Firefox's Version Controversy isn't Just About Marketing. It's About the Strategic Direction of the Company.

For those who tuned in late, Mozilla announced after the release of Firefox 4 in March that they would be instituting a rapid release schedule like that of Google Chrome, involving a new browser release every six weeks. Resistance to the plan has been widespread. To some degree this reaction was psychological: Firefox 4 was [...]

Should Apple Discontinue Safari or Double Down?

The recent news that Chrome has passed 20% browser market share (according to StatCounter) was impressive for a browser that hit the market just 30 months ago. One subtle point that was hardly mentioned in the tech press is that, as the same narrative was trotted out time and time again (Chrome surging, Firefox holding [...]

Death to the Downloads Folder

Like many geeks, I’m a bit of a slob. I depend on technology to help me stay organized, not create more chaos and clutter. So I’ve become increasingly irritated by the web browser downloads folder, that ubiquitous garbage heap for any content you might stumble upon that isn’t an HTML page or image. On Mac, [...]

Sharing JavaScript Code in Firefox and IE Add-ons

Recently I ported a Firefox extension to Internet Explorer. The Firefox version has some rather complex application logic implemented in JavaScript, so I wanted to share the code in the IE version rather than reimplement it. I thought the others might be interested in the approach that I used. My IE add-on is implemented in [...]

Browser Bits and Bobs for Septembers 16, 2008

I didn’t see a compelling reason to switch to Opera when I tried it, so in the interest of fair and balanced coverage, here are 10 reasons why you should use the Opera browser, according to one commentator. Interview with Aza Raskin (Mozilla’s head of user experience) about the future of Ubiquity. Intriguing commentary on [...]

Why Did Google Make Chrome?

Yep, it’s Chrome week and I’m just going to blather on about it through Friday. Today we have a piece by the one-and-only Robert X. Cringely speculating on why Google decided to make Chrome in the first place. (Actually the post is four days old, but I’m perennially behind in my feeds. Sue me.) What [...]

My Wild Guesses, Speculation and Unfounded Opinions about Google Chrome

September is here, and I’m slipping out of a mild off-season hibernation after a relatively laidback summer (“relative” being the operative word when you’re coming off ten years of stressful startup life). In particular, this blog has been sorely neglected. I’m planning to ramp things up once again, and what better way to start than [...]

The Mozilla/WebKit Arms Race

Biologists talk about a phenomenon called the evolutionary arms race. Cheetahs, for example, only survived if they were fast enough to catch the slowest gazelles. Gazelles, on the other hand, only lived to produce offspring if they could outrun the fastest predators. These are powerful evolutionary forces, and as a result both species have adapted [...]

Microsoft, Good Standards Citizen

In response to widespread outrage at their decision to make the Internet Explorer 8 handle web pages by default in the same broken way as IE7, Microsoft has now announced that they have seen the light: Our initial thinking for IE8 involved showing pages requesting “Standards” mode in an IE7’s “Standards” mode, and requiring developers [...]

Do We Really Want the European Commission to Regulate the Web?

Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie continues to promote and defend his company’s legal action against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices with a guest editorial in The Register. One thing seems incontrovertible: Microsoft should not be allowed to tie Internet Explorer to Windows and strong-arm hardware manufacturers into refusing bundling deals with other browser vendors. Assuming this [...]