Ilya Kozhevnikov

Browser Newsletter #18

March 21, 2008

IE8 Beta Expert Zone Chats

After a successful run with the IE7 beta, we’re bringing back our monthly online Expert Zone Chats with members of the IE team. The first is this Thursday, March 20th at 10:00 PDT/17:00 UTC. These chats are a great opportunity to have your questions answered and hear from members of the IE product team. In case you miss the chat, a transcript will be published afterward and available online.

Microsoft eyes iPhone with Adobe Flash smartphone deal

Adobe today announced that Microsoft has licensed Flash Lite and Reader LE for the Windows Mobile OS. Microsoft will make these products available to all Windows Mobile OEMs around the world, firing a shot across the bow of the S.S. iPhone.

Flash Lite has been available as a manual download for Windows Mobile for some time, but Microsoft is clearly looking to reenergize its mobile OS market share and kill the iPhone’s growing momentum. Flash support could be a point of differentiation for Microsoft, after Steve Jobs panned Flash Lite as “not capable of being used with the web” at a recent shareholder’s meeting. Microsoft is looking to fill the void left by the iPhone’s “just the Internet” Safari browser, which has been criticized for its lack of Flash support. “People want vibrant web experiences and access to entertainment and information anywhere, anytime,” said John O’Rourke, Microsoft’s GM of Mobile Communications.

Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera

In our recent coverage of the Firefox 3 beta releases (1, 2, 3, 4), we have noted performance improvements and a significant reduction in memory consumption relative to Firefox 2. The enormous amount of effort that developers invested in boosting resource efficiency for Firefox 3 has paid off, and the results are very apparent during day-to-day use.

Mozilla developer Stuart Parmenter has written an overview of the tactics that were used to reduce Firefox’s memory footprint and also reveals the results of a memory benchmark he performed to compare Firefox 3 with other browsers. The memory benchmark, which uses the Talos framework and was conducted on Windows Vista, replicates real-world usage patterns by automatically cycling pages through browser windows and then closing them. Firefox 3 used less memory than Firefox 2, Internet Explorer, and Opera, and it also freed more memory than the other browsers when pages were closed. Safari 3 and Internet Explorer 8 could not be benchmarked because they crashed during the test.

IE 8 Connetion Parallelism Issues

Now that we have our hands on IE 8 beta, we see developers testing the various features. Ryan Breen continues IE 8 tests on the new connection limits and parallelism

A few weeks ago, I discussed IE8’s improved connection parallelism, specifically the increase from 2 concurrent connections per host to 6. One open question was the total number of connections allowed — my speculation was that the IE team would stick with a max of 6 rather than triple that value as well. I was wrong. The new max is an astonishing 18 concurrent connections [...]

Microsoft Licenses Flash Lite and Reader

Microsoft and Adobe today announced that Adobe Flash Player Lite and Reader LE software would be shipping on Windows Mobile (neither company has indicated when). This is somewhat surprising given Microsoft’s desire to see their Flash competitor Silverlight succeed, but it is also a good move for both companies.

We’re just two weeks removed from Steve Jobs panning Flash Lite as “not capable of being used with the web,” saying that it bears little resemblance to Flash on the PC (which in turn is too slow to use in the iPhone, according to Jobs). For Adobe, a high profile partnership with Microsoft to ship Flash Lite on Windows Mobile devices, along with the announcement that Flash Lite has now been installed on 500 million devices, is a clear message to mobile developers that despite what Jobs says their platform is relevant.

What’s the best beta? IE 8 vs Opera 9.5 vs Safari vs Firefox 3

It’s up to your Web browser to make using the Internet easy and enjoyable — it’s arguably the most important piece of software you use. As the Internet becomes more integral to daily life, the browser you use is of great importance to software companies too. That’s why every major browser developer is working on new versions of their product.

Fortunately, they’ve all released early versions of their work — that’s betas to you — for us to poke around and play with, so we can suggest fixes and improvements that could be made before the final version is released to the general public.

The four browsers in question are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla’s open-source Firefox 3, Opera 9.5 and Apple’s Safari 3 for Windows. All are free downloads and all try to offer something better than the competition.

Joel Spolsky on Martian Headsets and the Internet Explorer default

Fog Creek Software’s Joel Spolsky has entered the debate about IE8’s standard behaviour rather late, but with his usual insight, he’s recast it as a battle between idealists and pragmatists. Or between Martian headset wearers.

The question is whether IE should assume most sites are standards compliant and make standards the default, or assume that they are not, and make “behaves like IE7″ the default. Microsoft originally took the latter view, supported by Jeffrey Zeldman, publisher of A List Apart, on the pragmatic basis on “not breaking the web”. However, the idea was rapidly buried in abuse and Microsoft changed its view to making standards operation the default, leading my colleague Bobbie Johnson to post Webistan calm after Microsoft backtracks over IE. Righteousness wins!

Which is fine in theory, but as Spolsky points out, the reality is more complicated. “Standards are sometimes misinterpreted, sometimes confusing and even ambiguous,” so there are always differences in implementation.

Study: Mobile Safari share increased 64 percent

StatCounter reports that usage of the Mobile Safari Web browser included on the iPhone and iPod touch in the United States increased by 64 percent between December and March. The browser’s share of the global Internet browser market more than doubled in the same period, from 0.03 percent to 0.08 percent.

Safari 3.1 update fixes 13 security flaws

Apple on Tuesday released Safari 3.1 for users on Mac OS X and Windows. Along with new features are 13 security updates for the Safari browser, WebCore, and WebKit. Most of the vulnerabilities address cross-site scripting flaws. A cross-site scripting attack can inject malicious code onto a victim’s computer usually via a script tag appended to a specially formed URL. The Security Update APPLE-SA-2008-03-18 can be downloaded and installed from Apple Downloads, or you can simply download the new version of Safari 3.1 directly.

Apple iPhone Users Are Big On Internet Access

According to a new study from M:Metrics, 85% of iPhone users regularly browse the internet. The study showcased that the iPhone, more than any other smartphone, is a great tool which users love to browse the web on.

The study looked at the habits of more than 10,000 adults in the U.S. for six months following the launch of the iPhone.

The report stated that 85% of iPhone users regularly browse the internet.

This compared directly to 58% of total smartphone owners, and 13% of mobile phone users.

WebBrowser Control Rendering Modes in IE8

Many commonly used applications and Windows system components depend on the MSIE WebBrowser control to render webpages from within their program. Unlike live sites, pages loaded within these controls are typically static resources stored in libraries and executables on a system. While webmasters can easily alter their site to render properly in the new version of IE, many software vendors do not have the resources to instantly push out new versions of their applications with updated internal pages. In order to ensure that these existing applications remain in working order, IE8 renders pages running within instances of the WebBrowser control in IE7 Standards Mode by default.

about:mozilla - Memory usage, QA companion, SXSW, Effortless Good, Year of the Gecko, T-shirts, AwesomeBar and more

As the web and web browsers have matured, people have started expecting different things from them. When Firefox was first released, few people were browsing with tabs or using large numbers of add-ons. As browser usage patterns have changed, so too have Mozilla’s strategies on how to effectively make use of system resources such as memory. A large number of changes have been made to the platform Firefox 3 is built on, including many that aim to reduce the browser’s memory footprint. The results have been dramatic, particularly in the recently released Firefox 3 Beta 4, with tests showing that Firefox 3 now beats memory usage numbers of all other modern web browsers.

Mozilla’s Quality Assurance team has released a new “Mozilla QA Companion” Firefox add-on that was created to make it easier for people to get involved with the Mozilla Project by helping to test Firefox. The add-on pulls test cases from Litmus, provides an easy-to-use response form, and keeps users up to date on events such as Bug Days and through live feeds from the QMO site and forums. Chatzilla is also bundled with the add-on, with one-click access to the Quality Assurance IRC channel (#qa). The add-on is currently in beta form so there are still likely to be some minor issues and bugs. See the QA blog for more information and a download link for the add-on.

Edward Lee, one of the developers responsible for the new Firefox 3 “AwesomeBar”, has blogged about the new features that have been included in the new location bar behavior for Firefox 3 Beta 4. The adaptive learning system works for the drop down menu without typing any words, so it now benefits from mouse as well as keyboard input. Additionally, the location bar now allows you to search with multiple words, including against tags you’ve added to bookmarked pages. There are other tweaks and features that have been added, much of which is geared towards more advanced users, which Edward discusses at length in his blog post.

Who Needs Flash on the iPhone More: Adobe or Apple?

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen says that, with or without Apple’s blessing, the company plans to develop a Flash player for the iPhone/iPod touch platform.

During yesterday’s earnings call (see SeekingAlpha transcript), Narayen told investors that that Flash was “synonymous with the Internet and frankly, anybody who wants to browse the web and experience the web’s glory really needs Flash support”.

Having evaluated the iPhone’s official Software Developer Kit, Adobe can “now start to develop the Flash player ourselves”, says Narayen. “…we think it benefits our joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring that capability to the device.”

IE8 and Safari 3.1 compatibility updates

Our hero, PPK, has updated his compatibility tests to include IE 8b1 and Safari 3.1.

You can now check out the W3C DOM Compatibility - HTML table, and the W3C DOM Compatibility - Core tests.

Browser Newsletter #18

IE8 Beta Expert Zone Chats

Microsoft eyes iPhone with Adobe Flash smartphone deal

Firefox 3 goes on a diet, eats less memory than IE and Opera

IE 8 Connetion Parallelism Issues

Microsoft Licenses Flash Lite and Reader

What’s the best beta? IE 8 vs Opera 9.5 vs Safari vs Firefox 3

Joel Spolsky on Martian Headsets and the Internet Explorer default

Study: Mobile Safari share increased 64 percent

Safari 3.1 update fixes 13 security flaws

Apple iPhone Users Are Big On Internet Access

WebBrowser Control Rendering Modes in IE8

about:mozilla - Memory usage, QA companion, SXSW, Effortless Good, Year of the Gecko, T-shirts, AwesomeBar and more

Who Needs Flash on the iPhone More: Adobe or Apple?

IE8 and Safari 3.1 compatibility updates

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