Browsers

There is an article over at TechCult titled 10 Weird Browser Extensions. The list does include some really odd extensions, like one to block YouTube comments with ALL CAPS or excessive punctuation!!!

There are some useful ones in the middle of the pack though. Like the FireNES one:

You don’t need extreme hackery to protect yourself from the rest of humanity – just find something better to do and you’ll never need to deal with those annoying fleshbags again, and it doesn’t come much better than FireNES. Two thousand ROMS all ready to go in a browser toolbar. Claim that isn’t better than constantly refreshing an e-mail window and you’re a filthy liar.

The Java application doesn’t deliver the smooth emulation of Nestopia, but for somebody stuck in some kind of work-like environment where they can’t install software, it’s perfect. Not that we encourage reliving the joys of your childhood rather than doing those really interesting spreadsheets, of course.

Check out the full article to see all the other extensions that were included in the list.

Mozilla labs is all set to include a new project called Geode that will make use of geographical information while browsing and make better use of geotagged information on the web. Geotagging is the process of adding geographic information to media ( such as longitude, latitude and altitude information to photos and videos ). This information could be utilized by services to fetch content specific to certain places.

The project would be useful for accessing location specific information on mobile devices – directions, places, street addresses. Though Mozilla does not have a big presence in the mobile browsing space. Various projects at mozilla labs have been developed to make the browsing experience much smoother and efficient. Perhaps when these set of projects mature Mozilla would be considering a major thrust in the mobile browsing space as well.

Details on the Geode project will be updated here soon.

Virtual browsers are one of the two technological twists that have come to the browsing world. The other being 3D Browsing. With increased focus on security over internet activities, the concept of virtual browser makes for a secure browsing environment that would ideally not take down your system due to some malicious activity with or without your knowledge. I use the word ideally here because virtual browsers are not exactly proofed from all known and unknown exploits.

Virtual browsers provide for more secure browsing by a process called Sandboxing. Sand-boxing is the creation of a safe execution environment on a host machine so that changes made from one process do not affect the functioning of the system. The processes running inside a sandbox have limited access to the system resources and importantly to the critical resources. Thus the host as such is as secure as the absence of flaws in the sand-boxing program itself.

Coming back to browsers, the main criteria to consider when choosing among various sand-boxed environments is the option of how much fine grained control you have on the data that is stored in the sandbox session and movable to the host machine. Recently, HP in association with Mozilla announced its virtual browser. Google Chrome also features a sand-boxed approach to its browser tabs – which means that each tab runs as a separate process and does not crash all other tabs in event of any failure. This technology has been a reason why Google acquired Greenborder, a maker of secure software.

Virtual browsers are a good choice to make your web browsing experience much safer.

Everyone seems to be talking about Google’s open source browser today huh? Instead of rambling on that as well, I will just give you some links so you can check what the fuzz is all about.

Here is a link to the comic book that Google used to introduce the project (yeah I find it weird as well, but hey its Google).

Here is a link to the official Google Blog, where they commented on the launch:

All of us at Google spend much of our time working inside a browser. We search, chat, email and collaborate in a browser. And in our spare time, we shop, bank, read news and keep in touch with friends — all using a browser. Because we spend so much time online, we began seriously thinking about what kind of browser could exist if we started from scratch and built on the best elements out there. We realized that the web had evolved from mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications and that we needed to completely rethink the browser. What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that’s what we set out to build.

Here is a link to the TechCrunch article, which claims that Chrome is a direct punch at Microsoft:

Make no mistake. The cute comic book and the touchy-feely talk about user experience is little more than a coat of paint on top of a monumental hatred of Microsoft.

Chrome, the Webkit-based Google browser that launches tomorrow at Google.com/chrome, will give them a real foothold on the desktop and way more control over how web applications perform. While it seems that Chrome is aimed at IE and Firefox, the target is really Windows.

And here is a link to post defending that unless the browser manages to take some market share, it won’t matter:

This has the blogosphere all excited. Everyone is writing about the features of the new browser, and its strategic significance. The product sounds great, but I can only get but so excited.

Why?

Because as a developer, Chrome seems to me to be little more than pissing in the wind.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer controls around 75% of the browser market, and that’s not the bad news. The bad news is that Internet Explorer version 6 has 25% of the market.

Mozilla’s attempt to recreate the success of FireFox on the handheld with its mobile browser initiative code-named fennec has entered pre-alpha test stage. The browser is seeing great many improvements in the efficiency, memory footprint and execution.

An excerpt from Ars Technica:

In a recent blog entry, Mozilla technical evangelist Chris Blizzard notes that the optimization work has produced even more gains on ARM than on x86. The Nokia N810 Internet Tablet comes with a browser called MicroB which uses a fork of Firefox’s Gecko rendering engine that dates back to the earliest Firefox 3 alpha series. Comparing MicroB with the latest build of Fennec on an N810 provides some insight into just how much mobile Firefox performance has improved during the Firefox 3 development cycle. Blizzard ran SunSpider benchmark tests with both browsers on the N810 and found that Fennec’s JavaScript execution performance is 5.9 times faster than that of MicroB.

There are more features that are planned for the browser that will ingrain it into the touchscreen experience that was all the more popularized by the iPhone. Ongoing processes also includes better integration with desktops and other computing equipment and essentially making the browser the main application for the mobile experience rather than just another app on the mobile.

Add-ons, the one feature that has endeared FireFox to its users will also be supported for the mobile browser. The browser will look to be platform agnostic.

The iPhone has set a very high benchmark to mobile computing and as more equipment makers seek to get similar features into their phones, application developers for mobiles get a lot more leverage to be creative.

Mozilla’s Fennec will enter the mobile space as a major competitor to already established players like Opera and the IE. But entering late in the game may prove helpful here since developers get a chance to anticipate the kind of innovation that is taking place in the mobile equipment space. Nokia is also partnering with Mozilla in the mobile browser effort and most certainly will look to the browser when it comes out with its challenge to the iPhone

With Google’s Android software stack based handsets set to debut this year, expect Mozilla to be ready by then to make full use of the features that would come with the handsets. Touch and gesture based interfaces have infinite possibilities from the UI perspective and here’s hoping that Fennec will extend their applicability to the full.