I’m a firm believer that most of the innovation in browsers is coming from the open-source players. This week brings a number of interesting developments from the browser arena, especially if you use either of the two most popular open source browsers: Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. Firefox is slated to come out in a new version 3.6 next week, with several improvements, and I’m hoping it will iron out a few of the instabilities I’ve experienced in Firefox 3.5. Meanwhile, the Google Chrome team has announced a new collection of Artist Themes for enhancing your browser’s look. The themes come from a diverse list of well-known designers and artists, ranging from Dolce & Gabanna to pop star Mariah Carey. They’re very slick. And finally, the Arora browser, which is based on the open source WebKit rendering engine,is out in a new, cross-patform version that makes it especially easy to block ads.
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Google has apparently made enough progress with its pre-release Google Wave project that, starting today, the company is rolling out a preview version, although it’s only available to some users. Wave has been available for a small group of developers already, but now more than 100,000 invitations to try Wave in its newest incarnation will go out to active preview developers, the first users who signed up and offered to give feedback upon Wave’s announcement, and some customers of Google Apps. Read the rest of this entry »
If you happen to work for a small startup business, and have the need for web development and tools, you may want to look into a new program that Microsoft has launched: WebSiteSpark. The specifics of the program are in this announcement. Essentially, Microsoft is offering a number of its widely-used development tools to small startups for free, or essentially for free. Here are more details, and some of the restrictions that apply.
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Last week, the IEEE’s Standards Board ratified the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, which will increase the number of certified compatible products based on the standard, and is likely to encourage many businesses and users to upgrade from previous 802.11g Wi-Fi technology. Of course, many people, myself included, have been using pre-ratification Draft-N technology for a long time; I wrote last year that the Draft-N technology was worth upgrading to. Many Mac users have been using it by default for a long time via Apple’s Airport Express routers. If you are still using 802.11g, though, now is the time to upgrade. Here are some tips for getting the most out of this faster wireless technology.
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Sometimes, technologies that are ready for prime time don’t arrive in official, finalized form for ages. For example, although many of us have been using high-speed Draft 802.11n Wi-Fi technology for years now, it was only a few days ago that the IEEE officially ratified the 802.11n spec. Likewise, USB 3.0, or SuperSpeed USB has been working technically well for a long time now, but hasn’t arrived for widespread use in products. (If you want to learn more about USB 3.0, see Stacey’s post over on GigaOM, “Everything You Need to Know About USB 3.0.“) There are some strong signs that that is about to change, and the true arrival of USB 3.0 could change the way you work in many ways — for the better.
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This week brings several pieces of significant news on the browser front, about Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) 8. As covered on the OStatic blog, Google has announced a new, stable version 3.0 of Chrome. It’s downloadable here, and if you’re already using it, you’ll get an automatic update. Meanwhile, Mozilla announced new tools, and Internet Explorer — which has been steadily losing market share, to Firefox in particular — bested all other browsers in an interesting set of tests.
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I noted with interest that Microsoft has announced a new feature in its Bing search engine, focused on visual searches. You can try it here (note that it requires you to have Silverlight installed). Like some of the dedicated visual search engines, it presents a way to do web searches by clicking through collected visual images, instead of entering keywords. Initially, it’s only available for certain types of search categories.
To perform searches, you start with a category such as “Digital Cameras,” where a search will present you with a large tapestry of individual photos of camera; a portion of the digital camera-related results is shown below. Clicking on any camera in the tapestry will take you to dedicated search results for that camera. This seems, in particular, to be a good search metaphor for, say, shopping for tech products online, where the look of the product might matter a lot to you. For general use, though, there are some other visual search engines that I favor.
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The Google Chrome browser has been in existence for a little over a year now, and has close to three percent market share, according to NetApplications. Many people attribute its relatively low market share thus far to lack of availability of finished Mac and Linux versions, as well as a lack of of the kinds of very useful extensions that are available for Firefox. On that last front, Google is taking a bold step forward, and making support for extensions turned on by default on versions of the browser obtained through the Dev channel, which anyone can subscribe to. The news was announced on the Chromium blog, and is a strong sign that a healthy ecosystem of extensions is on the way for one of the speediest and most innovative browsers.
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Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
