Category: Web Browsers

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Slashdot posted a story about a new web browser called Flock. The source was an article at BusinessWeek. Now here’s the interesting part:

It’s a fairly long article about a web browser, and it mentions a few other web browsers including Firefox, Opera and IE. It also mentions websites Amazon.com and del.icio.us. But the only links in the article are to stock quotes and an earlier article.

I understand that it’s Business Week, and I’m not saying they should have linked to every website that was even tangentially mentioned—but you’d think they could have at least linked to the browser company they just profiled! I had to get that link from Slashdot! (Unfortunately, so did everyone else, so I won’t be able to look at the page until tomorrow.)

Edit: Compare the BusinessWeek article to Wired’s take from last month. Even taking into account that they’re written for different audiences, BusinessWeek still looks like a print article that’s been thrown up on the web.

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A tale of the Browser Wars on the high seas.

Harken, lads, and listen to my tale. It is the tale of the FyreFawkes, a vessel that turned the tide in the never-ending battle for the high seas.

In this day, shipping lanes criss-cross the ocean like a Web, and in years past, that web was commanded by the Fleet of the Navigators. Wherever ye wanted to go, a Navigator ship was there to take you. But the wealthy My Crows’ Loft Company controlled the ports, and knew that if they did not take command of the high seas, someone might use the Navigator Fleet to build their own harbors, outside My Crows’ Loft’s sphere of influence.

So My Crows’ Loft built their own fleet, a fleet of Explorer craft, and after a great trade war, their fleet dominated the ocean. The Navigators’ fleet shrank, nearly forgotten.

But My Crows’ Loft grew complacent in their victory, and the Explorer fleet aged. Worse, the vessels had weak spots and leaks that pirates and brigands of all sorts knew how to attack. What was once a pleasant voyage across the sea became a journey fraught with danger, with spies, phishermen, and great wyrms lying in wait for the unsuspecting voyager. Continue reading →

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Opera BrowserOpera Software celebrates its 10th anniversary today with an online party and free registration codes for a day.

I first discovered the Opera web browser in college, probably 1998 or back in 1999. A friend who worked with me at the Artslab showed it to me, and I was impressed by how fast it was and that the installer fit on a floppy. Opera was shareware only back then, with a 30-day trial period, and I had no objection to paying the $15 or $20 $18 it cost with a student discount. (I remember scanning my student ID and emailing them a JPEG to prove I was a student.)

By the time Y2K rolled around, Netscape 4 was showing its age, and Mozilla was still early in its development cycle. IE—well, IE had won the browser war, and was arguably better than Netscape at this point, but as far as I was concerned they had cheated to do so instead of winning solely on merits. Opera was a lean, mean browsing machine.

Things changed during 2000, though. Opera 4 and 5 started getting cluttered, and Mozilla was starting to stabilize. Side projects like Galeon started branching off of Mozilla. Pretty soon I was using Mozilla all the time on Windows and Galeon on Linux.

I kept up with new releases, though, and the latest version of Opera is excellent—on both Windows and Linux. I mostly use Firefox these days, but I’m using Opera a lot more than I used to—and not just for testing!

Check out Opera, grab a free reg code while they’re still available, or just drop in on the party.

Seen in rounds at WaSP Buzz, Slashdot, and Opera Watch.

Also interesting: the Opera 10th Anniversary T-Shirt reminded me of Joi Ito’s comments on wearing Firefox (via a*dot). I wonder how people would react if I wore a Firefox shirt and an Opera hat, or vice-versa?

(Other notable tens this August: Windows 95 and Internet Explorer)

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It occurred to me today that if you lay out the three major players in computer operating systems and the three major players in web browsers, the results track remarkably well.

  • Windows and Internet Explorer. The dominant player. Obtained that position by being good enough, cheap enough, and promoted enough to win a protracted two-way battle. Detractors claim the victory was primarily due to marketing and business practices, not quality. Plagued by a public perception of insecurity. Currently trying to maintain that lead against an opponent unlike any they’ve faced before. Believes itself to be technically superior to the other options.
  • Linux and Firefox. Open source product with a core team and hundreds of volunteer contributors. Originally created as a replacement for a previous major player. Very extensible. Promoted as a more secure alternative, but has faced growing pains with its own security problems. Highly regarded among many computer power users, beginning to gain mainstream acceptance and challenging the dominant player. Believes itself to be technically superior to the other options.
  • Mac OS and Opera. Has been there since the beginning. Constantly innovating, pioneering ideas that get wider exposure when their competitors adopt them. Very dedicated fan base that never seems to grow enough to challenge the dominant player. Has been declared doomed time and time again, but keeps going strong. Believes itself to be technically superior to the other options.

It breaks down, of course. Traditional UNIX is missing from the OS wars, though it provides a nice analogy to Netscape for Firefox. The battle lines don’t quite track either, since the previous wars were Windows vs. Mac and IE vs. Netscape. And Safari’s missing entirely. But it’s interesting to see the same three roles in play.

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Many web browser add-ons have features that require contacting a central server. The Google Toolbar will show you a site’s PageRank. Amazon’s A9 Toolbar will show you information from Alexa. If you want this, that’s great—but if you only want it occasionally, you might not want someone tracking your entire browsing session.

After installing the A9 toolbar for testing, I decided I wanted to know just when they were contacting their server. I installed the Firefox versions of four toolbars and used netstat to see when they connected.

  • A9 Toolbar: Constant connections to hosts at amazon.com and alexa.com, but only when the toolbar is visible.
  • Google Toolbar: Opens initial connection to a Google-owned IP address. If PageRank display is enabled, or was earlier in the session, maintains continuous connections—even when the toolbar is hidden!
  • Yahoo! Toolbar: Opens initial connections to a Yahoo server and to unknown.Level3.net (which, based on traceroute, appears to be on the way from here to Yahoo). Sometimes the latter remains open for a long time before closing. It does not appear to reconnect on its own.
  • StumbleUpon: Only connects when you press its buttons.

Overall, these toolbars seem to behave in a privacy-friendly way. But it was disturbing that the Google toolbar keeps a connection open even when it’s hidden, and that disabling PageRank display doesn’t seem to stop the connections until you restart Firefox. (Maybe it does eventually, and I didn’t wait long enough.) If I’ve hidden the toolbar, I don’t need the functionality right then. There’s no reason to hold a network connection open until I re-show the toolbar.

If I only want to use these toolbars occasionally, I can just hide most of them through the View→Toolbars submenu. But to keep the Google Toolbar from phoning home, I have to either disable PageRank and restart Firefox, or disable the toolbar in the Extensions—and restart Firefox.