Comments on: Browsers on Windows 7

By: April

April — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:59:25 +0000

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that I’ve really enjoyed reading your posts. Anyway
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By: Frederick

Frederick — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:31:01 +0000

Sure, Internet Explorer has by far the largest share. This is common knowledge among Web designers and developers — most often as a nuisance, given its massive failures with Web standards. But I'd refer to the context in which I mentioned Firefox and Chrome as the 1st and 3rd most used browsers.

…Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, two of the most common browsers among people who are on the cutting edge of software technology… (emphasis added)

Remembering that the purpose of this article wasn't to highlight the respective successes of Firefox and Chrome, it seems reasonable to me to point out that both Firefox and Chrome, with advantages in terms of Web standards and technologies over Internet Explorer, should focus on — or at least pay some attention to — improving their user-friendliness. Chrome's done a great job of that, though, as Linus Torvalds said, "different, if better, is worse"; that is to say, Chrome's too different from the norm for the average user. Similarly, if only Firefox could make itself integrate… it would gain popularity with new, non-technical users.

By: Frederick

Frederick — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:23:11 +0000

"Just an RC" means a lot. It means a ton to software developers, hardware OEMs and everybody as a whole, given that RTM will be in July and GA (in stores) is set at October 22nd. (Windows 7 Team Blog.) It's the goal of developers, particularly those working on major projects, to ensure compatibility with new (versions of) platforms, and for a project as massive as Firefox, there's no reason not to make it Windows 7 aware — aside from the little problem that it's not even perfectly integrated into Vista, and that was about 2 years ago.

Why would Mozilla be developing features for Windows 7 when they can focus on getting 3.5 out sooner.

Perhaps it's valid to claim that Firefox should perfect the HTML5 features in 3.5 before turning to the aesthetic things. But I would also note that, as of two days ago, I got an early release candidate of Firefox 3.5, where all those other things seem to have already been perfected. Meanwhile, Apple has managed to implement, in Safari 4, not only an implementation of many HTML5 features, but also amazing support of CSS3, thanks to the WebKit project. That's how Safari 4 combines an aesthetically pleasing UI with amazing underlying technology. As for Wakoopa, I'd agree. It only tracks those who sign up for it; it represents the demographic of users who are more technologically adept than their peers. This is very possibly the same demographic that is running the Win 7 RC or that will be the early adopters of the new OS. More to come in my next comment.

By: William

William — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 04:45:12 +0000

You see to forget this is just an RC. Windows 7 is still months if not years off of Launch. Why would Mozilla be developing features for Windows 7 when they can focus on getting 3.5 out sooner.

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After all, according to Wakoopa (which tracks software usage), Firefox and Chrome are the 1st and 3rd most used browsers on Windows.
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What kind of source is that? That site only tracks those who sign up for it. To have a fair and unbiased sample, we must look at all Internet users, which http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 does a good job of. And we see IE has by far the largest share. (And this is adding in Mac users – higher in Windows)

By: Frederick

Frederick — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:13:51 +0000

Don't forget that with Chrome and Safari you can remove thumbnails from the startup page. (And Opera's Quick Dial pioneered the thumbnail start page.) If you don't like the taskbar thumbnails, you can always disable them.

By: required

required — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:11:55 +0000

A couple of things.
One: Safari is, really, not that great. I’ve tried out several different browsers in the past few months, and I must say that Safari is by far the worst. Most prone to crashing, most ineffective attempt at a “pretty” graphical interface, generally just annoying.
Two: This “rollover to view tabs” sounds more like an inconvenience than a good thing. If you are doing something personal or private on the computer, and you don’t want the other people near you to see what you’re doing, you can’t roll over the taskbar without giving everything away. That’s another reason I don’t really like Chrome – everyone can see what sites you visit right when you open the browser.