Chrome Helping Other Browsers Out, Says Opera CEO 187
Pablo Martinez-Almeida writes "Opera CEO Jon S. von Tetzchner confirms that new entrants in the browser market are raising awareness on the mainstream Internet community about the availability of alternatives to the ubiquitous Internet Explorer. 'How has the emergence of WebKit and Chrome changed the market for you?
JvT: The effect of Chrome so far has been 20 percent more downloads every day. It's fairly logical when you think about it, because the biggest hurdle we have is all those people that don't realize there's an alternative in the market. Now, with the launch of Chrome there's focus on the choice of browsers in the market.'
Chrome for me? (Score:5, Insightful)
"How has the emergence of WebKit and Chrome changed the market for you"
When they can be bothered to release a linux version let me know then I might be able to give answer.
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:4, Informative)
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Chromium is what we want.
CrossOver is not...
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You can't kill a process in Windows either if it blue screens. OTH, if you CAN'T OPEN A GODDAMN TERMINAL because of a TOTAL SYSTEM LOCKUP in Linux, you can often ssh in to the machine from another one and kill the process that way. Just because your X Windows system has locked up, that doesn't mean the system is unusable.
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It wasn't a total system lockup then. Also, instead of ssh'ing from another machine if you are using X just press ctl-alt-f1.
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I've had X lockups that prevented ctl-alt-f* from working. The gpp wasn't a complete troll, sometimes the virtual consoles are not available. That's why I always run an ssh server on my machines, so I can get access to a command line from the outside if necessary.
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Try Alt-SysRq-K instead next time.
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you do realize that BSOD are hardware related......
right?
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The best way to get rid of BSOD is by switching to a monochrome monitor!
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I haven't had XP Bluescreen in like... years? Yeah, Explorer might crash. It auto-restarts. It might also freeze - Three finger salute the process and run it again via the Task Manager.
In a weird way, I kinda miss the blue screen. It's like how a woman misses her abusive ex-boyfriend.
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They are defiantly not as common as they used to be, but I still see them once in a while. My laptop started doing it pretty regular a couple of months back, but it was due for a re-image anyway. It hasn't happened since I refreshed the system.
You are a masochist ;)
Yeah, I really miss that condescending message: "Because Windows was shut down improperly, one or more of your disk drives may have errors on it. To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down you
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And for the GODDAMN PARENT POST, just know that Raising Skinny Elephants is Utterly Boring [wikipedia.org].
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Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Informative)
I have had system lockups, but not often (not every year). However, if your system locks up "softly" it's very easy:
1. ctrl+alt+F(1-8). That is, F1 - F8. Log in there, find the process, kill it.
2. If the machine doesn't take your keys immediately, try "alt+sysrq r" , which switches your keyboard from XLATE to RAW mode. Then go to 1.
3. ssh into the machine from another machine and kill the misbehaving process
4. ctrl+alt+backspace (kills X and all applications running in your X session).
Knowing the above tricks, you'll get way fewer lockups. The usual suspects for lockups in my case has been funky graphics cards and laptops with funny sleep/suspend/hibernate modes.
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Funny)
Does your computer all of a sudden realize that it can't win and give in and never lock up again?
Your are finally on the path to becoming a true IT warlord - well done! May your digital subjects fear you, and your scheduled tasks never be tardy.
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I think the idea is that you can isolate what is locking up and then do something about it. If your system locks more than others with the same program and OS, you probably have some "lurking variable" that is the root cause. Not using the otherwise OK program because of an unknown root cause never really solves the problem.
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Informative)
I also like Ctrl+Alt+Esc, which gives me a nice X cursor and nukes something I click. I don't know if this works outside of KDE4.
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hear, hear! Just don't get too trigger-happy, I've accidentally killed my background before... :-(
But that isn't as bad as when I accidentally hit ctl-alt-bksp instead of atl-alt-esc. All I could think was "FAILURE."
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When they can be bothered to release a linux version let me know then I might be able to give answer.
WebKit is open source and as for the Linux version, let me point you towards an Ars Technica article:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/02/google-unveils-chrome-source-code-and-linux-port [arstechnica.com]
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Haha, Linux folk. Release the specs! Ok. No, release the source! Ok. No, port it for us!
People are working on the port, I'm sure.
Keep in mind, it's been out for a grand total of two months. Can you port that fast?
archaic tool chain
You've got something better?
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Funny)
You've got something better?
Apple and Microsoft do. Let the flames begin.
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"Demands to have something ported for us usually come from novice users who are not able to port software themselves"
So people who don't write software for fun are novice users? Perhaps some of these people could, but simply don't care to, and are hoping that maybe the paid coders at $PROJECT will do it on the clock, rather than sinking 3 months of their lives into a port that will probably be obsolete by the time they're done and for which they won't be paid a dime.
Sometimes, I have to admit, the "communit
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Demands to have something ported for us usually come from novice users who are not able to port software themselves, and are not aware of the extent to which software is ported by others.
I think labeling users that don't code at that level as 'novice' is disingenuous at best. I have used *nix systems for well over 10 years in my daily life and in my job and have nothing more than a basic understanding of C because the bulk of my work (network engineer) revolves around PERL, AWK, and expect with a healthy dose of Oracle and MySQL. Does that make me a novice user? No, I don't believe so. Users come in all shapes and sizes, and everyone's individual strengths reinforce the community as a whole.
A proper and well-documented OS should be able to support any user that wants to use it without an excessively steep learning curve. Usability of a well-designed tool should never require intimate knowledge of how the tool is constructed.
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I never denied it. I took one C and one FORTRAN course 16 years ago in college, but haven't looked at either of them in so long I probably couldn't even swing a Hello World at this point. I use other languages now because they are more appropriate to my work.
The point was never about languages. The point was that being a user of an Operating System should not require programming knowledge of any sort. A user is just that. One who uses a tool to perform a task. If Linux (or any OS, for that matter) has
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, there is no archaic tool chain.
This is highly subjective. I realize in the *nix world, it is a badge of honor to use command line development tools. Of course, there are people who don't feel the need to lay claim to arbitrary feats, and just want the best tool for the job. The GNU toolchain is old, has seen little innovation, and has not kept up pace with Microsoft and Apple facilities. It is stagnant, except in the eyes of those who take pride in using such archaic and user-unfriendly tools. What's more, it's common to be berated for wanting something more modern, usually taking flak for being a novice or some other unsubstantiated claims regarding ability.
Re:Chrome for me? (Score:5, Insightful)
The GNU toolchain is old, has seen little innovation, and has not kept up pace with Microsoft and Apple facilities
You realise that Apple currently uses the GNU compiler? They use their own linker, which is more primitive than the GNU one (Mach-O is, in many ways, much less nice to work with than ELF). They use xcodebuild rather than make, which takes input files that are easier to generate from XCode but almost impossible to hand-edit and very difficult to edit with anything other than XCode, but they also support using GNU Make for building.
Or are you confusing the toolchain with the IDE? Most modern IDEs, including Visual Studio and XCode, drive a command-line toolchain in the background. Whether you use the GNU toolchain from a command line or from an IDE is your choice. The same is true when you use the Microsoft toolchain, although since it was impossible to get it without buying their IDE until a few years ago, most people used it via the IDE.
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story title edit: (Score:2)
"Chrome Helping Other Browsers Out, Says Opera CEO"
scratch, scratch, scratch:
"Chrome Helping Obscure Browsers Out, Says Opera CEO"
if your market share is tiny, then yes, awareness of alternatives helps. but for the big guys: ie and firefox, chrome represents a smaller slice of the piechart
the truth though is that chrome just slows down coders responsible for cross browser testing and compatibility ;-P
its a nice browser though. its dom and javascript quirks seem very safari like. did google base chrome on sa
Re:story title edit: (Score:5, Informative)
someone mod +1 informative please (Score:2)
thanks for the info ;-)
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maybe because its not necessary information to know in most cases?
do you know the metallurgical base of the pistons in your car?
NO?!?!?!
WTF MAN!!!!!
you driver it nearly every day!
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One of the questions in the interview was, "How has the emergence of WebKit and Chrome changed the market for you?" .
I think an honest answer to that question from Mr Tetzchner would have been to say that Apple's active engagement with webmasters, and their user base's evangelising, has been the most significant factor in any market change.
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Re:story title edit: (Score:4, Insightful)
And one way to ensure the standards are being followed tightly is to have a number of alternative browsers.
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for the big guys: ie and firefox, chrome represents a smaller slice of the piechart
Frankly, I think awareness of alternatives helps Firefox as much as it helps Opera.
Every user who leaves IE for any other browser makes my job as a web developer that much easier.
the truth though is that chrome just slows down coders responsible for cross browser testing and compatibility
Except that Chrome is based on Webkit, so there aren't going to be many Chrome bugs that aren't also Safari and Konqueror bugs.
More relevantly, all of these browsers follow the standards much more closely than IE. The day IE becomes marginal enough for a website to just throw up a "Get Firefox" banner and stop testing on it is a da
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"did google base chrome on safari code?"
Yeah, that's what the whole WebKit thing means.
Firefox, as far as the general public is concerned, is still not a 'big guy'. Web traffic numbers can't be used as a very accurate source of how many different people actually use a browser, because people that use Firefox, in general, will visit many more web pages than a casual user who has never heard of it. I can guarantee you if I went around the office here and asked people what Firefox was, at least 9 out of 10 w
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"Web traffic numbers can't be used as a very accurate source of how many different people actually use a browser, because people that use Firefox, in general, will visit many more web pages than a casual user who has never heard of it."
Read what I posted. The 20% nmber is representative of hits to websites. That does not mean that 20% of people are using Firefox. That means 20% of traffic is from Firefox. There are a lot of casual internet users who only are on a few hours a week. Heck some older folks
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Folks can say what they want about JScript rendering and memory leaks
The Mozilla folks have really done a good job fixing the memory leaks and improving memory usage in Firefox as of version 3+. There might still be some small leaks here and there (it is very difficult to eliminate them entirely in large enough programs which weren't implemented in a garbage-collected programming language), but for the most part FF3 is pretty good and the excellent addons (flashblock, adblock plus, and noscript being the three most important) really push it over the top and into the number o
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Aren't those nearly equivalent statements, though? Almost all browsers are obscure.
holy chrome partisan zeal batman (Score:2)
i've offended a chrome zealot. less than 3 months after release. i didn't know rabid combative fan bases grew that fast
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So anyone who expresses a point of view different from yours is a "zealot" from a "combative fan base." I guess you would be happier if we all just used IE in Windows.
It's the lack of adherence to standards that creates extra work for web developers, not choice in browsers.
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I think we're already there (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we're already to the point where many people are aware they have a choice of web browsers. I was watching the news the other night (obviously not MSNBC), and they had a large touch-screen display running a web-browser with multiple tabs - Firefox. They were using it to display charts and other information.
Also, various family members are aware of Firefox, but they have no idea what "chrome" is. So I'm not sure how Chrome is somehow more noticeable to the mainstream, especially since it doesn't add any of the bells-and-whistles type features that typical people notice (security and performance isn't exactly exciting to the average joe).
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Re:I think we're already there (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, yes -- I have a few (not many) family members and older co-workers aware of "FoxFire," too.
Yes, that's what it's always called, an no, no matter how many times I correct them it's always "FoxFire."
Re:I think we're already there (Score:4, Funny)
Every time somebody mentions FoxFire, God strikes a fox with lightning(thus creating a FoxFire).
Re:I think we're already there (Score:4, Interesting)
My grandparents have a series of books entitled Foxfire [wikipedia.org], so they want to call it that as well. BTW, have you ever seen foxfire (the namesake of the book)? I have in the woods numerous times at night. It's a type of fungus [wikipedia.org] that grows on dead, rotting wood that glows in the dark. It's kind of spooky when you first come across it (like blood from the alien in Predator).
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Aye, pretty cool -- but not half as cool as Firefox [imdb.com], one of my favorite Clint Eastwood movies as a kid. Concidentally, for some reason now, when I say the name of this movie out loud, it always comes out as "Foxfire."
It is a strange and funny world we live in.
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No, bioluminescence is much cooler than any movie, even if it stars Clint Eastwood.
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What if the movie is about bioluminescence, starring Clint Eastwood? Ha!
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Re:I think we're already there (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think it's more than that. A big problem for Firefox is the people click on the big blue E and it actually works fine. So they don't have any obvious reason to look further.
A big problem for Opera users is the people who claim there should be a choice of browsers usually mean there should be a choice between IE, Firefox, and maybe Safari. I've had sites work fine with Opera and then one day they just stop working because the webmaster decides to suddenly start checking user agent strings.
So a site that wo
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I think it's more than that. A big problem for Firefox is the people click on the big blue E and it actually works fine.
...Sorta. This is kind of like how masturbating "works fine". When they discover sex (Firefox), they realize what they were missing all those years, and while both can be used after that, one is clearly preferred.
;)
Yes, I realize I just compared sex to a web browser. It was just an analogy.
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Well at least it worked for Microsoft.
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So I'm not sure how Chrome is somehow more noticeable to the mainstream, especially since it doesn't add any of the bells-and-whistles type features that typical people notice (security and performance isn't exactly exciting to the average joe).
Chrome got a line on the Google homepage for a while.
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Yes, my users have local admin rights, it's easier in the end and they usually abide by the rules. SpiceWorks will tell me about it anyway...
Opera Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)
I used Mozilla/SeaMonkey/Phoenix/Firefox for 9 years. I switched to Opera a few months ago and never looked back.
The 'advertisement banner' was a stigma for me, although now I realise Opera Software are THE innovators.
I realise it's not "open", but I look forward to any JS or rendering optimisations they may do to counter Chrome/FF3.1.
Options are beginning to look like a good thing. Striving to match a rival will only be good for the world (and those of us who develop for the web ftl or ftw).
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I keep trying to switch to Opera -- every couple of months or so I make a concerted effort. However, the lack of an easy-to-use extension system (and the presence of ads -- ads? I had forgotten the web had ads!) keep bringing me back to Firefox. I also can't seem to import certain certificates into Opera -- haven't really delved into the problem, so I don't know if there's a solution somewhere out tere.
More importantly, get me NoScript working on Opera, and I'm sold. (That's even more important that get
Re:Opera Mozilla (Score:4, Informative)
I use per-site preferences instead of noscript when I use Opera. /.) I use the site-preferences to turn off Javascript for that domain.
At the moment I use it with Javascript turned on in the main preferences and then when I come to a site with completely intrusive ads (hello
I just right click and choose "Edit site preferences". It's great!
I just can't believe google haven't got gmail working with opera correctly yet, it's a bit buggy.
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Do you turn off JavaScript for all of Slashdot, or just for the adserver domain? You see, that's my problem -- I'd like JavaScript to work for the top domain that I'm visiting (i.e., Slashdot), but not for scripts loaded from the adservers that are included in the HTML (Doubleclick, Tacoda.net, etc.). I like NoScript especially because it does this automatically, without the need for a huge whitelist/blacklist.
Seriously, if Opera builds-in something like this, I'm sold, since it's really the only plug-in
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Re:Opera Mozilla (Score:5, Informative)
Are you sure you're aware of Opera's full feature set?
Opera has both per-site Noscript and Noscript by default, it's up to you.
Right-click on a website, pick "Edit site preferences..." and uncheck "Enable Javascript" for the domain if you want. Or disable Javascript for the entire application, and check Enable Javascript for the sites you wish.
As for blocking ads, right-click on the site with ads and pick "Block content..." -- wildcards are supported. The only thing I miss there is a subscription like that in Adblock, but after having blocked the most common sites, I don't get ads nearly as much anymore.
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Is there an easy to use interface for managing what domains I have JavaScript blocked from? Or do you have to go to each site every time to manage?
And say I somehow go to doubleclick.net and disable JavaScript for that domain, does it only work when I actually navigate to that site, or does it work as well on sites like Slashdot when it has scripts brought in _from_ doubleclick.net?
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Your second question is an interesting one, but I don't know the answer. I use a userjs file to handle blocking javascripts I don't want it to load. It b
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Aye, your first answer was what I was looking for -- thanks!
However, I still think it doesn't work if the domains are from within another site (like Slashdot). I'm sure someone's created a userjs file somewhere for this (kinda like the one you have).
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Aye -- that's why NoScript (on Firefox) has the best solution, that I've seen. Simply block all other domains from serving ads or running JavaScript, except for the one you currently navigated to. Exceptions (CDN's used by developers, authentication servers) are rare and handled on a case-by-case basis.
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No, it doesn't.
It just has a site blacklist that requires you some extra bunch of clicks and navigation through dialogs
This is not like noscript neither in functionality nor in ease of use, notice noscript is not a blacklist, it is a whitelist... Not to mention it also does a lot more things like blocking plugins and preventing XSS giberish and other stuff. You can also allow javascript temporarily for a site, without disabling it
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I don't see adds either.
Download the url filter:
http://www.fanboy.co.nz/adblock/opera/ [fanboy.co.nz]
and also get the CSS "element hide" file.
It's not AdBlock, but I don't see advertisements anymore. 5 minutes is a small price to pay :-)
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However, the lack of an easy-to-use extension system (and the presence of ads -- ads? I had forgotten the web had ads!) keep bringing me back to Firefox.
That is AFAIC the biggest downside to Opera. OTOH, there are plenty of tools to remove ads without using an extension. http://www.admuncher.com/ [admuncher.com] is what I've been using for years, even with Firefox (performs better than AdBlock IMHO).
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The advertising banner was annoying, but I had no problem paying the modest fee the asked for to remove it.
It's really just better at doing things the way I want them done than Firefox is (without hunting around for the proper extensions)
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Seriously? Look, I understand the love for Opera (great browser), but it was seriously easier for you to bring out the wallet then it was to search for a few free extensions? :\
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Agreed. I switched when 9.2 came out and I realized that Opera wasn't the same Opera I had dismissed years ago.
Fast, stable, and an impressively awesome feature set. Opera's all element zooming and ease at switching from author to user mode makes browsing even sites with horrible UI's painless.
Web developers care, normal people don't (Score:3, Insightful)
There has been choice for years that many people have been aware of.
Most people who still use IE just don't care for the other choices.
Web developers care more than anyone. People who only go on the Internet to watch the odd youtube video and check their hotmail care the least.
Re:Web developers care, normal people don't (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd be surprised. I work for a fairly large company (several thousand employees). People at the head office have control on their machines. A large portion of them (many who barely know how to turn on their computer) downloaded and use Firefox, and many even Chrome!
But for the people in the outlets... their computers are locked down (very...locked down. For good reasons: if it breaks, someone needs to take a trip from the headoffice, thats time consuming and expensive), old, and purely controlled by the network administrators. Pushing IE is easy, though there are some machines on Win2k out there, so IE7 and above are no go. Pushing Firefox or others would be more difficult, for little gain (from a business perspective), even if users want it.
The consequence in the end is: I have to make our -internal- apps work in IE6/7, and only those. Not a good thing.
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There's an element of truth in that, but you can't underestimate the power of Chinese whispers... With IE6 and IE7 Microsoft caused so much resentment amongst web developers (or the ones who built pages properly at any rate) that lots of people began some kind of crusade to get everyone they knew using a different browser.
As a web developer I've ended up doing the same. So, while the percentage of internet users who are also web developers might be pretty minimal, IE's broken standards created so many evang
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Fixed :)
IMO (Score:2, Informative)
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I can understand why you prefer Firefox--it's got a lot more development history and third-party support in terms being an alternative to Internet Explorer compared to its competition (Opera doesn't have the third party support that Firefox enjoys now).
But don't dismiss Chrome just yet--Google can easily throw a lot of resources at it to quickly develop the browser and offer a lot of enticements for third-party support (they have the liquid assets to do this). I've been playing around with the current publi
IE will remain on top as long as Windows is top (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>all those people that don't realize there's an alternative in the market.
Yeah. So? Even when Netscape had 90% dominance, most people still chose Internet Exploder, thereby gradually erasing Netscape from existence. I don't think any browser's ever going to beat IE's advantage of being "there" on the desktop.
Re:IE will remain on top as long as Windows is top (Score:4, Insightful)
For a time, IE was also better. It was much faster, rendered better, and came bundled... who wouldn't use it?
There's nothing wrong with a browser taking tons of marketshare when it's the better product, and for a while Netscape abandoned their browser while they tried to be all enterprisey... Netscape Mail server, Netscape this, Netscape that, all while their browser wasn't being updated and fell behind IE. Then, IE proceeded to languish at version 6, and Mozilla, via Firefox, finally started making inroads.
The entire browser market has a strong 'you snooze, you lose' component to it. Microsoft did employ dirty tricks to get IE popular fast, but if Netscape hadn't fallen asleep at the switch, Microsoft still wouldn't have succeeded in dominating the market.
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>>>For a time, IE was also better. It was much faster, rendered better, and came bundled...
Better than Netscape Navigator? Nonsense. I remember when IE first came out, and I gave it a try, and decided it was VASTLY inferior to the then-dominant Netscape. But it's main flaw was you had to go to netscape.com to download it, and most new users simply didn't bother.
Chrome helps debug Safari issues (Score:3, Interesting)
For me as a Web developer, even if it doesn't get much market share, it's already provided a great service (although it sure would be good to see it get market share, it's a nice browser). It has helped me significantly already in debugging Safari issues. With the site that I am currently developing, which is fairly JS/Ajax intensive, all of our Safari bugs showed up in Chrome as well. Since Chrome actually has a debugger (and a fairly decent one at that), I was able to use it to diagnose and fix the Safari issues in a fraction of the time. Of course if Apple were to release a debugger for Safari or a third party were to develop one, that would lessen the need, but Chrome currently solves a significant issue from a developer standpoint.
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It has one [webkit.org]
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Wouldnt how your site is ajax/js intensive be irrelevent when it comes to chrome compared to safari? The javascript engine isn't even the same, only the rendering engine is. So my CSS/XHTML issues do show up in both, but the javascript issues are totally different... The app I just finished today was an example of that: Safari wasn't part of the browsers required by the client, but when we tested for fun, it just happened to work. So did Opera (which we also hadn't tested). The javascript broke all kind of
Just as chrome helps Opera, Apple blocks them (Score:3, Informative)
Apple Blocking Opera on the Iphone
http://www.osnews.com/comments/20455 [osnews.com]
(blocking legit apps on the iphone is one of the stupidest things Apple has done in a long time)
Re:wer (Score:5, Informative)
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