s really hard to track down correct browser statistics.
Depending on who you trust for browser information, the situation gets muddy very quickly on what is going on. According to NetApplications, Chrome’s browser share actually went down, but StatCounter is showing a month over month gain in share.
ConcievablyTech’s Kurt Baake has written a great article on the subject, and it looks like they are leaning toward the StatCounter data. However, major publications such as the Wall Street Journal still rely on NetApplications.
It’s hard for me to believe that Chrome’s market share actually went down given that Google is marketing their browser all over the web. But as TheNextWeb points out, sales of Windows 7 has been strong, and that has led to more use of Internet Explorer 8 that comes with the OS – and is not all that terrible of a browser, mind you.
Anyways, can we find a freaking consensus on this information? That would be really nice.
thechromesource Daily: Links for 8/3/10
Posted on 03. Aug, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 1 Comments
What can the jailbreaking of Apple’s iOS mobile operating system mean for Chrome? Here’s a look.
Rapportive, a company that has created an extension to help Gmail users with their contacts, has received $1 million in funding.
PCWorld says that with so many technical improvements abound the browser wars have entered a new round.
InfoWorld’s Galen Gruman is not convinced that the “everything in the cloud” concept will work for Chrome OS tablets.
Microsoft is paying its salespeople a bonus for switching customers from Gmail over to Exchange.
w3schools: Chrome Adoption Growing Fast
Posted on 12. Jul, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 0 Comments
Back in January, I remarked about how quickly Chrome browser had been gaining share of the early adopter market. Back then, 10% of those who used the w3schools.com web developer site were browsing with Chrome. Now six months later that figure has jumped to over fifteen percent. Here is the month by month stats for 2010.
Those growth numbers are pretty impressive, don’t you think? They are markedly different from other browsers, whose numbers do move nearly as fast as Chrome.
So the data here tells one that those who develop for the web are increasingly interested in at least checking out what Chrome is all about. Recently Chris Blizzard from Mozilla told Gizmodo that they aren’t afraid of Chrome, and the data here suggests he’s right about that notion: Firefox has not lost any share to Chrome, it has mostly come at Microsoft’s expense.
NetApplications is reporting that worldwide use of Chrome is somewhere around 7%, so those who are using it to develop and otherwise create for the web are double that amount. That seems pretty logical to me.
Chrome 5 – Bigger, Badder and Faster
Posted on 05. May, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 2 Comments
No doubt that it has been big news about all of the new features included in the new release of Chrome 5, which is a beta yet should be going stable quite soon. Some of the biggest features include integrated Flash, a revamped V8 JavaScript engine and geolocation. Also: an overhauled HTML based bookmarks manager, an extension-capable Incognito Mode and the ability (finally) to organize your extensions the way you want them.
Let’s also not forget the fact that although Chrome has been known for its speed, this element has been amped up even more for the newest realease. Look at how much faster Chrome has gotten since its inception in 2008.
With all of the new elements in Chrome browser, one has to start to wonder what Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple will do with their respective browsers. Quite frankly, I’m not sure that these other companies are going to be able to keep up with all that Google is doing to build the best browser available, especially since it is available for all of the major operating systems. This coupled with the fact that Chrome also has its own open source community, Chromium, certainly lends itself even more credit.
Let’s also not forget slick marketing. The ads that have been released touting Chrome are thoughtful and very original. Who else is trying to sell you their browser technology this way, or even at all?
Comodo Dragon Browser Offers a Secure Browsing Experience
Posted on 21. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments
Comodo, a mid-sized security company based in the United States, has decided to release it’s own version of Chrome browser that puts a particular focus on security aspects. It’s Comodo Dragon Internet Browser, and the purpose, according to the company, is to offer a safer and more protected web browsing experience. Their website notes that there are millions of potential malware and privacy threats that are out there, and that this browser is built to protect from these vulnerabilities.
I went ahead and downloaded Comodo, and while you can tell that the Chrome UI has largely stayed the same, they have added their own skin to Comodo that make it their own. Like Chrome, when you install the browser, it allows you to import your things from whatever browser you have been using, which is helpful.
One of the first things I realized about this browser is that I was unable to install extensions. This would lead me to believe that Comodo Internet Browser is based on an earlier version of Chromium browser that did not support extensions, but I’m not entirely sure of that after reading their technical documents and forum. You are able to install your own theme – but for some reason you’re not be able to install extensions. That could be an issue for some people, especially since you aren’t even able to use Google’s own approved extensions from their official site.
It appears that the main benefit of using Comodo right now is to restrict Google themselves from accessing the information that is normally sent back to them while you surf. Features that are inherent to Chrome browser have been stripped out. This include things such as reporting back to Google’s servers of the version number of the browser, the GoogleUpdate auto-updater, usage statistics and RLZ-tracking, which sends to Google information about where you downloaded Chrome from.
Comodo claims to offer a faster experience than other browsers, but in a test between Chrome 5, Firefox 3.6 and Dragon using Sunspider Javascript benchmarking, they came in second after Chrome 5. Hopefully they can continue to develop their own flavor of Chrome, but I would be hard pressed to expect that they will be able to surpass the most recent Chromium browser source in terms of rendering speeds.
I surfed around with Comodo Dragon, and the experience wasn’t any different from using the latest Chrome version, which is 5 Beta right now. Although Comodo’s website says there are added security features, I could not find any located within the options menu. In fact Chrome 5 has more content setting options than Comodo Dragon, so my guess is that they plan on adding more features with a security focus soon.
You can download Comodo Dragon Internet Explorer right here. Unfortunately, it only runs on Windows for now – from XP and up.
An Important Choice to Make: Your Browser
Posted on 20. Feb, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey. 4 Comments
So if you use Windows and you live in Europe, you’re about to make an important choice about which browser you will now use. Because since the European Union finds that Microsoft’s practices are anti-competitive, a Windows update for those with Internet Explorer will soon be deployed and will present users with alternative browser choices for them to install.
This is interesting to note, as someone commented on this blog not too long ago about seeing advertising for the Chrome browser in London. Users are going to be prompted to make a choice on a web browser in the next few weeks, and so now that piece of information comes to mind it doesn’t seem so shocking to me. What Google’s intentions are: they probably knew that Microsoft was going to be forced to push this Windows update and wanted to familiarize the public about the fact that they have their own browser.
And once one uses Chrome, they may realize that they’ve been missing out on something: an experience that is faster and more reliable than Internet Explorer. Of course, that could be said about most browsers other than IE.
As you can see from the screenshot above, the five most popular browsers will be shown in a random order, with other less popular ones being shown on another slide.
Overall, this does not help Microsoft in the browser wars. They are already losing a lot of users to Firefox and Chrome, but now this development is based not on the fact that their product isn’t very good, but because a government entity wants to make sure that people realize that they have a choice to use something that doesn’t automatically come with Windows. And there are several choices for them out there, more so than ever before.
So, have you been prompted with this message? What did you choose to do?
