OStatic

The Browser Competition Heats Up: Notes from this Week

Few corners of the software world are witnessing as much fierce competition as the browser market. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is continuing to drop in market share,  and although the company's new version 8 of IE has many improvements, Walt Mossberg and others are finding that it's not as fast as Firefox, Chrome or Safari. I remain loyal to Firefox because of the incredible extensions that I can use with it, but I'm actually using all the major browsers, including Opera. Amidst all the competition, here are some findings I took note of this week, regarding Chrome, IE, Firefox and Opera.

Google Chrome is now available in an alpha for Linux. The Ubuntu daily builds are works in progress, but I have no doubt we'll see a finished version of Chrome for Linux soon. Apparently, the alpha is already very fast. Meanwhile, there is a new beta version of Chrome, which we wrote about here. It includes many useful new features.

Also on the Chrome front, developers have started working on RSS features, the absence of which many users have complained about. Google has also put out a call for extensions for Chrome, and posted a How-To document for people who want to build them.

Microsoft is seeking to downplay performance deficiencies in the new version of Internet Explorer, as CNet reports. Still, I'm finding much of the hubbub surrounding performance to be off the mark. Firefox's success is built on the enormously useful extensions that are availabe for it. That's why it is my primary browser. The differences in speed between IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari are not huge, but extensions continue to be the reason why Firefox keeps gaining market share. Mozilla pushed solid open source principles in making sure of this, and the effort is working. There are already signs that IE 8's adoption rate may not be very good so far, which would only bode well for open source browsers.

Meanwhile, Opera has released an alpha test version of its browser, dubbed Opera Turbo, downloadable at the bottom of this page. I loaded this and used it quite a bit yesterday, and it is surprisingly fast, and especially good for slower performing machines. I could see many netbook owners appreciating it. It mixes up the way pages are rendered, so that you see text before graphics load and the like. It had some problems with certain sites I went to, but it is alpha, and was surprisingly fast.

Opera has its own loyal base of users, and plans to include the Turbo features in upcoming releases of its official browser. I'm not counting Opera out yet.
 

• firefox
• Internet Explorer
• opera
• Chrome

Share Your Comments