Last week, Mozilla celebrated Firefox’s fifth birthday. While it may seem hard to believe that it’s really been that long since Firefox first burst onto the browser scene, it’s equally hard to understate just how important it has been for the development of the web. While IE is still the most popular browser, according to Net Applications, the browser market is much healthier than it was five years ago. Several major desktop and mobile browsers are in active development, notably IE, Firefox, the WebKit-based Apple Safari and Google Chrome, and Opera. The intense competition among these vendors is causing a climate of innovation, and the start of a new browser war.
So what might the future hold for browsers? In my latest Long View over on our subscription research service, GigaOM Pro, “What Does the Future Hold for Browsers?“, with comments from Chris Wilson (Microsoft), Chris Blizzard (Mozilla) and Bruce Lawson (Opera), I look at where this new browser war might lead, and the battlefields that it will be fought on: innovative new technologies, browser performance, security and privacy, and the ability to browse from multiple, diverse devices.
How do you think browsers will change over the next five years?
It’s an exciting time to be a web worker, what with all of the great browser choices we now have available to us. Firefox may be the preferred browser for many of us, but Chrome, Safari and Opera are also compelling options.
Despite these choices, I’ve pretty much been locked into either Firefox or Internet Explorer because of my reliance on the RoboForm password manager, which is only compatible with those browsers. The lack of Google Chrome support has been particularly frustrating to me. I’m impressed with the speed and resource management of Chrome, but without the easy access to my passwords that I’ve grown accustomed to, it hasn’t been an option for serious consideration. But a couple of recent announcments by Siber, the maker of Roboform, are changing that.
Statistics from the exo.performance.network indicate that over half of computer users (50.6 percent) are now using the Firefox browser, InfoWorld reports. Despite this, Internet Explorer is still widely used, with 84 percent of users still turning to it “regularly.”
These numbers indicate that a large number of people use more than one browser. This is hardly surprising, given the addition of newer browsers like Google Chrome and Safari for Windows, and the recent upgrade of Opera.
It’s evident that web designers and developers will continue to need to support multiple browsers, and while modern browsers are generally more compatible than they have been in the past, developers will need to plan testing of their applications accordingly.
Opera 10, the latest version of the innovative browser, launched today. It sports a sleek new design and improved performance, thanks to improved handling of JavaScript and a new “Turbo” mode that uses compression technology to speed up slow connections.
As I reported back in June when the public beta became available, Opera 10 has impressive standards compliance, scoring a perfect 100 on the Acid3 test, and includes support for web fonts. It also has greatly improved JavaScript performance, although it’s still not as speedy as the latest versions Firefox or Google Chrome. The final release doesn’t seem to have changed greatly from the beta; running it through the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark gives a virtually identical score on my test machine. Read the rest of this entry »
Browser development from the major vendors continues apace. Yesterday saw the release of the Opera 10 beta. This new version of Opera is interesting for a few reasons, not least of which is a brand-new (and much improved) interface designed by the talented Jon Hicks. Opera Software prides itself on the standards-compliance of its browser, so you’d expect the new version to be good in this department. Indeed, the new version gets a perfect 100 on the Acid3 tests (compared with 93 for Firefox 3.5 beta 4, and a paltry12 for IE 8). The beta supports goodies like web fonts (check out Aliza’s interview with Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie for a demo), has integrated email and chat, visual tabs, and a new “Opera Turbo” mode with compression technology that should improve performance when stuck on slow and laggy connections. Read the rest of this entry »
Earlier this week Simon asked us to share what we carry with us when we go mobile. Unlike Aliza, my forays out of the office tend to be short, usually for things like client meetings or local presentations, so my needs are pretty sparse. I bring with me what I need to accomplish my trip’s goals, plus the general tools that I find I may need no matter where I am headed.
There’s nothing particularly fancy inside, but it is all functional and each piece fits its required role perfectly.
While at SXSW, I had the opportunity to meet one of the web’s founding fathers, Håkon Wium Lie. He’s the creator of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and a CERN alum, along with Tim Berners-Lee. He’s also the CTO of Opera Software, and sang the praises of this underdog browser that, while often ignored, introduced some of the snazziest features in the browser world today. Lie and I discussed CSS3 and the upcoming Opera 10, currently in alpha, that will continue Opera’s tradition of innovation.
Web designers have long been using CSS to customize font size, style, family, backgrounds and layouts across a site. CSS3 brings a much more powerful feature set to those designers, including: Read the rest of this entry »
We spoke with the inventor of CSS, Håkon Wium Lie, at SXSW. Lie is a CERN alum, alongside the granddaddy of the web, Tim Berners-Lee. Lie is also the CTO of Opera Software, maker of the Opera browser, and works and resides in Oslo, Norway.
Lie is a fan of Google Docs (yes, another one!), and here’s how he uses it.
Opera 10
Browser development from the major vendors continues apace. Yesterday saw the release of the 
Earlier this week Simon asked us to share what we carry with us when we go mobile. 
While at SXSW, I had the opportunity to meet one of the web’s founding fathers, Håkon Wium Lie. He’s the creator of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and a CERN alum, along with Tim Berners-Lee. He’s also the CTO of 
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
