All posts tagged ‘Browsers’

File Under: Browsers
Aug
12
2010

Chrome 6 Beta Boasts New Look, Better Sync

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Chrome 6 beta on the Mac

The next version of Google’s browser has been promoted to beta status. You can now download Chrome 6 beta and start testing it out on multiple platforms.

The biggest new features? There’s a simplified user interface in Chrome 6, a new autofill feature for completing web forms, and better syncing, including support for autofill data and extensions. If you’ve been using the dev channel or canary releases of Chrome, you’ve seen these features showing up one by one over the last few weeks.

Chrome 6 beta gets the performance bump that’s standard for each new browser release. It also comes hot on the heels of the latest pre-release versions of Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9, both of which arrived within the last week showing off faster and more capable HTML and JavaScript engines.

The browser’s skin has been tweaked slightly to streamline the tab and button layouts, and there’s a new unified button that marries the old Tools and Menu buttons found in previous versions of Chrome. The new menu button holds all the most popular controls, as well as some oddly placed buttons for zooming pages, launching fullscreen mode, and performing copy/paste tasks. I don’t think any of us are going to be abandoning keyboard shortcuts for these options any time soon.

The autofill feature is integrated with the sync feature in Chrome 6 beta, so all of your instances of Chrome (home, work, laptop) will be able to share not only preferences, extensions, browsing data and themes, but also form data. You can autofill forms with the same information — provided you’re logged into Google using the same account in each location. Chrome can remember, store and sync any set of common information you’d normally put into a web form (names, e-mail, mailing addresses, phone numbers). You can simply select which data set to choose from when the autofill feature takes over.

Chrome can also remember credit card numbers, but you have to explicitly add them in the autofill feature’s preferences.


This version of Chrome will likely move from beta to a general stable release in a few weeks. We should expect the next version of Chrome to follow along only six weeks after that, as Google has sped up its release cycle to put a new version of its browser out every month and a half.

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File Under: Browsers
Aug
12
2010

Next Firefox 4 Beta Arrives, Now With Multi-touch

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Mozilla has released the latest beta version of its Firefox 4 browser. You can grab Firefox 4 beta 3 for all major operating systems and over 30 languages from Mozilla’s beta download site.

The big addition to this beta is support for touch events inside the browser on Windows 7 machines. Windows 7 ships with built-in support for multi-touch actions on touchscreen tablets, desktops and laptops, and now Firefox is able to access that magic and let you interact with websites by touching them. The result is stuff like this:

Also new to this release is an enhancement to the JavaScript capabilities within Firefox. If you’ve been keeping up with all the latest JavaScript and HTML5 web app demos we’ve been showing you over the last few months, you’ve probably noticed that animations with many moving parts tend to be much smoother and faster in Chrome and Safari. This new version of Firefox gives scripted animation performance a significant boost, so the speed difference is less noticeable.

These new features join the enhancements already introduced in previous pre-release versions of Firefox 4, like the new tabs-on-top interface and the addition of App Tabs.

The tabs-on-top setting can be toggled in the browser's View menu.

The move to tabs-on-top is a growing trend among browser vendors. Chrome and Opera do it, and Safari has flirted with the look. While some within the Firefox user community fear Mozilla is making the switch just to chase the latest design fad, the change is less about a trend and more about the evolution of the web as a platform — these UI tweaks turn the tab bar into something much closer to a dock or a task bar.

Keep in mind, Firefox 4 is still a pre-release browser, and it may not be entirely stable. But it should be stable enough for daily use, and it will give you a heads up on all the new goodies on the way when Firefox 4 is officially released this October or November.

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File Under: Browsers, HTML5
Aug
2
2010

Is Your Browser Ready for HTML5?

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The HTML5 era is already here, it just isn’t evenly distributed yet. Browsers vary in their levels of support for the emerging standard, and developers are pushing the envelope with hacks, experiments and proof-of-concept demos.

If you want to find out how well-equipped your browser is for the HTML5 future, just pay a visit HTML5test.com.

The page will check if your browser supports HTML5 parsing, canvas, file drag-and-drop, embedded audio and video, and all of the other elements required by the draft HTML5 specification, as well as specifications that are related to HTML5 but not actually a part of it, like geolocation and local storage.

You’ll be issued a score (out of a total of 300 points) that indicates the level of support for the stuff in the spec, as well as bonus points for support that goes beyond what’s required for HTML5 compliance. For example, your browser gets bonus points for each video codec and audio codec included in the browser. These are only bonus points, and not real points, since HTML5 outlines how audio and video files can be embedded on a page, but does not require a specific audio or video codec to be included.

Here’s how the browsers on my Mac stack up:

  • Chrome (dev channel) scores 217 points and 10 bonus points
  • Safari 5.01 scores 208 points with 6 bonus points
  • Firefox 4 beta 2 scores 189 points with 9 bonus points
  • Opera 10.6 scores 159 points and 7 bonus points
  • Internet Explorer 9 platform preview scores 84 points and 1 bonus point

If you’re wondering how these scores are being generated, the code behind the single-serving app was posted to Github by creator Niels Leenheer. He says he also incorporated the HTML5 parser tests created by Mozilla developer Henri Sivonen.

HTML5, the much-anticipated rewrite of the web’s lingua franca, is currently in open development, with the web’s standards body and all the browser vendors taking part. While some browsers won’t fully support HTML5 until it is officially standardized some time in the next year or two, developers have already begun building with it, and all major browser vendors are adding support into their latest releases.

There are multiple methods of checking for HTML5 element support when a user visits your page, as well as libraries like Modernizr, which let you take advantage of HTML5 elements while controlling how browsers with limited support handle your page.

The HTML5 specification is updated frequently, and browser support for the various elements is in constant flux. As such, the test numbers will go up and down as new browser versions are released and as the code that powers the tests is improved and is updated to reflect HTML5′s changing status.

Also, Leenheer has posted the next version of the test, which ups the total possible score to 315 points, at beta.html5test.com. Go there if you want to see what the page will be testing for in the future.

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File Under: Browsers
Jul
26
2010

Next Beta of Firefox 4 Delayed a Few Days

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The second beta release of Firefox 4 won’t arrive until the middle of this week at the earliest, Mozilla says.

We were expecting Firefox 4 beta 2 last Thursday or Friday. But the Mozilla Wiki page for the browser has been updated with this statement: “Hi! We’re glad you’re interested in Firefox 4 Beta 2 – it’s not quite ready yet. Our candidate builds are still going through quality assurance tests.”

The new proposed release dates are July 27-29.

As we’ve pointed out many times before, Mozilla’s release dates are only targets and not hard-and-fast deadlines. No worries, we can wait.

The final version of Firefox 4 is still expected in October or November. It will ship with increased support for emerging web standards like HTML5 and CSS 3, a new look, and the usual speed improvements. We reviewed the first beta and gave a rundown of the new features. You can always download the most current beta release from Mozilla’s Firefox Beta page.

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File Under: Browsers
Jul
23
2010

Chrome Team Sets Six-Week Cadence for New Major Versions

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Google announced via the Chromium Blog that it plans to release new stable versions of Chrome every six weeks. Though the team has managed to ship five major revisions in less than two years, the new accelerated pace means we could see Chrome 9.0 by the end of this year.

According to program manager Anthony Laforge, the increased pace is designed to address three main goals. One is to get new features out to users faster. The second is make the release schedule predictable and therefore easier to plan which features will be included and which features will be targeted for later releases. Third, and most counterintuitive, is to cut the level of stress for Chrome developers.

Laforge explains that the shorter, predictable time periods between releases are more like “trains leaving Grand Central Station.” New features that are ready don’t have to wait for others that are taking longer to complete—they can just hop on the current release “train.” This can in turn take the pressure off developers to rush to get other features done, since another release train will be coming in six weeks. And they can rest easy knowing their work isn’t holding the train from leaving the station.

Mass transit metaphors aside, Chrome will be revving the major version number with each stable release, with 6.0 expected pretty soon, and then shortly followed by 7.0. 8.0. and 9.0. However, warns Laforge, “please don’t read too much into the pace of version number changes—they just mean we are moving through release cycles and we are geared up to get fresher releases into your hands!”

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news. For more from Ars Technica, follow the links below.

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