Chrome the No.1 browser in India

Apart from Android, there is another Googly that is gaining market share rapidly.

As per StatCounter, Google Chrome is all set to become the number one browser in India. It has already pushed IE down to number 3 last month and now just a percent behind Firefox. 

Its just a matter of a week or two that we'll see a new King of Browsers here. 

PS: I'll still be using Firefox :)

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

Funny Footers...

Dear Websites,

If you can still be "best viewed with Internet Explorer 6.0 / Firefox 2.0 or higher" let me tell you that stone age is over. Oh and there is something called Chrome that you must know even if you choose to ignore Apple of the eyes.

And here is something you might find earth shattering:

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

Good luck,

Cheers,

Exploring Shiretoko

After three initial beta releases under the Firefox 3.1, Mozilla developers decided to change the numbering of this release to version 3.5, to reflect a significantly greater scope of changes than was originally planned.



Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, codenamed Shiretoko, is the sixth development milestone and fourth beta release of Firefox 3.5. Based on the Gecko 1.9.1 rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 10 months, Firefox 3.5 offers many changes over the previous version, supporting new web technologies, improving performance and ease of use, and adding new features for users.



New Features:

- This beta is now available in 70 languages
- Improved tools for controlling private data, including a Private Browsing Mode.
- Better performance and stability with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
- The ability to provide Location Aware Browsing using web standards for geolocation.
- Support for native JSON, and web worker threads.
- Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering. Support for new web technologies such as: HTML5


Known bugs:

All Systems
- Occasionally Google Mail will fail to respond when creating a new filter, showing advanced search options, or clearing the spam folder. Reloading Google Mail fixes the issue
- Some users with older computers or slower Internet connections may experience choppy OGG video/audio playback
- Users who run this beta, then downgrade to a previous Firefox 3.5 Alpha or Beta, will be unable to use stored passwords
- If you have set your preferences to clear your browsing history every time Firefox shuts down, it will also clear history when you restart after installing an add-on or theme. This is unintentional and will be fixed
- The default settings for clearing your recent history every time Firefox shuts down now include removing your cookies
- The "switch text direction" menu item has been removed from the context menu in locales that use left-to-right reading order languages.

Microsoft Windows
- Pressing enter in the Location Bar will not do anything if you are running AVG SafeSearch v8.0 or lower. Upgrading AVG SafeSearch fixes the problem

Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 can be downloaded from here.

IndiBlogger Meet

Another weekend, another unconference. This time it was a Blogger Meet organized by IndiBlogger. The event was hosted and sponsored by Microsoft (Gurgaon).


I have noticed that all the conferences these days begin with a hash code, and this one had: # indincr. Also a funny thing about this blogger meet was that there were more Tweeters than Bloggers here.

We started the conference with a little intro from IndiBlogger team and attendees, and I realized that most of the entrepreneurs were byproduct of a bad boss. No wonder why I am still working for someone else (boss I hope you are reading this :)

But the main reason, for me being there was a presentation by Microsoft “Internet Explorer 8: First Look”. Though it wasn’t a first look for me because I have been using IE 8 for more than a year now . But I wanted to see how a person from Microsoft tackles so many Firefox fans sitting there (some were even wearing Firefox T-Shirts).

The presentation was given by Abishek Kant and I must admit he did an excellent work in handling questions like “What is the USP of IE 8”, “What is original in IE8” etc. And he was candid enough to express that the main objective of his presentation was to spread awareness about IE8 and not to compare it with any other browser.

Some of the points that he covered during his presentation:

Accelerators:
These are a form of selection-based search which allow a user to invoke an online service from any other page using only the mouse.

Web Slices:
These are snippets of the entire page that a user can subscribe to. Web Slices will be kept updated by the browser automatically, and can be viewed directly from the Favorites bar, complete with graphics and visuals.

Smart Screen Filter:
It is mainly an extension of Internet Explorer 7's phishing filter. If a user visits a site which has been labeled as an impostor or harmful, then Internet Explorer 8 will show a screen prompting that the site is reported harmful and shouldn't be visited.

Automatic crash recovery
A crash recovery mechanism has been incorporated; if the browser crashes, web pages being viewed may be recovered, at the user's discretion, when the browser is restarted.

Performance and stability
IE8 improves rendering of content authored to various web standards. It has complete support for the W3C CSS 2.1.

Version Targeting
Since it has stricter adherence to W3C described web standards than Internet Explorer 7. As a result, as in every IE version before it, some percentage of web pages coded to the behavior of the older versions would break in IE8. To avoid this situation, Microsoft proposed Version Targeting whereby a page could be authored to a specific version of a browser using the X-UA-Compatible declaration either as a meta element or in the HTTP headers. A browser with a newer version than what the page has been coded for would emulate the behavior of the older version so that the assumptions the page made about the browser's behavior holds true.

Nothing from the points mentioned above will make me switch to IE from Firefox but if you are using IE7 then IE8 makes more sense for you.

We also had Priyanka (better known as Twilight Fairy) giving a very interactive presentation on social media and copyrights. The theme was that every blogger has to be protective of their content and they are responsible for the comments posted on their blog. Some important points mentioned were “If it is on web, it doesn’t mean it’s free to use”, “Linking to illegal content is also illegal” etc.

Over all meet was good (any meet is good if it ends with Pizza ). But unlike Mozcamp Delhi, there were no free IE t-shirts here, another reason to like Firefox :)

Fennec: The Smaller Fox

Was trying out desktop version of Fennec, the upcoming mobile browser from the makers of Firefox. The name 'Fennec' is based on a small nocturnal Fennec Fox found in the Sahara desert.



The first look seems promising and with options of adding popular Firefox addons, this can be a huge hit (especially for Firefox fans like me).



The desktop version for windows PC can be downloaded from here.

Tips and tricks

• To use the full screen for browsing, click the button on the left hand side on top of the device (to the left of the -/+ buttons)
• Swipe left to expose back/forward/bookmark buttons and the URL bar; swipe right to dismiss them
• Swipe right to expose tabs; swipe left to dismiss them

Known issues

• Allow panning/scrolling in iframes - Websites that display large amounts of content in IFrames, including Google Mail and Reader, will be very hard, if not impossible, to use.
• Plugins may not work in some of the desktop builds.

Source : Mozilla.org

Internet Explorer Inside Firefox

I know many of you must be aware of this (since the first version was launched in October 2005) but I am writing this for the benefit of all the Linux users and Firefox lovers (like me) who are still not aware of this cool tool.

Though the number of Firefox users is growing but still there are many websites (including popular utility website like IRCTC) that do not fully support Firefox. But now, neither you have to switch to Windows nor you have to open a new browser because “IE Tab” is here to save your day.

With help of this great Firefox Add-on you can easily see how the web page is displayed in IE and then switch back to Firefox. Developed by PCMan this tool enables you to use the embedded IE engine in Mozilla/Firefox environment.

You can just right click and select “view page in IE Tab” option or just click on the small icon to change the environment.

I hope this information was helpful.

Click here to download the IE Tab.