Ilya Kozhevnikov

Browser Newsletter #20

April 03, 2008

Safari 3.1 on Windows: a true competitor arrives (seriously)

While pundits have been lamenting the fact that Apple’s “software update” program on Windows is now pushing Safari 3.1 to users, we thought we’d check out Safari 3.1 to find out if Apple has made any real progress on the Windows version of this browser. After all, it’s about the software, right?

We put the Safari 3 beta on Windows through the wringer last summer, and we weren’t too terribly impressed. The problems were significant, such that we’d have a hard time recommending the browser to any Windows user. As of last summer, Firefox was still the Windows browser of choice here at Ars. Have things improved for Safari? Wow, have they.

TeaShark Web Browser Launches, Brings Webkit-Based Browsing To All

TeaShark is a brand new web browser designed to run on any java-enabled handset. Using a server to reduce data costs and speed up page rendering, TeaShark should be perfect for non-smartphones. This new web browser is also based on the same Webkit core that Nokia’s S60 web browser and the iPhone’s Safari web browser are based on.

Firefox 2.0.0.13 update now available

As expected, Mozilla has released a new update for Firefox. According to the release notes it basically consists of a number of security patches but no detail is currently available on Mozilla Security Advisories page.

Apple’s Safari browser likened to malware

Mozilla chief executive John Lilly has lambasted Apple for its use of iTunes to offer the Safari web browser to Windows users, saying the technique “borders on malware distribution practices” and undermines the security of the Internet.

“What Apple is doing now with their Apple Software Update on Windows is wrong,” Lilly wrote on his personal blog. “It undermines the trust relationship great companies have with their customers, and that’s bad - not just for Apple, but for the security of the whole web.”

Mozilla makes the Firefox browser, currently the most popular alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer with about 15 percent of the market to IE’s 78 percent, according to figures cited recently by Apple. Apple said Safari currently has about 5 percent of the market, a figure the company is setting out to increase.

Mozilla: Final Version of Firefox 3 Will Ship in June

The final release of Firefox 3 is due in June, the company said Wednesday during a roundtable discussion with a small group of tech bloggers.

According to VP of engineering Mike Schroepfer, the first Release Candidate will ship in early May. The RC1 stage is the point at which most of the larger extension developers re-work their code to be fully compatible with Firefox 3. So if your favorite extension isn’t yet working, you’ll only have to wait another month or so.

Will IE8 & HTML5 Make RSH Irrelevant?

As the title asks, will IE8 & HTML5 make Really Simple History (and other Ajax history managers) irrelevant? Not so much says Brian Dillard, project lead for the Really Simple History project. While additions to HTML 5 & IE8 will definitely make managing page history easier, Brian anticipates that libraries such as RSH will evolve into tools for handling session data, especially as offline storage tools mature [...]

WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build

With r31342 WebKit has become the first publicly available rendering engine to achieve 100/100 on Acid3. The final test, test 79, was a brutal torture test of SVG text rendering. Details of the bugs we fixed will follow. Indeed, we found a critical bug in the test itself that would have forced a violation of the SVG 1.1 standard to pass, so until a few hours ago it was not possible to get a valid 100/100. Acid3 test editor Ian Hickson has the details.

Read more…
© Surfin’ Safari, 26/03/08

Firefox 3 expected for June

Mozilla VP of Engineering, Mike Schroepfer, has confirmed that the final release of Firefox 3, currently in Beta 4 stage, is expected for June, a full quarter later than the latest estimate and some nine months past the original.

According to Firefox 3 Beta 5 release schedule, it is being built as I write this and release candidates (except for Windows) are already available. Once builds are ready they will be handed to QA for thorough testing. You can join and help test this release by participating on this Friday’s Firefox 3 test day.

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers – Standards Highlights Part 2

With Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers now out in the wild, we have received a good deal of positive feedback regarding our plans for CSS. The feedback includes the need for the specifics around CSS support for IE8 Standards Mode for both the current Beta and what is projected for the final release. This information allows you, the developer community, to test your sites and give quality feedback for features that are actually implemented in the current beta release. These details are posted up on MSDN in the following document: CSS Compatibility and Internet Explorer.

Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler on Firefox, Fighting Bloat and the Problem with Democracy

Asa Dotzler has been there from the beginning. As Mozilla’s director of community development, he’s had a hand in birthing some of the web’s most successful open-source software projects, most notably the Mozilla and Firefox web browsers.

[...] This is something almost nobody knows about. The entire add-ons structure was a compromise we made to avoid losing some of our key contributors. Everyone could see which way the wind was blowing — this new thing that would become Firefox was gaining tremendous momentum — but we had people working on Gecko, the web rendering engine, and other key backend stuff that were threatening to leave. They loved working on Mozilla and they told us that if we ditched Mozilla, they would leave. [...]

Safari on Windows: decidedly not illegal (plus, font fixes!)

It’s being widely reported this morning that Safari on Windows is “illegal.” This is completely false, but we understand why outlets are reporting this.

Apple has confirmed that the license for Safari contains a mistake, asking Windows users to agree to something that virtually all of them can’t: they agree only to run Safari for Windows on an Apple-made computer. From the license: 2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions. A. This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time.

The best news for anyone interested in Safari on Windows, in my opinion, is the new nightly WebKit that enables Windows GDI use (aka, the HTML engine for Safari will use Windows to render its fonts). This greatly enhances Safari on Windows, because text no longer looks like it has fuzz growing on it.

Where is Firefox on Acid 3? Here.

Some people have been surprised to not hear much from Mozilla around Acid 3. WebKit and Opera are duking it out, but what about Firefox?

Mike Shaver of Mozilla has posted on his views that Acid 3 is a missed opportunity and is pretty damning of the whole thing [...]

Why did Apple try to push its browser onto Windows PCs?

Because it wants more people to use it - but the method it used to try to get its Safari browser onto Windows users’ machines (pre-selected as part of a “Software Update” to iTunes and QuickTime) was, at best, cackhanded; at worst, downright sneaky.

So what is Apple up to? Two things: trying to garner market share by getting more people to use Safari, and concomitantly aiming for a little extra cash from Google in return for those extra people using Safari - because Apple and the Mozilla Foundation each get payments from Google every time someone uses their built-in search fields on Safari and Firefox respectively. Safari, with about 5% of searches, earns Apple about $2m (?1m) per month, while Firefox (with about 15%) earned Mozilla $4.73m per month in 2006, 85% of its income.

Opera and Safari Race to Pass the ACID 3 Browser Test

Apple’s Safari web browser and Opera have been duking it out in a race to pass the ACID 3 browser stress test. Both browsers have recently emerged with builds that reportedly pass the test.

The ACID 3 test is a test case designed by the Web Standards Project to give manufacturers a reference point and to help identify flaws in browsers. ACID tests don’t necessarily prove anything, they simply create an extremely difficult test case with the idea that, if a browser can render the test, it should be able to handle almost any other page.

Public Acid3 build

Two days ago Opera reached a 100/100 pass rate on the Acid3 test for the first time and we published a screenshot on the Desktop team blog to back up the claim. I am pleased to announce the first public build with a 100/100 pass rate and pixel-perfect rendering! The build can be downloaded here: Windows, Linux.

New Mozilla Add-ons an inch short of the perfect central

Mozilla has unveiled the new version of Mozilla Add-ons, the official repository for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Sunbird extensions, plugins, search plugins and themes.

When in Rome: engineering the Firefox 3 user experience

This past week at the Mozilla headquarters in Mountain View, we talked to user experience design expert Alex Faaborg about the Firefox 3 visual refresh. He shared some insights about the interface design process and talked about some of Mozilla’s goals for refining the look and feel of the Firefox user experience.

Adobe AIR Makes Its Way to Linux

The Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), which allows developers to take web applications to the desktop and store data offline, is finally coming to Linux. Adobe announced today that the pre-release alpha version of AIR for Linux is available immediately on the Adobe Labs site. Adobe shipped the 1.0 version of AIR for Windows and Mac last month but was forced to delay the Linux release. According to a FAQ on the Adobe site, the reason for the delay was that the AIR team had to “wait on the core Flash Player’s support for Linux to be finalized.”

Browser Newsletter #20

Safari 3.1 on Windows: a true competitor arrives (seriously)

TeaShark Web Browser Launches, Brings Webkit-Based Browsing To All

Firefox 2.0.0.13 update now available

Apple’s Safari browser likened to malware

Mozilla: Final Version of Firefox 3 Will Ship in June

Will IE8 & HTML5 Make RSH Irrelevant?

WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build

Firefox 3 expected for June

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 for Developers – Standards Highlights Part 2

Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler on Firefox, Fighting Bloat and the Problem with Democracy

Safari on Windows: decidedly not illegal (plus, font fixes!)

Where is Firefox on Acid 3? Here.

Why did Apple try to push its browser onto Windows PCs?

Opera and Safari Race to Pass the ACID 3 Browser Test

Public Acid3 build

New Mozilla Add-ons an inch short of the perfect central

When in Rome: engineering the Firefox 3 user experience

Adobe AIR Makes Its Way to Linux

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