Google Chrome Browser Review |
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Software Reviews -
Browsers
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 06 July 2010 12:00 |
Anyone that uses Google, (the qualifier for this is the fact you are human) will have noticed that beneath that iconic search bar is a new link, directing you to Google Chrome, a Google web browser that as with all things Google, comes with a hype that could perhaps be hugely unmerited.
Before we get to the ins and outs of its functionality, appearance etc, let's just take a look at the history of the web browser, and why Google would take this route.
The web browser was really born in the late 1980's, when a variety of technologies, most famous of course the WorldWideWeb, laid the foundation for the first web browser, which brought together a variety of existing and new software and hardware technologies. Web browsers communicate with Web servers primarily using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) to fetch webpages, which are located by means of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). In simple terms, they interpret the information that webmasters want you to see, and present it to you in the form of a webpage.
Historically, Microsofts' Internet Explorer has dominated the market, and currently still holds approximately 75% market share, Mozillas' Firefox pulls an impressive 20%, and the rest divided between the likes of Safari, K-Meleon, Flock, Konqueror, and Opera.
The market is packed with perfectly capable alternatives...ok, perhaps perfect capable is stretching their achievements, but there are many variations out there that offer you slightly different takes on the idea, and personally Firefox is my browser of choice, but thats largely due to the fact it is not IE.
So why a browser? Well, Google have a suite of Applications, Programs and Indentures (API's), most notably Google Maps, Android, Google Earth, and Gears, in addition of course to their search services. Could Google be aiming to unify their API's with Chrome? This is an opinion I've seen and heard touted about the internet, but I feel there is a far bigger picture here.
Google Chrome may appear to have its teeth cut for a battle with Internet Explorer, but the Microsoft product that Google is ultimately setting its itself up to destroy is the Windows operating system. In reality, the search titan hopes that its browser, in the short term, will simply make it easier for businesses to deploy their online applications.
Anyway, that's one for the future, right now we have the issue of where Google Chrome fits in to the current landscape, and my suggestion is that we tuck it discreetly behind a bush and forget about it for the foreseeable future. With it being Google, that may prove to be more difficult than it should be, but in the core elements of its functionality it offers nothing new, nothing exciting, and certainly nothing to challenge Firefox for my attention.
Google's first major publicity of Chrome came in the form of a 38-page comic that resembled the in-flight instructions of a plane more than it did the release of a major weapon in Google's considerable armoury. Suffice to say Marvel will sleep easy. The sedate nature of its release suggests Google really aren't all that bothered about the success of this project, at least not in the near future, and were really just hoping for a little bit of the limelight following Yahoo's protracted kissing and cuddling with Microsoft before their acrimonious fall-out and subsequent fisticuffs and chest-pumping. Google love a headline, if they were a film star they'd surely become Scientologists and marry some failed actress from Dawsons Creek, but where they normally maneuver that attention well, here I feel they fail on the basic principle of the product letting them down.
They have introduced something called an Omnibox, which is just the search bar wearing a tutu, and fails miserably as a nonpartisan addition to the browser. People have the option with most other browsers of selecting home page etc, but this bar doubles as a search engine on ... you've guessed it, Google. The merging of the address bar and search bar gives Google too much control over navigation. It separates companies and website operators from their website addresses and brands. Companies spend heavily to establish and maintain brands. Google has just imposed itself between consumers and businesses. Direct navigation has now become proprietary search, whereby Google uses its discretion to filter out web addresses and domains that it deems less relevant. I object heavily to this and see it as no less than bullying, so for this alone I have boycotted the browser, but more poignantly, they have thus far failed to release a Beta version for the Mac. As a Mac user i find this rather insulting, and as an opponent of Microsoft and every filthy moral they stand for I am infuriated.
I shall leave it at this: as a writer/consumer this story is fun, it sometimes even shakes hands with endearment, but as an employee of a web development company, and having test-driven it on a PC, I am more excited by the recession thats' somewhat fallaciously drowning the spirit of a perpetually melancholic UK. Chrome will not affect things for my employers within the next 3 years at least, and I predict that it probably never will.
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Last Updated on Sunday, 11 July 2010 10:18 |
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Read more... [Google Chrome Browser Review]
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Internet Explorer Almost Dead!! |
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Software Reviews -
Browsers
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 09 June 2009 21:41 |
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Internet Explorer 6 is almost dead! And we should let it die! IE6 is a dinosaur and a thorn in almost every modern web developer's side. If you are a web developer or web designer, you should stop supporting IE6 and make suggestions to people to upgrade their browser instead. Why? Because Internet 7 and now Internet 8 are out and readily available. As a web designer, do you *REALLY* want to support 3 browsers? We know that we most certainly DO NOT!
We should take a stand and make IE6 die by encouraging users to update their browsers.
Better Alternatives to IE6 - FOR FREE! There are so many good (and free) browsers on the market now. Internet Explorer 8 has recently been released while Internet Explorer 7 has been out since 2006! Other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome are also good alternatives to Microsoft's latest editions of Internet Explorer. These newer browsers follow the World Wide Web Consortium (aka W3C) standards which are set to make your web browsing experience equal across all platforms.
Reasons Why IE6 Causes Problems For starters, IE6 does not render .PNG files properly. Most modern web designers take full advantage of .PNG transparencies to create visually appealing websites. In order to make IE6 render these .PNG files properly, special scripts must be run to force IE6 to render the .PNG files so the transparencies are displayed correctly.
IE6 also has quirks with how it renders CSS files and requires special CSS hacks and work-arounds to make the page display properly. CSS is important to the web development community because it separates web content from the presentation (graphics) allowing for faster load times, flexibility, and accessibility. Because IE6 has many quirks when dealing with CSS - designers and developers must hunt down and "fix" these discrepancies. In other words, web designers have to cater to 1 browser because it is not playing by the rules while IE8, IE7, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome are all following web standards.
What are you waiting for? Let's MURDER IE6! If you are a web developer who no longer wants to waste time catering to problems dealt by IE6, We have listed several website which will help your users update their old (and OUT-DATED) Internet Explorer 6!
 
- IE6 Update - A really effective way to get users to update!
- IE6 Death March - Join a group of developers who refuse to support IE6
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 July 2010 14:21 |
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Software Reviews -
Browsers
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 09 June 2009 20:43 |
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As a budding 'surfer' (back in the days when surfing the web still seemed mysterious and vaguely appropriate), I never took to Internet Explorer. I think it was because every time I opened a link in a new window it always managed to position it somewhere annoying on the monitor. Then again, maybe I just preferred the Netscape Communicator loading button. Either way, from the beginning I was a fan of using programs that didn't come with Windows, and it's a trend that I've followed to this very day.
It's not that I enjoy jumping on (or off) the Microsoft bandwagon - they're too easy to hate and it's even easier to forget that Windows has provided most of us with the majority of our computing experiences to date. It's just that if there are features in parts of Windows that annoy me, I turn them off, or find ways to do what I want without being driven into a blind, keyboard ruining rage... damn you, Office Assistant Paperclip!!!
Of course, Netscape is now defunct (though I still amuse myself with a Netscape skin now and then), and at any rate, if I shove nostalgia to one side and let honesty step in, I stopped using it years ago. There is, to my mind, a very obvious replacement, but there are quite a few browsers out there vying for a bigger share of the market. As far as the number of users is concerned, Internet Explorer is and will no doubt remain the King for a long time, but what genuine alternatives are there?
Mozilla Firefox
In my opinion, nothing will beat Firefox. They can rip off ideas but they'll never take its crown.
Recently in the headlines for setting the Guinness World Record for the most downloaded software in a day, Firefox does what I want it to do without irritating me about it. It introduced me to the idea of tabbed browsing, it's fast, it lets me choose if I want to view content or not and it has a large community making the applications I want. The idea behind Firefox was to create a stripped down browser that users could add what they liked to it, and for that alone it beat Internet Explorer hands down. I've never been able to look back since I discovered tabbed browsing. In short, it's great, and it saddens me that it still only has a market share approaching 20%. Looked at in another light, however, when you consider that the vast, vast majority of PC's come with Internet Explorer installed as standard, this is quite a feat, and one that will no doubt impress further as Firefox 3 gains momentum.
The jury is still out somewhat for Firefox 3 - it looks better than Firefox 2, I like the big back button and the new browsing options. But it just doesn't feel different enough, and I've come across a few irritating styling issues with it that didn't crop up with v2. Still, I'll be used to it before long, and a few small glitches here and there are to be expected with any new release.
Opera
Opera is a very close contender to Firefox in my mind. Maybe Firefox 3 will lose out to it in the long run, but I just can't get my head around the position of the home button in the browser (mainly because I don't trust the Google toolbar , and I never will) - it's not mixed in with the back, forward and refresh buttons. I like a very minimalist browser, and Opera isn't set up to have that one button where I want it. Small annoyance, I know, but there you are.
That said, I love Opera's style, it seems very quick, I appreciate the ease of installing new apps (doesn't require restarts), and I think the speed dial is a marvellous thing, a far better way of using bookmarks. I like the little page previews that pop out of the tabs and for some reason I like the name. The ability to set up automated page refreshing is nice, too - it's uncluttered, modern, and I like it, a lot. Home button! Why!
Maxthon
Maxthon is a free browser that is based on Internet Explorer. That is, it effectively runs a heavily modified version of it. And by heavily modified, I mean a lot, lot better.
Maxthon is quite close to Opera in many ways. Like Opera (and Firefox 3) you can use mouse gestures to perform simple tasks, but unlike both of them, Maxthon draws your gesture on the screen and this makes it a lot easier to work out what you're doing. It is full of little innovations that I like - for instance, if you highlight some text and then drag and drop it anywhere on the page, Maxthon 'Google's' it immediately. You can rearrange the toolbars and buttons with a drag and drop as well, and it has a nice, clean look and a decent speed. Sadly, it seems a lot of the community behind Maxthon is based in Asia, and so for that reason alone it comes behind Opera - just. For now!
Flock
Just as Maxthon is based on Internet Explorer, Flock is based on Firefox. The browser itself seems to be overly graphical to me, so I find it annoying, but Flock is a bit different to most web browsers. A self-styled 'Social Web Browser', Flock is designed for those who just can't get enough Facebook, Blogger and YouTube in their lives.
And this is where Flock comes in to its own. A special sidebar displays all the latest social network updates once you've logged in to your accounts, and it enables you to upload large amounts of photos and videos to sites. It also lets you drag and drop text, links etc to your pages, and has a built in Blog editor (drag and drop again!).
So, for me, it's a bit over the top - but if your primary use for the Internet is blogging or hanging around on a social network, Flock is a browser you should definitely consider. The potential is quite astounding.
Internet Explorer
Love it or hate it, Internet Explorer is still the King, Queen and Jack of Web Browsers. I hate it less with each successive version, but the fact that every single browsing experience feels like a chore doesn't go away. I use it for Windows Update (grr) and irritating forays into Hotmail that require me to paste links into a better browser. And by the time they fix it I'll still be using something else - even the tabs idea is badly implemented. I'd rather use Safari.
Safari
No I wouldn't. My Safari experience: I want to install Safari. No, Safari, not QuickTime. I don't use QuickTime if I can help it, go away. No, I don't want to install iTunes. I don't have an iPod. And I don't want to install iTunes and QuickTime. No. Yes. I want to install Safari. Thank you. That was quick, ah, good. Do I want to search for updates. Okay, why not. Oh. Do I want to install QuickTime or iTunes.
Close. Uninstall. Last place.
So. All round I can't recommend any web browser as much as Firefox. I'm interested by Maxthon, and like to dabble with Opera, and I think the idea behind Flock is excellent (it's also based on Firefox, so I like it a little bit more). Though it will always be a case of horses for courses - some people actually prefer Safari...
You can view the article in its original format - as well as other handy guides and features - here: http://www.nublue.co.uk/blog/
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 July 2010 13:42 |
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Software Reviews -
Browsers
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Written by Administrator
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Tuesday, 09 June 2009 20:40 |
Being the underdog of the Internet browser war, Opera still haven't given up it's effort of becoming top 2 or maybe top 3 browser. For you info, IE currently dominates the browser market, occupying 70% of the browser market while Mozilla Firefox occupies 20%, Safari 6% and Opera 0.8%. That 0.8% is really really low. Even Google Chrome beat it by 0.1% since it's release a few months ago.
I have been using Opera since version 8, thanks to the recommendation of a friend. This version 10, codenamed Peregrine, retains the same visual interface as the version 9.5 Opera and up.
That visual not really bad, nor it is attractive. I just feels that that big black bar is taking too much space for tabs. I know the appearance can be changed, but still, why do Opera want that bar to become so BIG?
The Opera 10 boasts about it's ability so scored 100/100 in acid3 test. But, in my case, I only get 98/100. No matter how many times I refreshed, it still remain 98. Perhaps my download got a bit corrupted?
Since it's only an alpha version, I expected it to run into many problems, such as missing objects in browser or crash unexpectedly. Here, I must say that I'm pretty impressed with this alpha version, as it display correctly on websites that I frequently surf, expect for 1. It's the Blogger 'Create Post' section. It won't display all of the options such as font type, font size, alignment and etc. When I'm typing this post, I don't even know whether I'm in "Edit Html" or "Compose" mode.
Well, so far so good. I really like Opera browsers. Simple interface, fast load speed, and non-IE look, it really belongs to the royal section of web browser. But I will still be using Firefox for now, because I dearly need the Google toolbar (Gmail notifications and Pagerank) and the Flashgot extension (to intercept every download).
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 06 July 2010 14:19 |
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