White Fir Design Web Security Blog » Web Browsers

Google’s Chrome Continues to Gain Market Share

White Fir Design — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:33:49 +0000

Google’s Chrome continues to gain market share according to Net Applications data. It market share has increased 3.7 percentage points to 5.22 percent from the year ago period. Last month it surpassed Apple’s Safari as the third most popular web browser behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox. Internet Explorer market has continued to decline. In the last year it last 7.2 percentage of points, though it continues to have the highest market share with 62.12 percent share. January mark the first month that Internet Explore 8 was the most popular version of Internet Explorer. It had a market share of 22.37 percent, version 6 had a market share 20 percent and version 7 had market share of 14.53.

Developer Preview of Google’s Chrome Released for Mac and Linux

White Fir Design — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 17:23:16 +0000

Google has released the first version of their web browser Chrome for Mac and Linux, plans these were announced last September when Google introduced the Windows version of Chrome. The version released is “developer preview,” Google’s destination for releases that are least stable and designed for testing new features. The version released is missing many of the features currently available in the Windows version. The missing features including Flash support, modifying privacy settings, and printing. The Mac version requires an Intel CPU and Mac OS X 10.5, the Linux version currently requires Ubuntu or Debian, with support for other Linux distributions planned.

Internet Explorer 6 has Enterprise Market Share of 46.8 Percent

White Fir Design — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:25:04 +0000

Internet Explorer 6 has a market share of 46.8 percent in enterprises according to research by Forrester Research as reported by CNET. Internet Explorer 6’s enterprise market share is significantly higher than its market share among all users. According to Net Applications in April it had a market share of 17.52 percent. Market share for all version of Internet Explorer is also higher in enterprises, with it accounting for 78 percent of the market versus 66.10 percent among all users. Forrester Research also reported that Firefox has an enterprise market share of 18.2 percent, Chrome has 2 percent, and Safari has 1.4 percent.

Internet Explorer 8 Market Share Reaches 4.63 Percent a Month After Release

White Fir Design — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:13:55 +0000

A month after Internet Explorer 8’s release it had a market share of 4.63 percent of worldwide web browser share according to Net Applications. This was an increase of 3.18 percent of market share from the 1.45 percent Internet Explorer 8 had on release date of March 19. Those number include users using pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 8, the day before the finalized version was released it already had market share of 1.34 percent. Internet Explorer 8 now has a larger market share than either Google’s Chrome or Opera and over half Apple’s Safari had in the month of March. Chrome had a market share of 1.23 percent, Opera had .70 percent, and Safari had 8.23 percent. In March Internet Explorer had a total market share of 66.82 percent, with Internet Explorer 6 having a market share of18.36 percent and Internet Explorer 7 having 46.54 percent.

Microsoft Announces Plan for Roll Out of Internet Explorer 8

White Fir Design — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:59:13 +0000

Microsoft today announced its plan to roll out Internet Explorer 8 to Microsoft’s Windows Update and Automatic Update software update services. According Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 will begin to show up in the update services “on or about the third week of April” and the show up for “a narrow audience and expand over time to the entire user base.” For users who update via the Automatic Update service the update will not be automatically installed, instead they will see a screen that will ask them if they wish to update to the new version. When Internet Explorer 8 was released on March 19 it was only made available for download on the Internet Explorer website. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer 8′s market share had reached 4.36 percent yesterday; up from 1.45 percent on the day finalized version was released.

Internet Explorer 8 Released

White Fir Design — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 18:27:50 +0000

Microsoft today released Internet Explorer 8, coming less than two months after the Release Client was released. The new version renders web pages in standards compliant mode by default and Microsoft claims that the new version is the browser that is most complaints with the CSS 2.1 standard. The browser provides a compatibility mode for web pages that are designed for older versions of Internet Explorer. The new version also provides limited support of HTML5, including XDomainRequest (XDR), Cross-document Messaging (XDM), local storage, and AJAX page navigation. The new version is available in for Windows XP and Vista in 25 languages.

Apple Releases Safari 4 Public Beta

White Fir Design — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 18:06:16 +0000

Apple has released a public beta of Safari 4 for Mac OS X and Windows. The new version introduces HTML 5 support for offline technologies, support for advanced CSS Effects including reflections, gradients, and precision masks, and improved JavaScript performance. Apple claims that new version runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3, and up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7. They also claim that Safari 4 loads html web pages 3 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and almost 3 times fasters than Firefox 3. Apples performance tests were run on 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 2GB of memory running Windows Vista.

Opera Getting Faster JavaScript Engine

White Fir Design — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 19:31:57 +0000

Opera has announced that they are developing a new JavaScript engine for their web browser that will be significantly faster than the current version. The new version is being designed to achieve maximum execution speed, while previous engine was designed to minimize code footprint and memory usage. To accomplish the goal the new engine will include native code generation, registered-based bytecode, and automatic object identification. Native code generation removes the significant overhead that bytecode execution creates. Firefox, Safari, and Chrome’s latest JavaScript engines also include native code generation. According to Opera, the new engine “is currently about two and a half times faster at the SunSpider benchmark than the ECMAScript engine in Presto 2.2 (Opera 10 Alpha)”without using native code generation. When using native code generation, which is “not yet ready for full-scale testing”, it runs “between 5 and 50 times faster” in compatible benchmark tests. No details were given as to when the new engine will be added to the Opera web browser.

Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Released

White Fir Design — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:37:22 +0000

Microsoft today made Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate 1 available for public download. According to a post on the IEBlog, the release candidate should behave in the same way as the final version and that any changes between the two will be clearly communicated. The post also said that the release candidate has improved reliability, performance, and compatibility over the second beta. The release candidate is available in 25 languages for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Windows Server.

Opera 10 Alpha Released

White Fir Design — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:38:06 +0000

Opera has released the first alpha version of Opera 10, which introduces a new version of the Presto engine, according to a post on the Opera Desktop Team blog. The new version of Presto, 2.2, receives a perfect score in the Acid3 test, a test of compliance with web standards. The only other engine that has reached that score is Webkit, used in Safari and Chrome. The new engine also adds support for Web Fonts, a feature of CSS 3 that specifies where to download a font if the computer of the website’s visitor does not contain it. Opera claims that Opera 10 is 30 percent faster “on the real web.”

Firefox’s Market Share Surpasses 20 Percent

White Fir Design — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 22:51:39 +0000

Firefox surpassed 20 percent market share worldwide for a full month for the first time in November according to Net Applications data. Firefox’s November share was 20.78 percent, up from 19.97 percent in the previous month and 16.01 percent in November of 2007. According to Net Applications the increase was due to continued growth of Firefox of use and increased residential browsing during the month, of which Firefox has a higher share than in corporate browsing. During the month both Safari and Chrome increased their share, while Internet Explorer and Opera share decreased.

Internet Explorer 8 Delayed

White Fir Design — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:56:29 +0000

The release of Internet Explorer 8, which was previously scheduled for later this year, will not occur until next year according to a post on the IEBlog. A final public pre-release version will be made available in the first quarter of 2009 and the finalized version will release at some after that. According to the post the final pre-release should behave in the same way that the finalized version will, and any changes that do occur will be clearly explained ahead of time.

Google Releasing Web Browser

White Fir Design — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 19:10:57 +0000

In a post on the Official Google Blog, Google has announced that they will be releasing their own web browser. The browser, called Google Chrome, is built on the WebKit rendering engine used in Apple’s Safari. The browser uses a V8, a JavaScript engine developed by Google, that Google says is designed to “power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers”. A beta version for Windows will be released shortly, with Mac and Linux versions in the works.