Google to release new web browser

September 2, 2008

Today is a new day in the browser wars. In the beginning (early 90s) there was Netscape, Opera and Internet Explorer, then for years there was pretty much just Internet Explorer. In 1999 Mozilla was born, and in the early 2000s Safari joined the race and Firefox arose from Phoenix.

Later today Google will release the first public beta of a brand new Browser - Google Chrome. Chrome borrows code from Firefox and Apple and will be an open source project meaning anyone can add and adapt the browser.

Google are touting Chrome as a lightweight browser that is “streamlined and simple”, saying “Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.”

I’ll be interested to compare the file size to the hefty 14.8MB for Internet Explorer 8 (beta) or the svelte full install file of just 7.8MB for a Firefox download. I’ll be even more interested in the speed it downloads and displays webpages and how it renders them.

Google say Chrome is ready for “the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers”. The true test of success for me will be how well it runs the websites I need today, such as eBay, PayPal, Parcelforce, Royal Mail and of course TameBay.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 35 Comments 

Firefox 3.0 released

June 18, 2008

This post was written in June 2008; specific information contained within it may be out of date.
Download Day

Firefox 3.0 has been officially released by Mozilla and is available for download today. Mike Shaver, Director of Ecosystem Development at Mozilla was at eBay DevCon today and in his keynote speech announced that the download had become available just 3 hours previously.

Mike explained how Mozilla are passionate about Firefox as a web standards based product. He explained how when IE6 was released there was no real competition and developers produced software which worked with Microsoft technology exclusively. With Firefox now having 20% of the browser share developers can once again write code for web standards.

You can download Firefox 3.0 today, on what’s been designated as “Download Day” and be part of a world record attempt. Firefox are hoping to set a Guiness world record for the most downloads of a program in 24 hours. At the time of writing they’ve had over 2.6million downloads already.

The one complaint I have so far is Firefox 3.0 is incompatible with most of my add-ons including the Skype extension for Firefox, hopefully the developers will catch up soon.

Written by Chris Dawson · Filed Under News | 17 Comments