Reblog: How to name a web browser

This post was originally written by thebeebs on blogs.msdn.net, on 9 January 2012. You can read the original post here.

How to name a web browser (by those who have)

I don’t know about you, but my web browser is the second app I launch every day (just after email). In fact, overall, I probably spend more time using it than pretty much anything else (not surprising considering what I do). But it got me wondering, where do the different browser names come from? So I did some digging.

Getting rid of the cobwebs

Over the span of four years, my bookmarks have become VERY cluttered. Like that picture on the left, my bookmarks were all haphazardly stuffed into one bulging folder. Luckily, I had the URLs and website names of my favorite websites memorized, but when time came to make use of a site that I had cached away in my bookmarks, it was nearly impossible to do so. Even with the search features of Firefox, the sheer amount of bookmarks hurt my eyes.

Why browser speed tests fail

We’ve all heard of browser speed tests that claim different things: “Firefox is the fastest”, “Safari crushes the competition”, “Google Chrome is faster than a potato”, whatever. The truth is, none of these browsers is faster than the other, save for IE, which sucks. Why?

A visual guide to Opera 10

Just a few of the many new features in Opera 10:

You can search from the address bar or the search bar

Opera comes with widgets

Right-clicking a web page brings up this context menu

The tab bar can be expanded to show previews of webpages

Mousing over a tab shows a preview of that tab

Of course, there are a few bugs.

Opera 10 has a sidebar featuring widgets, mail, notes, and much more

The search bar supports multiple search engines

The main window

Opera 10 comes with a very stylish RSS feed reader

Opera 10 has the most advanced statusbar of any web browser

Opera’s preference dialog makes the browser highly customizable

100/100 on the Acid3 Web Page rendering test

Speed Dial is highly customizable and provides quick access to your most viewed sites

Opera 10 is the latest installment in the Opera Browser series. It features the Presto 2.2 rendering engine, an accelerator for loading web pages on slow connections, customizable skins and many more that make this browser such a versatile web surfing application.

Unfortunately, it can be very complicated to customize Opera, since there are so many buttons and drop-downs to digest, but once you get the handle on this great web browser, it will integrate seamlessly into your online life.

I give Opera 10 an 8.5/10 rating and recommend it to anyone who hasn’t tried it out yet.

Review: Firefox 3.5

Firefox 3.5, the long-awaited mega-upgrade to the already awesome Firefox browser by Mozilla, just came out today at around 8:00am. Within about 3 hours, Firefox 3.5 had already been downloaded a million times in the United States alone.

I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this new version of Firefox, and when it came out this morning, I didn’t hesitate in downloading the update. Now that I’ve been using it for a while, here are some of the things you can expect:

Logo Redesign

At first, I didn’t even see any changes to the Firefox 3.5 logo. But if you look closely, you will see that there have been a few color modifications, especially in the tail of the fox. It looks much more rich than the old logo.

New Interface

For the eagle-eyed users, you will notice that the borders of the navigation bar buttons have gotten much skinnier, which saves just the tiniest bit of space, but it’s worth it. Mac users will also notice a slightly different loadin bar in the status bar.

The tabs don’t look too different, besides a “New Tab” button that can’t be removed. I think it’s also defaulted to show the tab bar even when you only have one tab on.

Your add-ons’ interfaces may look different too, just because of Firefox’s new interface. The add-ons themselves haven’t changed.

History and Private Browsing

Finally, Firefox introduces Private Browsing. Safari was the first browser to introduce it. Private browsing allows you to surf the web without anyone knowing. This is especially helpful if you’re using a public computer. In History, there’s also a “Forget this site” function when you right-click a website. The function deletes all the items in the history that link to that particular site. It’s like a super-charged delete function. And, if you want to clear all your history or just part of it, you can clear history within 2 hours, 6 hours, and so on.

Video and Audio

Firefox now has video and audio support, meaning that instead of having to download video/audio to play it, you can play it right in your browser. Firefox now supports .ogg formats of video/audio.

JavaScript

The JavaScript performance has definitely been accelerated, although it’s not quite the 2X faster that Mozilla claims. It’s closer to 1.25-1.5X.

Bugs

Your add-ons may clash with each other. For example, TwitterFox and ScribeFire will leave some “residue” on each other if you open them simultaneously.

For existing Firefox users, I recommend that you upgrade immediately and for people who don’t use Firefox yet, I highly recommend it, with a rating of 9/10.