Browser Wars Day 3: Firefox 3.5 (beta)

Due to some unforeseen schedule mixup, Day 3 of my Browser Wars blog series would go online tomorrow instead. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Browser Wars Day 2: Opera 10.0 (alpha)

Previously, I took a look at Safari 4.0 on day 1 of my Browser Wars series. Today I downloaded and installed Opera’s new browser, which has been in its alpha release since December of last year. I have to say that I haven’t really used Opera a lot before. I usually have it installed on my computers just for testing. It had a slightly different interface layout and as such it took me a bit longer to get used to it compared to Safari 4.0.

I already had the stable version installed (9.64) and I was glad to find out that it was possible for me to install the 10.0 alpha alongside the previous version. The installation went by without any problems as well.

In contrast to Safari 4.0, Opera’s user interface looked a bit clunky. The menus, tabs and buttons use up a lot of screen area and it was also disappointing to find out that the menu bar could not be disabled. It was completely the opposite of Safari’s minimalistic approach but I guess I should wait until the beta version is out before I comment too much on the UI.

This browser would probably be a techie’s dream browser. It seems like Opera crammed every possible feature they could think off.

On the default layout you would immediately notice an icon that’s not normally found on browsers: a trash bin (see image above). It took me a while to figure out what it does but after an hour of browsing, I notice that it collects the recent tabs/pages that you closed. Sort of like a recycle bin for your browsing history. Definitely a nice thing to have. Of course IE8 already has this feature but instead of giving users a dedicated button, IE just displays the recently closed pages when you open a new tab (more on this on IE day).

On the lower right hand corner of the browser (on the status bar) is a magnifier drop down box where you could choose how much zoomed in/out you want the page to be. This is also another feature that’s already in IE8. I don’t use it at all but it’s definitely a feature that should be in all browsers because it would definitely be very handy for some users.

On the upper left hand side you’d find the toggle button for the tool bar, which gives you access to still more features. From here you can access a notes tool, as well as Opera’s Widget manager. If your like your browser to come with all the bells and whistles there’d be plenty for you to get excited about right in that area. But I actually like my browsers as simple as possible so let’s move on.

The browser also has support for email, newsgroups and chat (via IRC).

From a techie point of view, this would be the browse of choice because of the Developer Tool: Dragonfly. It lets you dive deep into the code behind a page, allowing you to find bugs easier. Definitely a powerful engine, but then again like I said before, I’m actually not too fond of browsers that try to do too much. This sort of thing could easily be done in the powerful web development tools available today.

Looking at just the browsing features though, Opera 10.0 does have a lot of stuff that I like. One of these is the fact that it ‘remembers’ your open tabs. Closing the Opera window while you have several tabs open does not generate an alert but when you re-launch the browser it does open up all those tabs that you had in your previous session. This feature should definitely find its way to all new generation browsers (Firefox also has this feature, although they have a different implementation).

Another cool feature that I liked is their Speed Dial, which comes up as the default view when you open a new tab. This is somewhat similar to Safari’s Top Sites view but in Opera’s case it does not automatically populate the list. Instead, it allows the user to program specific pages unto the speed dial. It then assigns shortcuts to those programmed pages depending on which quick dial slot you assigned them too. Definitely a cool feature. However, I do have to say that I like Safari’s implementation better.

Regarding performance, I couldn’t observe to much difference between it and Safari. It was able to handle my usual websites just fine and it definitely feels faster than IE8.

Throughout the entire exercise Opera 10.0 only crashed once on a certain page. reloading the page managed to generate the same result every single time. The page in question contained both streaming video and flash content so I’m guessing it might be either of the two that caused the error. I tried the page in IE and Safari and they didn’t have any problems loading it.

All in all, Opera 10.0 is a decent release, especially given the fact that its still in its alpha stage. It would definitely be something to watch out for. Looking at their release plan, the beta should be just around the corner.

Tomorrow on Day 3 we take a look at something more mainstream. I’ll be trying out Firefox’s 3.5 (beta).

Browser Wars Day 1: Safari 4.0 Beta

Ever since I started using Windows 7 beta I found myself going back to Internet Explorer. The Win7 beta had an interim version of IE8 installed and it was hell using it. But for some reason, I was using it every single time I was on the PC.

Then came Windows 7 RC1. The IE8 that came with it is the final release version of the browser. It did manage to resolve most of the bugs that I encountered on the interim version. But it brought forth new ones.

And so, starting today I finally decided to go back to some of my previous browsers of choice.

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1

According to Jihad Dannawi (developer tools solution specialist for Microsoft Australia) Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 will finally be available for download next week.

I can’t wait.

Sticky-Happy

When you first install Windows 7 RC1 one of the default items on the revamped Start Menu is the new Sticky Notes. Vista users would definitely remember this one because it used to be a gadget. In this version though, it was promoted into a stand alone application.