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“Which Is The Best Web Browser?” – We put the top 6 “head-to-head”

Filed Under: Tech Insight by midas — 1 Comment

November 14, 2012

In developing a leading browser-based Room Booking & Resource Scheduling System that’s supported in all major browsers, we often get asked “Which is the best web browser?”. So less than a day after Internet Explorer 10 becomes available for Windows 7, we decided it was time to put the latest web browsers “head-to-head” to find out which one of the current offerings is “the best”….

Browsers Tested

The Tests

13 different tests were performed on each browser, covering four key areas in Speed, Memory Usage, Compliance with standards, and Javascript Performance.

The results revealed some varied and rather interesting findings – We even found to our surprise that Internet Explorer 9 out performed Internet Explorer 10 in two of the tests!

Results Summary

Read the full test report, with explanations and our conclusions here

Tags: Apple, browser, chrome, firefox, google, google chrome, IE10, ie9, internet explorer, microsoft, mozilla, opera, safari

Web Browser Roundup – November 2012

Filed Under: News by midas — Leave a comment

November 6, 2012

Following on from October’s Web Browser Roundup, here’s what’s been happening in the world of the web browser since then…

Internet Explorer – IE10 for Windows 7 coming this month… sort of!
Chrome – v23 out now, and can increase your battery life by 25%?!
Firefox – Market share drops below 20% – tough times ahead!
Safari – Download links for Windows users buried
Opera – 12.10 out now.. and Opera Mobile 12.1 also available

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 10
The buzz with Internet Explorer revolves right now revolves around IE10. More specifically, the growing anticipation for the eagerly awaited release for Windows 7. Microsoft stated in a recent blog post that this will be available “mid-November“.

In fact, for a short period just before the launch of Windows 8, the download page for Internet Explorer 10 actually went live (although the download links contained therein were not live). Microsoft quickly pulled the download page within a matter of hours. At time of writing the link returns a “Page not found” error. However, we understand that when IE10 does become available for download it will be at this link

Great, you might think… however, there’s a catch… the upcoming release in “mid-November” is only going to be yet another “preview” version of IE10 with “final availability to follow as [they] collect developer and customer feedback”.

Why they can’t just fully launch IE10 for Windows 7 users outright we don’t know!

As there have already been several “developer preview” releases of IE10 for Windows 7 users going back more than a year.

Remember too that IE10 is already included as standard in Windows 8. You’d think that if there were any “issues” with IE10 these would have been identified and addressed by now!

You’d also think there would be a real desire from the Internet Explorer team to get IE10 out. Given that Internet Explorer 9 is now quite literally years behind the current offerings from the other main browser developers (Mozilla, Google, Apple, and Opera Software). Come on Microsoft! Get your act together!

We’re keeping our eye on the wires, and as soon as IE10 is available for you Windows 7 users, we’ll let you know!

UPDATE: 12th November: We understand from Roger Capriotti, Product Marketing Director for IE that the “Preview” build of IE10 for Windows will be available from tomorrow (Tuesday 13th November) – Watch this space!!

UPDATE: 13th November: As predicted, Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 is now available

MIDAS is supported in Internet Explorer 8+ (v10+ recommended)

Google Chrome

Chrome more popular than IE
Today, Google have released the latest update to their Chrome browser, which has now reached v23 (v23.0.1271.64 to be precise!). According to their blog, one of the noticeable features is v23 offers longer battery life when running on your tablet/laptop. They claim it can extend your device’s battery life by up to 25%! If these claims prove true, that’s some noticeable improvement! Thanks to Google Chrome’s auto-update feature, if you’re an existing Chrome user, your browser should silently automatically update to v23 shortly!

Also, Google Chrome’s share of the browser market continues to grow at almost the same rate as Internet Explorer’s share declines. It remains to be seen what affect the wider availability of IE10 will have on this…

MIDAS is supported in Chrome 9+ (v23+ recommended)

Mozilla Firefox

Just after last month’s Web Browser Roundup, Mozilla released Firefox 16… only to withdraw it the following day due to a security vulnerability. This was promptly fixed, and Firefox 16.0.1 was released in its place.

Mozilla seem to be having a tough time of late, and their troubles continue…

Due to supposed “glitch” in the Browser Ballot screen that the EU forced Microsoft to show to users in the European Union in order to offer them a choice of browsers, it emerged that this screen wasn’t in fact shown to a large number of users.

This “glitch” had subsequently been fixed. However the EU are set to fine Microsoft for their mistake. Harvey Anderson, the Vice President of Business Affairs at Mozilla, has commented that “Firefox downloads saw a decrease of 63% to as low as 20,000 per day and increased by 150% to 50,000 per day after the fix was issued.“. In addition, he claims that Mozilla lost 6-9 million Firefox downloads during the 15 month period.

If that wasn’t bad enough for Mozilla, Back in 2007 they decided that they didn’t need to pay taxes for revenue that comes from their partnership with Google search. Why? Because according to Mozilla, $66 million (out of $77 million) dollars were a form of “contributions” and therefore, should not be taxable.

Unfortunately for Mozilla, the US government took a different view. As a result, Mozilla will now be paying a total of $1.5 million dollars. Mind you, this is considerably less than they were expecting, having set aside $15 million over this matter.

But the bad news still keeps coming for Mozilla! A report from NetApplications for October 2012 now puts Firefox at less than a 20% share of the browser market. The small, but ongoing, decline in Firefox’s user base is due mainly to its users switching to Google Chrome. Chrome has enjoyed a steady increase in market share since its launch in 2008. Many users feel that Chrome is faster and lighter on memory than Firefox. Certainly some recent builds of Firefox have been pretty memory intensive. However, Mozilla have made significant improvements in this area. Firefox v16 onwards has a much smaller memory footprint that earlier versions.

MIDAS is supported in Firefox 4+ (v16+ recommended)

Safari

Safari 5
It’s all quiet on the Safari front at the moment! Development on Apple’s web browser seems to take more a back seat to their hardware development. So when there’s an upcoming product launch, such as the new iPad mini, other Apple-related news is harder to come by!

There’s still no news as to whether Apple will ever release another update for Safari for Windows. Currently Safari 6 is only available to iOS users, with 5.1.7 being the highest version of Safari that Windows users can update to. Although, Apple have somewhat buried the download links for new Safari Windows installs deep within a KB article on their site! So, if you wish to download Safari 5.1.7 for Windows, here is the link.

MIDAS is supported in Safari 4+ (v5+ recommended)

Opera

Development over at Opera Software continues at pace! Following 4 “release candidates” within just about as many days, today, Opera announced the release of Opera 12.10. In their own words, 12.10 contains “many updates and more bugfixes than I can count“. They also state that “This release is a recommended security update.“. The Opera browser is now quite impressive! It’s always had a small, but dedicated following, that’s never really grown much. But at the same time has also never shrunk. It’s also been around for a very long time. In fact, it was first released 18 years ago in late 1994! So over the years, many people have tried it, and not really liked it for whatever reason. However, today, the Opera browser is fast, sleek, and modern. It can easily give the other major browsers a run for their money!

One notable new feature in Opera 12.10 is support for a new “Fullscreen API” support. Previously the “Fullscreen API” has only been supported in Firefox 15+, Chrome 22+, Safari 5.1+. Now it comes to Opera 12.1+ too! (There’s still no support in IE10 though at time of writing!). So what is this “Fullscreen API” and why bother mentioning it?

Basically, the “Fullscreen API” allows developers to make elements in a web page, such as a video, go completely “full screen” without having to use Flash or some other means. Whilst most browser can go a sort of “full screen” (usually by pressing F11), the address bar and some navigation buttons are usually still present. The relatively new “Fullscreen API” allows web pages to completely fill your screen with no toolbars/navigation buttons etc. We are currently implementing this API to allow you to use future versions of MIDAS in true “full screen” mode. This means more screen space for displaying bookings! …watch this space!

Did you know that Opera 12.10 is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux? So if you’ve never tried Opera before, you’ve really no excuse!

Opera Mobile 12.1 for Android Phones is now also available. If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that our website is now “tailored” to viewing on mobile devices. Currently, only Opera and Firefox offer mobile versions of their browsers. So if you have an Android phone with an outdated browser, be sure to download Firefox or Opera Mobile for the best possible viewing experience!

MIDAS is supported in Opera 9+ (v12+ recommended)

Tags: Apple, browser, chrome, firefox, google, internet explorer, microsoft, mozilla, opera, safari

Web Browser Roundup – October 2012: “State of Play”

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October 5, 2012

There’s plenty going on in the world of web browsers at the moment. Our web based scheduling software, MIDAS relies on a web browser. So we take a keen interest in the ever-changing browser landscape. Here’s our round up of what’s been happening recently with the 5 major browsers:

Internet Explorer – Google Apps dropping IE8 support.. and still no word IE10 for Win7?
Chrome – More popular than IE? Depends on who you talk to!
Firefox – 10 years old.. and Windows 8 “modern” app round the corner
Safari – No further updates for Windows users?
Opera – Development continuing at pace!

Internet Explorer

Google have announced that starting from November 15, their suite of “Google Apps”, which includes services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, will no longer be officially supported Internet Explorer 8. We predict that it won’t be long before other major sites begin to drop support for IE8.

Internet Explorer 8 is now nearly 4 years old – a long time in today’s fast changing browser landscape. Consequently, it now offers poor support for today’s web technology standards.

So why are people still using Internet Explorer?

Well, one of the main problems is that if you’re still running Windows XP (which many people still are!), you can’t install Internet Explorer 9 on it! This is a bad decision on Microsoft’s part we feel. In fact, they’ve pretty much shot themselves in the foot by not allowing Windows XP users to upgrade their browser past IE8!

By not allowing Windows XP users to upgrade past IE8, it’s allowed other browsers (such as Firefox and Chrome) – which can run on Windows XP, to steal a lot of the market share that Internet Explorer has. This is simply because end-users want to use a fast, up-to-date, modern browser – something which IE8 isn’t by today’s standards.

Sadly, at the moment, this could be a trend that Microsoft continues with their upcoming Internet Explorer 10. Internet Explorer is currently only available to users of Windows 8. Windows 8 sees its full release later this month on October 26. Users of Windows 7 are presently unable to update from Internet Explorer 9 to Internet Explorer 10. Microsoft have said that IE10 will become available for Windows 7. Yet they’ve been very vague and noncommittal about exactly when this will happen.

If you’ve used IE10, you’ll know how much better it is than IE9. Not least in terms of speed/performance, but also compliance with the latest web standards. We hope Microsoft make IE10 available to users of Windows 7 as soon as possible!

MIDAS, our web based scheduling software, is currently supported in Internet Explorer 8,9, and 10! However, for the best experience, we recommend IE9/10. We have no immediate plans to drop support for IE8, as Google Apps are doing. However, there will come a time when we no longer support such an old version of a web browser.

Therefore, you should always keep your browser up-to-date with the most recent version available to you. If you’re still using Windows XP, and have no plans to upgrade to Windows 7/8 in the near future, you may wish to consider installing one of the other modern browsers that will work on your system.

Google Chrome

Still somewhat on the subject of Internet Explorer – opinion continues to be divided as to which browser – Internet Explorer or Google Chrome is currently the most widely used browser in the world. It all depends on who you talk to!

Last month’s figures from one leading company, Net Applications, show that IE 8 is the most popular web browser for PC’s, with 24.09% of the market share, followed by IE 9 with 19.45%. Chrome 21 (which was updated to Chrome 22 last week), has a 14.32% shared of the web browser market.

Net Applications - Browser Market Share - Sept 12 — Source: Net Applications

However, StatCounter, another leading company, have very different numbers for September. They show Chrome 21 in a clear lead with 27.34%. IE9 comes second with 17.93%, followed by IE8 at 13.06%.

StatCounter - Browser Market Share - Sept 12 — Source: StatCounter

Why such a difference between the two sets of statistics? Well, both companies use very different ways for assessing browser usage. Net Applications only counts “unique visitors”. StatCounter however counts browser hits, regardless of whether they are unique. For example, if someone views the same page 10 times, Net Applications would count that once, StatCounter would count that ten times.

It’s also worth noting that the Google Chrome browser has a “pre-fetch” function. This can silently fetch web pages in the background that it thinks you’re going to visit – so this has the potential for skewing the data slightly.

That said, if there is one thing that both Stat Counter and Net Applications are in close agreement on, its Mozilla’s Firefox place in the web browser standings. Firefox 15 comes 4th on both lists. Net Applications shows a market share of 10.91% and StatCounter fractionally more at 13.01%.

MIDAS is supported in Chrome 9+ (v22+ recommended)

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox celebrated it 10th birthday a couple of weeks ago! Firefox has come a long way in its 10 year history, although it wasn’t actually called “Firefox” until 2004. Originally, it was called “Phoenix” in 2002. Several months later, after complaints from BIOS manufacturer Phoenix Technologies, that name was dropped in favor of Firebird. The community didn’t like “Firebird” either as there was – and still – a database server carrying the same name. Instead, the name “Firefox” was adopted in early 2004.

Firefox became quite popular thanks to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6, which didn’t receive significant updates for many years. Firefox however introduced a lot of people to tabs, RSS-feeds in the bookmarks bar, themes and extensions. In February 2008, Firefox had been downloaded 500 million times. It established a record with version 3.0 several months later, with the “Most Downloads of a Software Application in 24 Hours,” according to Guinness World Records.

Today, Mozilla are busy on developing a special Windows 8 “modern” version of their popular browser in time for the launch of Windows 8 later this month.

MIDAS is supported in Firefox 4+ (v16+ recommended)

Apple Safari

Apple’s Safari browser was recently updated to version 6. However, if you’re a Windows user, Safari 6 isn’t available to you. Safari 6 has only been made available to iOS users. The most recent version of Safari available to Windows users if 5.1.7. Yet even this has now been quietly removed from the Safari download page. (at time of writing 5.1.7 is still available to Windows users with an earlier version of Safari already installed via their “Apple Software Update” application).

No reason has been given by Apple as to why Safari 6 hasn’t been made available to Windows users. The speculation is that the move was made because Safari 6 is more tightly integrated with features only found in iOS6. We hope that this is only temporary, and Apple will make Safari 6 available to Windows. However, as Safari has the smallest market share of Windows-based browsers, they may now just be focusing on their own operating systems.

MIDAS is supported in Safari 4+ (v5+ recommended)

Opera

The Opera name has been with the browser since the very beginning. In fact, Opera v1 was first released back in 1994. Often overlooked, this well established browser has retained a small, but loyal following over the years. Although historically not enjoying the same user growth as other browsers have, for the last year or so, development work on Opera has really gathered pace! Opera software have been regularly putting out developer snapshots and beta builds – sometimes several times a week! All this work culminated with the major release of Opera 12 back in June.

We’ve been quite impressed with Opera 12’s speed and compatibility with the latest web technologies and standards. Plus the work the Opera team are putting into their software shows no signs of slowing down any time soon! Opera 12.10 was released as a beta last week, so expect a public update to Opera very soon.

There were also rumors earlier in the year that Facebook may be gearing up to purchase Opera in the not too distant future. Whilst unsubstantiated, if true, Opera’s market share may see a significant increase as a result of an acquisition of Facebook. So if Opera’s slipped under your radar, or you’ve perhaps dismissed it in the past – maybe it’s worth taking another look!?

MIDAS is supported in Opera 9+ (v12+ recommended)

Tags: Apple, browser, chrome, facebook, firefox, google, internet explorer, iOS, microsoft, mozilla, opera, safari

Firefox 13 out now, IE10 updated, Chrome beats IE, and Facebook to purchase Opera!?

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June 4, 2012

Well, it’s been a busy few days in the web browser world! We’ll try and summarize what’s been happening for you!

Internet Explorer 10 Updated

On Thursday, Microsoft released Windows 8 Release Preview. Along with it came an update to their Internet Explorer 10 browser. This is the browser that will ship when Windows 8 is fully released later this year. Sadly, IE10 isn’t currently available for Windows 7, but we very much hope it will be before too long, as IE10 sees some significant leaps forward for Microsoft’s browser.

Firefox 13 Out Now

The latest version of Firefox – version 13 – is now available to download from Mozilla (even though it’s not “officially” released until tomorrow!). Notable changes in this version, according to Mozilla, relate to the “Home” and “Tabs” pages. The “home” page can now be customized with bookmarks, history, sync, and previous session data. The “new tabs” page has also seen a feature introduce that has been knocking around in Chrome and Opera for a while. This feature shows thumbnails of recently/commonly viewed pages

Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer

Statcounter also reported recently that Google Chrome has now overtaken Internet Explorer in terms of market share. According to StatCounter, Chrome now accounts for 32.76% of the worldwide browser market. This compares to 31.94% for Internet Explorer and 25.47% for Firefox. This is the first time that a browser other than Internet Explorer has commanded the largest share of the browser market. Ok, so it’s not a massive lead – in fact, Chrome’s lead is only 0.82%. Still, this is quite an achievement for a relatively new browser, which was first launched less than 4 years ago!

Facebook to purchase Opera?

It’s also been rumored this past week that Facebook may be gearing up to buy the Opera browser!
That’s according to a report from Pocket-Lint.com. The article claims (via unnamed sources) that Facebook is looking to purchase Opera Software. Opera Software are the makers of the long-running Opera web browser. Details are sketchy, but the story claims that Facebook is looking to compete in the web browser war that already has Microsoft, Google, Apple and Mozilla among its big players.

The Opera web browser has historically always had the smallest market share of any of the 5 major desktop browsers. That said, Opera has gained some ground most notably in the mobile web browser market. Facebook is currently very focused on the “mobile” side of their operations. This is due to an increasing number of users regularly using Facebook on their mobile devices. So, Facebook could be about to purchase Opera Software as a shortcut towards making a browser that could compete in the smartphone and tablet space?

The Facebook purchase could actually be very good for the Opera browser. Such a move has the potential to become much more of a “threat” to the other 4 browsers. This in turn will likely see increased development, competition, and a race to strive to produce the fastest, most “standards compliant” browser.

We’ve been closely monitoring Opera developments in recent months. Opera Software are about to release Opera 12, and we’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen so far from the nightly developer “snapshots”. Opera 12 is a substantial improvement on Opera 11 – it’s faster, and far more standard-compliant

MIDAS: Booking Software for ALL major browsers

Our browser-based software, MIDAS, is fully supported on Internet Explorer (including on IE10 in Windows 8), Firefox (including v13), Opera (including v12), as well as the current versions of Safari and Chrome.

…and there’s still time to take advantage of our very special Diamond Jubilee discount!

Tags: browser, chrome, facebook, firefox, google, internet explorer, microsoft, mozilla, opera