Browser maker Opera just released a new version for Android with a slew of new features, an upgraded design and better performance. And, for the first time for Opera, it is not running on its own Presto rendering engine.

Opera for Android is running WebKit.

In February, Opera said that it was ditching Presto in favor of WebKit, the open source browser engine that powers the likes of Apple's Safari browser and Google Chrome. The release of the new Opera for Android is the first "final" (gold version, not in a beta stage) release of Opera running WebKit, according to Falguni Bhuta from the Opera communications team.

Opera's decision caused a bit of a hullabaloo among the browser community. Mozilla's Robert O’Callahan said at the time that it was, "a sad day for the Web." O'Callahan and other browser enthusiasts lamented the loss of Presto, as it was one of only a small handful of browser rendering engines available to developers. Including WebKit, the others are Mozilla's Gecko and Microsoft's Trident for Internet Explorer.

New Features Come To Opera

Rounding up the new features for Opera, users will find some interesting capabilities:

Discover - A new feature to Opera for Android, "Discover" helps users find new articles with just a swipe from the homescreen. Opera has selected relevant global and regional news sources to give users a way to find what it going on around them.

Off-Road mode - Opera Mini has long been known for its compression technology that helps users minimize how much cellular data their browser is using. This often helps when you are having trouble getting a data connection or are roaming and is new to the full Android version of Opera. 

Combined address and search bar - Basically, Opera just created its own "omnibox" that allows you to type in website URLs or search from the same field.

Tabbed browsing - Not specifically new in the final Opera for Android version, but the UI has changed a bit from the last version and offers private browsing.

History - Easier to find your browser history. Swipe to the right to access content from the left of the homescreen.

Save for later - Allows you to download a complete webpage so as to read it later or while offline. Goes well with the "Off-Road" mode when you just want to be able to load an article or a website for later review but know that you are not going to have access to cellular data or Wi-Fi. 

Customizable navigation bar - Top or bottom, put the navigation bar where you want it.

New Speed Dial - Opera's "Speed Dial" feature now syncs with bookmarks to provide easier access to frequently visited websites from Opera's homescreen.

The new version of Opera can be found for free in Google Play.

Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 on Tuesday, providing a substantial speed increase over Internet Explorer 9 as well as more support for modern Web standards. But Microsoft added that it will continue its conservative approach to supporting Web standards - no doubt disappointing some in the Web community.

For those Windows 7 users with Windows Update turned on, IE 9 on Windows 7 will begin self-upgrading around the world, Microsoft said, within the 95 different languages supported by the Microsoft browser. To help mark the occasion, Microsoft launched ExploreTouch.ie, where users can explore singer Blake Lewis' song, "Your Touch." The site is designed to showcase the use of touch, IE10 and Windows 8, Microsoft said.

Better, Faster, Stronger

IE10 is designed to improve performance, privacy and compatibility compared to IE9. Specifically, Microsoft claimed that IE10 users would load websites 20% faster than in IE9 - giving the new browser what company executives characterized as market-leading real-world site performance. In tests of eight common browsing tasks by independent researchers at Principled Technologies, IE10 was up to 63% faster than Chrome on Android and Safari on iOS, the firm found, and Microsoft also cited real-world tests of site performance that found IE10 came out on top. (Of course, it always makes sense to take browser makers' speed claims with a bit of salt.) 

The performance enhancements could be a factor helping IE climb to more than 55.14% share of browser usage, as measured by Net Applications, its highest share ever among desktop browsers. (At the beginning of February, NetApps said that 2.3% of desktop users used Windows 8, which ships with its own version of IE10.)

From a privacy standpoint, Microsoft has left a feature called Do Not Track on by default, asking websites not to track IE10 users. Advertisers have howled in protest at this feature, but IE10 also includes Tracking Protection, which actively blocks personal information from being transferred. (Still, Australia has expressed concerns about Microsoft's suggested approach to privacy and data collection, wondering if incidental data provided by routine transactions could be used without consent to build a user profile.)

Slow And Steady On Web Standards

Microsoft has long taken a more deliberate approach toward implementing Web standards than other browser vendors, which has earned the company some criticism - perhaps due to the legacy of browsers like IE6, whose insecurity and lack of standards support has collected widespread scorn, and a place in PC World's list of the 25 worst tech products, among others. (Microsoft later created IE6countdown, a concerted effort to kill off IE6; today, just 0.2% of U.S. users still rely on it, the site claims. It has a much higher market share in some overseas markets.)

Some critics haven't given up the fight. "We are filing this complaint on behalf of all consumers who are tired of having a monopolist make choices for them," said Jon von Tetzchner, chief executive of Opera, which asked the EU to prevent Microsoft from bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. "In addition to promoting the free choice of individual consumers, we are a champion of open Web standards and cross-platform innovation. We cannot rest until we've brought fair and equitable options to consumers worldwide."

That was in 2007, however. Criticism has tapered off in recent years, although Microsoft has fallen on its sword a time or two:

"The way we approach this is from the standpoint of what developers want, within the platform," said Rob Mauceri, Microsoft's group program manager for Internet Explorer. "When there are standards being developed with the W3C [World Wide Web Consortium], often time we are directly involved with those standards. We work with others in the community to define and then implement those standards, as they're ready and mature enough to implement, and as developers are actually interested in them."

In IE10 Microsoft implemented 30 new standards, including HTML5, CSS3 and Web applications, Mauceri said. IE10 adds new rich visual effects to the page with shadows, 3D transforms, CSS3 gradients, sophisticated page layouts with CSS3 grids, flexbox and multicolumn support. Plus, there are enhancements to the Web programming model like LocalDB, per-application caching, WebSockets, Web workers and more.

"These are just a few examples, but they really cut across things... developers look for as they're building new experiences on the Web," Mauceri said.

Leading From Behind?

"There are two aspects of what Rob called out: what developers want, and what developers are coding to," said Ryan Gavin, the general manager for IE within Microsoft. "Is the spec ready for the browser? And then there's the thing that you lose when you go to an HTML5test.com that generates a somewhat arbitrary score and tries to put the thing down into a numerical value. In some cases we have a point of view unlike some of the other browser vendors: implementing a spec too early actually causes developers a lot of pain."

"And so it's really not a race to throw as much crap as you can into the browser," Gavin added. "If you implement a spec too early and it changes, as these things do, sometimes on a weekly basis, the developer ends up writing and rewriting and writing their site, and testing it, because they're always in break-fix mode, because that spec is always evolving."

Microsoft tries to add support for a standard when it's "site-ready": defined as a state that when developer writes to a spec, there's a high degree of confidence that it's going to work and persist over time, Gavin said.

Commercial Blitz

Microsoft plans to launch a commercial blitz around the new IE10 platform, made by the same agency that developed the "Beauty of the Web" spot and the Lewis song. The new commercial will go live on Tuesday, pushing - naturally - the aspect of touch. (Gavin took the high road when asked about the touch-enabled Chromebook Pixel, applauding Google for following Microsoft's lead.)

Most would agree that the "Beauty of the Web" spot does an excellent job of showcasing Internet Explorer, and the new commercial goes a step further, adding touch to the equation. As Microsoft moves forward, its challenge is to persuade third-party developers to continue making the Web beautiful, too.  

Presto change … oh?

Browser maker Opera is ditching its custom-made Presto rendering system for its iOS and Android mobile browsers in favor of WebKit, the layout engine that powers Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers.

This is a significant step for Opera and the Web. Presto was one of four viable layout engines on the market (the others being WebKit, Mozilla’s Gecko and Microsoft’s Trident for Internet Explorer). Opera will phase out Presto throughout 2013 and work to enhance aspects of the open source WebKit.

Good For The Web?

Depending on who you ask, this is either very good or very bad. WebKit is considered the best layout engine by many developers and will enable Opera to run many Web apps and sites that run on iOS and Android that would otherwise been difficult to implement. This will make it easier to create material that will render the same across many browsers. For many developers, any move to WebKit a good thing.

"It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine further. Opera will contribute to the WebKit and Chromium projects, and we have already submitted our first set of patches: to improve multi-column layout,” said Opera’s CTO Håkon Wium Lie in a press release. 

Bad For The Web?

Others do not agree. Mozilla’s Robert O’Callahan calls it a “sad day for the Web” and says Opera’s impact on Web standards will be “dramatically reduced.”

“The big loss for the Web is a further decrease in the diversity of browser engines, especially on mobile devices,” O’Callahan wrote on his blog. “We now have one of the three viable browser engines, instead of one of the four, and engine diversity is already critically endangered - and more difficult, because this will strengthen the Webkit mobile monoculture and make it even harder for us to promote Web standards over ‘coding to Webkit.’”

Of course, a company like Mozilla would not be particularly pleased with Opera’s move to WebKit. When it comes to mobile browsers, the battle to be the leading third-party option is intense between Mozilla’s Firefox (which is not available on iOS), Opera and Dolphin. Anything that makes Opera a more attractive option to developers and consumers is not a good thing for the likes of Mozilla. 

Opera made the announcement of its move to WebKit while also proclaiming that the company has reached 300 million users between its TV, PC, tablet and smartphone browser products. Opera believes that the move to the more popular WebKit will help it accelerate growth in mobile.

What do you think? Is Opera's decision good for the Web or bad for the Web? Let us know in the comments.

Lead image courtesy Shutterstock.

The privacy-obsessed don't seem to think much of Google.

A survey of consumer confidence found Mozilla to be the most trustworthy pure Internet company when it comes to user privacy, the organization eagerly announced. Out of companies generally, Mozilla broke into the top 20 in the study, which was conducted by the Ponemon Institute.

The top 20 includes plenty of other tech firms, including Amazon, eBay, Intuit, IBM, Microsoft, HP and even oft-loathed telecom carriers Verizon and AT&T.

Notably absent? Google.

It's worth noting that this survey is a measure of consumer sentiment, not actual privacy features. Google gets very high ranks from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in its annual Privacy Scorecard, which tracks how major tech companies score on major issues of privacy. Twitter and the ISP Sonic.net topped the EFF's list last year, but Google ranked third thanks to its privacy policies, transparency about user data requests from governments and legal and legislative advocacy on behalf of protecting user privacy.

The EFF doesn't include Mozilla in its Privacy Scorecard and declined to offer an off-the-cuff score for the nonprofit. 

Mozilla vs. Google - Who Can You Really Trust More? 

Mozilla is making a big deal of its ranking, and has been making user privacy a very public priority for some time. Despite questions about its effectiveness, the organization has been proactive in incorporating Do Not Track technology in its browsers. Mozilla espouses a six-point philosophy when it comes to user privacy and generally tends to be transparent about its intentions and activities related to how it shares and protects user data. 

At the same time, Google - which has more complex privacy issues to contend with as a search engine, email provider and major player in mobile computing - has itself been pretty transparent on privacy, doing things like publishing regular transparency reports outlining the growing number of government requests it receives. Google tends to comply with those inquiries, but does so judiciously and has decried the ease with which governments are legally able to snoop on users' electronic communications. 

At the end of the day, both Chrome and Firefox are secure, privacy-friendly browsers - as are their other competitors. But defending privacy for Google is inherently more challenging given the company's enormous size and broad product line. And it appears that Google is not doing a great job of portraying itself as a privacy-friendly organization.

That could be a big problem. Moving forward, such perceptions - even more than objective actions and policies - could be crucial competitive differentiators.

Lead image courtesy of Shutterstock. 

Okay, forgive me, but I have to nerd out on you for a second. I have just learned that you can turn any modern browser window into a text notepad, and you can save the contents. It even works on mobile browsers.

Type this into your browser's location bar:

data:text/html, <html contenteditable>

Hit enter, then click on the blank page below. Now type away. And on a desktop browser, if you save the page, you'll get an HTML file that will open right back up in your browser with the text you had written.

How Does It Work?

The reason this works is laid out in a post by Jose Jesus Perez Aguinaga on Coderwall. It uses the Data URI format to tell the browser to make a simple HTML page that contains the new HTML5 element "contenteditable." It's pretty basic stuff, unless you aren't using a modern browser, but I sure hope you are by now.

Aguinaga explains that he uses it as a scratch pad since he lives in the browser, and he doesn't want text editor windows cluttering up his workspace.

I can relate to that. I wouldn't use it for writing a blog post, but I'd certainly use it for a tab of notes on the contents of the browser tab next to it. I regularly have browser windows with 10 or 12 tabs of stuff for an article I'm writing, and I can use this trick to keep my notes on each item right there next to it. It isn't pretty, but it works.

I've entered the magic words as a snippet in TextExpander by Smile. So whenever I type "tttype," my Mac or TextExpander-enabled mobile apps will spit out the real thing.

That's pretty neat, but the wizards in the comments section below Aguinaga's post have figured out even more powerful tweaks, including making it into a bookmark.

I learned this via Glenn Fleishman, who learned about it via Tom Standage. Nerd-out complete.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock

Mobile browser Dolphin is by all accounts a quality third-party application for both iOS and Android. Dolphin was one of the first browsers to come out with gesture and voice controls, allows for excellent personalization and is reasonably fast. 

It is also fundamentally flawed. 

A lot has been written in the past few months about “mobile first.” The mobile-first approach is where you develop your product thinking of the smartphone or tablet user first and the Web second. This, by all means, is usually the proper way to do things in a world where most people access the Internet and a variety of important information from their smartphones wherever they go. If it does not look good or work well in mobile, people are not going to come back on any device. 

First vs. Mostly vs. Only

There is a distinct difference between mobile first and mobile only (or even mostly mobile). We have seen, with a couple notable exceptions, that mobile-only companies have trouble achieving extraordinary scale. Path, Foursquare and others have demonstrated this (with exceptions like Instagram proving the rule). They can make a tidy business if they learn how to monetize right, but tend to get stunted by the mostly mobile strategy. For an industry that often espouses open standards and ubiquity, it is surprising to see companies put themselves in a position to be in a fundamentally closed channel by limiting themselves to the mobile experience. 

Dolphin, and other mobile-only browsers like Skyfire and Boat Browser, have a fundamental problem. They are always going to be one of many choices and relegated to niche status on the devices they are installed on. Most people that use third-party browsers on their smartphones tend to have two or three installed and use different browsers for different purposes.  

Dolphin rationalizes its mobile-only position this way:

“In short, no, we do not need a desktop browser to compete with the big boys,” the company said in an email through its public relations firm LaunchSquad. “Roughly one in seven searches are happening on mobile. [39%] use the Internet on their smartphones while going to the bathroom, and [89%] of people who search on mobile have taken action within a day. Mobile is our wheelhouse, and we aren't going to extend ourselves by making a desktop product when we aren't ready to do so.”

When asked if Dolphin has plans to move into the desktop browser space, the company declined to comment. 

Mobile Searches Still A Minority

Applying reverse logic to Dolphin's statement, if one-in-seven searches come from a smartphone, would it not be prudent to have a product in the vertical where six-of-seven searches take place? After all, it is not like Dolphin has a monopoly on those one-in-seven searches on mobile. Hence, it is competing for only a fraction of a fraction of the market. 

In its latest update, Dolphin allows users to share content from the mobile browser with any other device that shares a Wi-Fi connection with the smartphone. While impressive, that is still not exactly a true cross-platform approach. 

One reason why people gravitate toward cross-platform browsers like Chrome on computer, iOS and Android is the ability to have a single sign-on with the ability to sync bookmarks, login credentials and browser histories between devices. Opera was one of the first browsers to deliver on this trend, but it remains on the fringe of the popular browser wars. Chrome has popularized the concept of a cross-platform browser profile and as such it reaps the benefits of the data generated for a single user on any device they may be using. 

No Such Thing As True Cross-Platform Browsers?

Not everyone agrees, of course. “Sharing bookmarks and possibly open tabs is nice, but it's not a defining feature that drives people to change their habits,” said appMobi’s CTO Sam Abadir. “The mobile versions of Opera, Chrome and Safari are all optimized for small screen/touch (as they should be) and this makes them pretty different from their big screen/mouse desktop brethren. Dolphin for example, has achieved decent traction without having any desktop presence.”

Maybe so. But the fact is that an app like Dolphin, with an extensive feature set, traction among mobile users and gaining popularity, is still leaving money on the table with its mobile-only approach. 

A Microsoft-funded study by Forrester to be released on Thursday claims that enterprises face significant costs for supporting more than one browser among their employees.

The study, which ReadWrite viewed in advance, found that supporting an "alternative" browser  carries extra costs when it comes to Web apps. The key metric of the study: $4,200. That's the average amount the 133 companies polled told Forrester that they would be forced to spend per Web app per browser. 

Enterprises Support Lots Of Web Apps

Forrester's research also found that enterprise companies with 1,000 or more employees typically supported 92 Web applications, and medium-sized companies with 250-999 workers supported 28 Web apps. All told, Forrester found, companies could spend $118,000 to almost $400,000 on browser support alone, not counting additional support or staffing costs. 86% of the firms Forrester surveyed found that their IT costs increased significantly - about 20% - when they had to support multiple browsers.

Security ($1,000 per app) testing ($1,000) and training ($900) represented the top three cost buckets, and the companies told Forrester they actually feared break/fix support costs more than app compatibility. A proper, standards-compliant Web app should mitigate compatibility concerns, Forrester noted. But Roger Capriotti, director of marketing for Internet Explorer, argued that IT managers still can't get away from the costs of testing, deployment and support, no matter how modern the alternative browser.

Microsoft's Message

Not surprisingly, the message favors Microsoft. Alternative browsers typically mean ones not shipped with the PC - and Windows PCs come with Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Still, it's no secret that complexity comes with cost and that simplicity is a common theme within IT departments these days. "I think cost is #1 in terms of this," said Capriotti. "IT departments are getting squeezed, and things like total cost of ownership are becoming paramount." 

Forrester cast its survey in the light of the many companies standardized on Windows XP, who now plan a desktop "modernization" effort over the next 12 to 18 months. If they plan to stay with Windows, those companies face a choice: jump to IE10 on Windows 7, or make the leap all the way to Windows 8, which also uses IE10. In that context, it's no wonder security was the primary reason for their upgrade, as Microsoft has launched campaigns to try and eliminate the notoriously insecure IE6, the browser that originally shipped with Windows XP. 

The question of which browser is leading the desktop PC market remains open; StatCounter puts IE's November share at 31.2%, behind Google's Chrome, at 35.7%. But NetApplications, whose numbers Microsoft has favored, claims IE held 54.8% of the market in November, with Chrome at 17.24% and Firefox at 20.44%.)

A bare majority - 51% - of the 133 enterprises surveyed by Forrester not only require a single browser, but enforce it, either by removing administrative rights or otherwise locking down the PC. Another 45%  allow users to install alternative browsers, but either don't support them (13%) or simply support them on a best-effort basis (32%). 

What The Survey Didn't Ask

Unfortunately, Forrester didn't survey those businesses on the costs of moving from XP to Windows 7 - or, for those businesses already on Windows 7, from IE9 to IE10. According to Capriotti, however, the broader support for Web standards within IE10 justify any transitional costs. The survey also didn't address any benefits the companies might gain by supporting multiple browsers.

A few years ago, the operating system was the primary area of concern for enterprises. But with more corporate applications migrating to the Web, app compatbility is becoming more important. Does this let Microsoft keep some of the same advantages it enjoyed by controlling the Windows platform? Forrester, funded by Microsoft's dime, says yes.

Trying to break your addiction to Facebook's non-stop party of social micro-happenings? If you use the Firefox Web browser, that uphill battle might just have just reached Sisyphean heights. Tuesday, Mozilla cracked open its social API with native support for Facebook's chat feature, Facebook Messenger.  

I spoke with Jonathan Nightingale, VP of Firefox Engineering, and Gavin Sharp, Firefox Engineering manager, about what inspired Firefox's new support for social integration:. "We're trying to recognize that social is a different kind of thing," said Nightingale. "People don't use social the way they use the rest of the Web." Since users aggressively tab-hop to stay plugged into sites like Facebook, the team wanted to develop a way to let social notifications "float above" the browsing experience in a more persistent, less cumbersome way.

So much for productivity.

The new Facebook integration goes above and beyond the existing add-ons that thrive in the Firefox ecosystem, draping Facebook's social sidebar and chat boxes right over the browsing experience. Facebook Messenger for Firefox also adds a toolbar that lets users check notifications and friend requests, and easily toggle the the appearance of the sidebar on or off.

Nightingale and Sharp drew a distinction between Firefox's flexible new social tendencies and the class of social-by-definition browsers like Flock (R.I.P) and RockMelt, which haven't exactly caught on among Web users. Nightingale notes that in true Mozilla fashion, users can opt into new features like Messenger for Firefox or ignore them altogether. "We want to be sure that, at the end of the day, users have choice."  

The built-in social tool is just the first in Firefox 17, Mozilla's latest build of its famously open source browser. The feature has been floating around in the beta since October 22, but Tuesday marks its official debut in a final Firefox release. While Facebook and Firefox worked together to develop the integrated social sidebar, Mozilla's new Social API will open the doors for other social products. "We see potential for Social API integrations beyond traditional social sites, too – imagine using the sidebar as an easy way to keep up with group projects, email or new music," the company writes on its blog.

To install Facebook Messenger for Firefox, you'll want to be sure Firefox is up to date, then click the big green "Turn On" button over at Facebook's hub for the new feature. As for turning it off? Firefox makes that easy enough in theory, but after that first dopaminergic jolt of Facebook notifications right in your browser, you might find it harder than expected to live without. 

After a month's head start of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 8 users, Windows 7 users may be seeing their own IE 10 release as early as Tuesday, if rumors from Chinese blog iFanr have any validity. But will Microsoft's staggered release plan just cause more headaches for Web developers?

iFanr appears to cite Microsoft's IE Director of Marketing Roger Capriotti as the source for the named date, though Microsoft is not confirming or denying what it terms rumors and speculation. The date for the Preview Release would sync up to earlier reports of a Windows 7 version coming out in mid-November, after disappointing Web users and developers with a missing IE 10 for Windows 7 when the Windows 8 operating system rolled out with IE 10 on Oct. 26.

It will be interesting to see how IE 10 will be worked for the Windows 7 platform. Its interface and functionality has most definitely shot for the tablet target - a target that Microsoft very much wants to hit as it seeks to shove its way into the burgeoning tablet market.

Given that Windows 7 users are likely not going to be using it on tablets, a lot of that functionality will probably be absent in IE 10 for Windows 7. What will be included is the controversial Do Not Track feature, likely activated by default. Do Not Track has done little more than poke the advertisers' hornet nest with a sharp stick.

Do Not Track?

The Digital Advertising Alliance has already announced that it will not honor Do Not Track in IE 10 because, its rationale goes, there's no way website developers can tell whether Do Not Track was actually turned on by the user or by Microsoft. Microsoft's approach to Do Not Track has ticked off a lot of people, including Apache Web Server developer Roy Fielding who actually submitted a patch to Apache that would also ignore IE 10's Do Not Track feature back in September.

Since there aren't that many Windows 8 machines out yet, there hasn't been a lot of squabbling about IE 10 yet. But given that Microsoft's Auto Update feature will eventually upgrade almost all IE users to IE 10 on Windows 7, that's about to change. Advertisers will no doubt raise a stink again and those users who would really like Do Not Track to be honored will start getting loud about the problem once the final version of IE 10 hits the Web.

End of The Line For IE on Windows XP And Vista

Users of Windows XP and Vista won't have to worry about any of this, by the way: Microsoft is not planning on IE 10 supporting those versions of Windows. IE 9 is as high as Vista can go and IE 8 is the upper limit for XP users.

Cross-browser web development has always been less than fun for Web developers, who have to choose between taking advantage of the latest browser capabilities and making their sites viewable for as many incoming browsers as possible. And then they have to choose which browsers to target. The latest versions of Safari, Chrome, Firefox and IE are the default bets - as well as key older versions that still retain big user bases.

With the deliberate freeze of IE at version 8 on Windows XP and v9 on Vista machines, Microsoft may be making cross-browser development just a little bit harder. According to StatCounter, 34.23% of machines in the world were running Windows XP and Vista in October 2012, compared to 52.93% running Windows 7. That's a lot of machines that will be stuck in increasing obsolencense.

Clearly, Microsoft's plan is to encourage users to upgrade those older machines to at least Windows 7, but Web developers will be stuck in the middle of this widening gap between old and new until the market share for the older machines drops into the neighborhood of "we-don't-care-anymore" percent.

Microsoft has clearly decided that IE 10 is where the line of demarcation will be drawn, and Web developers will just have to cope. How long the pain will last will be up to millions of users' stubborn insistence on holding on to older versions of Windows.

Image courtesy of Microsoft.

On November 9, 2004, President George W. Bush was still glowing a week after his successful re-election bid and preparing for his second term in the White House. Xbox game Halo 2 had the most successful opening day sales of any video game, topping $125 million. 

And the Mozilla Foundation released the first version of the Firefox browser.

Yes, Firefox turns eight years old today. Begat from the ruins of Netscape and the evolution of the Mozilla Navigator browser, Firefox had a very specific aim: topple the near monopoly of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Beginnings: A Simple Mission

In the beginning, though Mozilla did call its browser "Firefox." The original name (in April 2003) was meant to be Phoenix, but Mozilla ran afoul of Phoenix Technologies, which had a semblance of its own browser at the time. Mozilla then thought it would call the browser "Firebird." but that did not work either, as the Firebird database server already had the name. Firefox was chosen for its similarity to Firebird, but Mozilla then learned that a group in the United Kingdom owned the trademark to Firefox, which delayed the browser's release. Mozilla worked out a licensing agreement and Firefox was born.

What Firefox 1.0 looked like in 2004

Firefox was developed as a branch of the open source Mozilla Suite as a cross-platform browser that would work anywhere. Firefox’s original space within the Suite was known as Navigator - next to other features such as Communicator (Mozilla Mail and Newsgroups), IRC chat (ChatZilla) and a webpage developer (Mozilla Composer). It was developed using XUL markup language, which essentially created the market for browser extensions and themes.

After Firefox 1.0, Mozilla released new versions of the browser about once a year (or so) until 2011, when Mozilla went to the “rapid release” schedule, issuing new versions of Firefox every six weeks or so. Firefox for the Web is now on version 16.2, which was released on Oct. 26, 2012. 

The core goal of Mozilla through Firefox was to create an open source community that gives developers and consumers a choice in how they want to interact with the Web. Firefox continues to meet that goal. 

Firefox was an essential piece in the evolution of the Web. Before there was Google Chrome, before there was iOS Safari, the browser landscape was pretty much Internet Explorer and Firefox. The two diametrically opposed organizations  - a closed system with few choices versus an open system with many choices – have defined, in parallel, the evolution of the Web. 

The Web is a lot different place in 2012 than it was in 2004. Yet that same open/closed dichotomy still defines how the Web evolves.

Firefox In The Mobile Era

Firefox for Android Beta The Mobile Revolution put enormous pressure on organizaions focused specifically on Web browsers. Mozilla looks after many open-source projects, but the bread-and-butter of the non-profit organization has always been Firefox.

As more smartphones reach consumers hands, the less time they spend on the Internet through their PCs and laptops. Smartphones come with default browsers, such as Android’s browser (and Chrome for Android, which will become the default browser for Android in successive releases of the operating system) and Apple’s Mobile Safari. Many other third-party mobile browsers are available (such as Opera and Dolphin) for both iOS and Android, but most smartphone owners stick with the default browser. Unlike the PC world, where installing your preferred browser is one of the first things that people with a new machine, third-party browsers are not yet pervasive on mobile devices. 

That could be because unlike on PCs - where the browser is basically the only way to interact with the Web - the browser is not as central to how mobile users interact with the Internet. Native apps, as found through Apple’s App Store or Android’s Google Play, consume as much time for users as do the default browsers. Whereas I might use Firefox to visit The Huffington Post on my computer, I am more likely to use The Huffington Post app on my tablet or smartphone. 

The native environments inherent to mobile operating systems belie the open principles that Mozilla was founded on. Hence, Firefox finds itself in a position shared by many Web companies in the Mobile Era: evolve or die.

That is easier said than done. Especially if you want to make a significant impact in how people fundamentally interact with the Web through their mobile devices. Third-party mobile browsers are important to the mobile app landscape because they give users choice, but ultimately the likes of Opera, Dolphin, Skyfire or Miren remain niche options for users with specific tastes. 

Sure, Mozilla has released Firefox as a third-party browser for Android. But Mozilla is thinking bigger than just being another third-party browser on some other company’s operating system.

The future of Firefox will be as its own operating system, based on HTML5 and shipped on its own devices. Firefox OS is based on the open source Boot2Gecko project and will be a browser-based mobile operating system built to be optimized towards the Web. ReadWrite has covered Mozilla’s ambitions in mobile extensively in the past. See the stories listed below for context:

• HTML5 Does Have A Mobile Future: Mozilla's Chris Heilmann Goes Mythbusting
• Mozilla Close To Cracking HTML5 Mobile Hardware Integration for Android
• Firefox For Android Reveals The Future Of The Mobile Web
• Mozilla Putting All The Pieces Together To Be A Smartphone Contender
• Mozilla's Plan For Keeping Firefox Relevant In A Post-Browser Web

A look back at eight years of Firefox makes it clear while Mozilla challenges have remained constant, but the context has changed. While Google, Apple and Microsoft try to control the user experience through their (mostly) closed native ecosystems, Mozilla wants to bring the Web back as the central user experience in mobile. The first Firefox OS devices are due to ship sometime in 2013 and will initially be focused on foreign markets, such as Latin America. 

Mozilla is adapting to the evolution of computing, but it remains to be seen if its new plan will be enough to keep Firefox relevant.

Top image: Phoenix version 0.1, Historical browser images courtesy Wikipedia.

Social image site Stipple is relaunching Thursday with new tools and indexing features designed to fix the perpetual problem of image attribution and introduce brand-new sales channels through the use of images alone - for all Web users.

Stipple uses what’s known as in-image tagging to let certain Stipple participants to tag an image with information about the picture, or add links back to the participants' Web site.

What is intriguing about this kind of tagging is the way Stipple managed it: instead of embedding the information within the image file itself, typically done with the use of metatags, Stipple can examine images for similarities to other baseline pictures, such as an article of clothing or a certain vehicle model. Tagging images by the way they look, through pattern matching, means that stripping out this meta information becomes nearly impossible.

When a similar image to the indexed image appears on a site scanned by Stipple, Stipple will insert tiny blue tags that appear when the image is passed over with the mouse. When the the cursor passes over the tags in a picture, up pops a little window with links to a vendor or a catalog entry… anything the vendor wants readers to see associated with the image.

In-Image Tagging For Everyone

Just as important, beginning Thursday, Stipple is no longer letting advertisers and brand-owners have all the fun: the tagging service is now available to all Stipple users.

The company is also announcing a new Stipple browser extension that will let users see information on Stippled images on whatever Web site they might appear.

Stipple CEO Rey Flemings described the immediate benefits of Stipple’s tools to its users:

“We ensure that information follows the photo,” Flemings explained. This is critical in an age of hyper-republication, where no one - not individuals and not brands - have control over their images. “Stipple is hoping to solve the problem of image attribution.”

Now that the service is open to all Stipple users, any one can assign the attribution they want to images uploaded to Stipple. And not just attribution.

Real-Time Links

For example, Flemings demonstrated how real-time links to information from product catalog can follow an image of a pair of shoes no matter what website that image ends up on.

Image creators can also take advantage of this service. Photographers can tag their images, and then sell rights to use them for micro-payments. Or ship prints of the image to whoever wants to pay for the privilege.

Flemings also stressed the capability to interject storytelling within images, by attaching videos and text to an image.

It’s not just about setting up creative storytelling and making new sales channels. There is also the promise of gleaning a rich treasure trove of data from Stippled images.

Fleming explained how one large advertiser tagged images for the recent Euro 2012 soccer tournament. On one day of the matches, 152 tagged photos were viewed, receiving a total of 303,962 pageviews. Of the images that were tagged, 64,522 users moused over the tagged images, and 97% of those users actually moused over the Stipple tags themselves, likely curious to see what they represented.

That’s a lot of data to use in a marketing campaign. Even better for the advertiser in question was the click-through rate on those Stipple tags: 1.08%. For “regular” Internet ads, you’re typically thrilled if you get users to click through more than 0.3% of the time.

That kind of interaction and data should be attractive to marketers, but also to anyone who wants to know how their images are used. By opening its door to more users, Stipple hopes to make its in-image tagging service a more ubiquitous Web feature.

The world once debated whether Internet Explorer's dominance in Web browsers was fair in the wake of Microsoft's conduct against Netscape. As part of its 2009 settlement with the European Union, Microsoft offered to give new Windows users in Europe a choice of default browsers, rather than just leave them with Internet Explorer and make them manually install any alternatives. At the time, one objection to this plan came from one of the very organizations whose objections to Microsoft's conduct led to the settlement in the first place. The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) alleged that the choice itself would be perceived by users as an annoyance at best, and at worst, a threat.

The ECIS may have been right.

Tuesday's revelation that Windows 7 Service Pack 1 in Europe omitted the browser ballot for 17 months - without anyone raising a fuss - suggests that users may have been better off without it anyway. As Brian Proffitt reported yesterday for RWW, Microsoft indicated to antitrust representatives of the European Commission (the upper house of the EU parliament) that the ballot was present in Win7 SP1, when in fact it was not.

European Commission Vice President Joaquin Almunia Tuesday morning continued to take credit for the success of the browser ballot initiative as though it existed. "To avoid the tying of Internet Explorer... in December 2009, the Commission made legally binding on Microsoft a commitment to make available a 'choice screen' enabling users of Windows in the EU to easily choose their preferred browser," Almunia told reporters in Brussels. "This decision, therefore, put Microsoft under an obligation to provide the choice screen to European Windows users until 2014. This has proved very effective when implemented: It gave consumers a real choice to use the product that most suited their needs."

No Effect From Choice Screen?

But evidence from one of the world's leading analytics firms suggests Google Chrome's rise to Europe's number one renderer of Web pages was not impacted by the ballot screen's absence. StatCounter's continuing measurement of which browsers render Europe's HTML pages, conducted since before the EC okayed Microsoft's settlement terms, suggests that the decline in IE's usage share for Web page rendering continued at an even pace even after the choice screen was neglected.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

It's important to take into account how StatCounter measures usage share (which is often inaccurately confused with "market share"). StatCounter does not count the number of installed browsers. Rather, it tracks browsers that identify themselves as clients rendering requested Web pages. (StatCounter recently made an adjustment in its scoring process, to take account of the fact that Chrome pre-renders pages that are linked to the visible page - a fact which had previously given Chrome an undeserved edge.) So among the top five browser brands in Europe for June 2012, Google Chrome (all versions) now stands tied with Mozilla Firefox (all versions), each rendering 30% of the continent's pages. IE (all versions) is responsible for 28.19% of Europe's page rendering.

A Complex Failure

To say that the Windows 7 SP1 installation process failed to include the browser ballot is slightly misleading. In fact, the installer never did contain the browser ballot, but instead pointed to the site browserchoice.eu where the ballot is hosted by Microsoft in concert with the EC. Rather than be led by a Microsoft-managed process, browserchoice.eu was originally intended to be an independent service run on Microsoft's dollar.

The site displays links to the top five browsers, as well as to seven more (when you scroll right), along with advertisements for those browsers, in a random order. The decision to randomize was made after Mozilla suggested that the original order (alphabetical by manufacturer) would have been deferential to Apple, which releases Safari. Even the formula used to randomize that order came under suspicion when IBM software engineer Rob Weir, in private testing, discovered that the algorithm Microsoft chose for shuffling browsers' positions on the ballot was unfair - ironically - to IE.

Separately, there were whispers of a conspiracy by Microsoft to monopolize the browser screen by effectively giving some of the seven "secondary" browsers (the ones you see when you scroll to the right) the IE rendering engine, enabling them to report themselves as IE to services like StatCounter. The belief that the browser choice screen may actually have been a subliminal ad for IE triggered a grassroots movement by some in IT to disable the patch that delivered the link, including through the use of registry hacks.

Waste of Energy?

All of this is trumped by the realization today that the ballot never made much of a difference to users in the first place. Usually Windows service packs include "roll ups" of patches that were released heretofore. Win7 SP1 for Europe may have omitted KB976002, the patch that contains the browserchoice.eu link, which was distributed to all Windows users.

Almunia stated that the EC is opening formal proceedings against Microsoft for essentially failing to include the link as part of the rollup. But that failure actually might not have precluded all Windows 7 SP1 users from seeing the link. Conceivably, they could have downloaded KB976002 as part of their regular updates, for the reason that it was not included in SP1. Thus, European users may have actually been shown the ballot anyway, even though the SP1 process omitted it, by virtue of an online check that may have taken place once the local installation process was concluded.

The amazing thing is the revelation that apparently nobody actually knows whether users got the ballot or didn't. Although Microsoft is ultimately responsible for the truth of its own statements to the European Commission, conceivably the EC could have easily checked on the relative popularity of the site using its own means, had it bothered to do so. Some factors regarding the site's popularity (which is arguably quite low) are, and have been, in the public record.

Windows 7 Ascendant

During the browser ballot's absence, Windows 7 was surpassing Windows XP to become the operating system behind the browsers rendering more than half of Europe's Web pages, according to StatCounter's estimate for last month.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Operating System Market Share

The statistics seem to indicate that the precipitous rise in Chrome's usage share is attributable not to the kind of filtration the browser ballot was intended to achieve, but rather out of users' free will. It will be interesting to see whether investigators take note of whether users now choose Chrome because they like it better or, as one Mozilla engineer suggested in 2010, because users confuse Chrome for Google itself.

Put another way, if Microsoft owes the public restitution for IE's preferential treatment in 2009, what does Google owe the same public in 2012? And suppose Google were made to give the public a choice... Would anyone notice?

The European Commission is starting a new antitrust investigation into allegations that Microsoft has reneged on a 2009 deal with the EC to offer users a choice of browsers - a self-admitted mistake that could cost the software vendor in fines and reputation.

Under a 2009 agreement with the EC, Microsoft's Windows customers in Europe were supposed to see a dialog box with choices enabling them to select Internet Explorer, Firefox or Chrome. This agreement was reached to alleviate the EC's fears that Microsoft wasn't providing better access for Windows users to take advantage of other browser technology. The choice screen was meant to be in place for five years, into 2014.

Very, Very, Very Wrong Indeed

But the antitrust commission has discovered something quite different has transpired.

"…[T]he Commission believes that Microsoft may have failed to roll out the choice screen with Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which was released in February 2011," a press release from the EC states.

Worse, not only did Microsoft omit the choice screen, it reported to the EC that the screen was actually in place.

"This is despite the fact that, in December 2011, Microsoft indicated in its annual compliance report to the Commission that it was in compliance with its commitments. From February 2011 until today, millions of Windows users in the EU may have not seen the choice screen," the statement added.

For its part, Microsoft has fessed up to the problem.

"Microsoft has recently acknowledged that the choice screen was not displayed during that period," the EC stated.

Just an Honest Mistake?

Of course, Microsoft is trying to keep its intent as pure as driven snow.

"Due to a technical error, we missed delivering the BCS [browser choice screen] software to PCs that came with the service pack 1 update to Windows 7," Microsoft said in a statement to The Register.

According to Microsoft, the detection logic within the BCS application was not updated properly when Windows 7 SP1 was released 17 months ago.

Microsoft's story sounds plausible… after all, the company could have hardly expected to sneak this one past the EC and an estimated 28 million European Windows 7 users. But it is not likely that the EC, which has long held a cynical view of Microsoft, will let this violation slip by with just a slap on the wrist. Indeed, the EC already seems readying its sanction weaponry.

"We take compliance with our decisions very seriously. And I trusted the company's reports were accurate. But it seems that was not the case, so we have immediately taken action. If following our investigation, the infringement is confirmed, Microsoft should expect sanctions," warned Joaquín Almunia, vice president of the commission in charge of competition policy.

How Did Everyone Miss It?

Accident or not, what is curious here is how the omission went unnoticed for so long. Almunia's comments imply that the EC itself was relying on Microsoft's self-reporting more than actually checking for itself to see if the company was in compliance. This seems barely understandable, since the EC probably doesn't have the time or wherewithal to follow up on every antitrust compliance agreement and sanction they've made.

At best, this error is a revealing failure on the part of Microsoft's legal and technical teams - the former for drafting a report to the EC without confirming the inclusion of the BCS in Windows 7, the latter for not doing basic QA to discover that an entire application wasn't working.

At worst, Microsoft may have been taking the EC's reliance on self-reporting for granted and, watching Internet Explorer's usage share stats continuing to fall, figured it would try to boost IE's numbers any way it could.

Admittedly, that's a reach, but even if this is nothing more than a series of incompetent decisions - this kind of screwup could shake the faith of even the company's fans and defenders.

Google delighted many users of its Chrome Web browser today by announcing that a version for Apple's iPad and iPhone will be in the iTunes App Store later today. In a demo at Google I/O in San Francisco, the company showed off a mobile Chrome that shares many similarities with its desktop counterpart.

Many of the expected features are included, such as tabbed browsing, incognito mode and in-page search, to name a few. The real magic lies in the browser's ability to sync across devices, something that Google's Director of Product Management Brian Rakowski demoed in detail. Recognizing that many users browse the Web from a variety of devices, Google allows them to sync tabs, history and login credentials across tablets, smartphones and desktops. The company also announced Google Drive for iOS, which is expected to arrive in the App Store later today. 

There are plenty of other third-party browsers available for iOS, but this marks the first time a major desktop browser has landed on Apple's mobile operating system. Earlier this month, Mozilla demoed an early prototype of an iOS browser called Junior, but it's nowhere near going live in the App Store. If Microsoft is thinking about making a mobile version of Internet Explorer, it's not something anybody's talking about, let alone clamoring for. Chrome, on the other hand, has risen quickly to become one of the most popular Web browsers on the market, and users have been begging for an iOS version for some time. 

Will Apple Let Chrome Users Have/Eat Their Cake?

While Chrome for iOS is exciting and long overdue for Chrome users who own iPhones and iPads, the excitement is muted somewhat by the fact that Apple won't allow third-party iOS browsers to be designated as the default. Users can tap open Chrome on an iPad all they want, but any links they tap in an email or another third-party app will open in Safari. This fractures the Web browsing experience across browsers whether users like it or not. 

Some observers, including John Gruber, predict that Chrome's arrival on iOS will force Apple to rethink this limitation. We certainly hope so. That may well end up happening sooner now, if only because Chrome is a widely used product with a large user base (it's hard to imagine users of, say, Dolphin storming Cupertino with pitchforks in hand). Chrome has 310 million active users, as Google proudly touted earlier today.

Not too long ago, Apple wouldn't allow third-party Web browsers on iOS at all. Like other restrictions, that one was slowly relaxed over time. Now alternative browsers are permitted, but they're all based on the same WebKit rendering engine as Safari. The differences lie in the UI design and user experience, areas in which Safari could be more mind-blowing, to say the least.

In many cases, Apple has legitimate user experience or security reasons for keeping a tight lid on things in iOS. When it comes to using alternative Web browsers, though, the company is running out of excuses. 

Fast, Functional, Secure

To many mobile users, a browser is a browser is a browser. As long as it works, they do not really care what's under the hood. Yet not all browsers are created equal, especially on mobile. Some browsers render mobile websites better, some can sync data from a desktop browser, some specialize in privacy. When it comes to performance and function, no one mobile browser is perfect. 

The new Firefox for Android is a big step up from earlier versions, which were functional but did not always offer a terrific user experience. They lagged and could be generally frustrating. Speed wins on the Web, and Firefox for Android has not always kept up with the competition.

That changes with the new version. It is remarkably fast. It renders the mobile Web extremely well and “snaps” to websites without a significant amount of load time. Users tend to notice when a browser is extraordinarily responsive, and Firefox delivers this time around on Android. When Mozilla says it likes to “move at the speed of the Web,” the statement is not hyperbole this time. 

Several other browsers like to tout speed as well. Opera and Dolphin are the next closest competitors to Mozilla in the third-party Android browser race, and both offer decent features and adequate speed. Yet none really stands out. For the time being, Firefox for Android is the king of speed. 

When it comes to functionality, Mozilla has added features that align Firefox with other Android browsers. The upgrade offers Flash support, a personalized start page, the Awesome Screen (which shows you a list of your bookmarks and history when you type in the URL bar) and Firefox Sync, a feature that connects data between desktop and mobile Firefox browsers. The ability to sync desktop and mobile browsers is something that Google does very well with its Chrome Beta for Android, and it provides a seamless user experience between platforms. 

Mozilla is also committed to protecting users’ data. Firefox for Android is one of the first mobile browsers to add a “do not track” option to shield users from behavioral tracking used for advertising. Mozilla also offers a “master password” feature that protects usernames and login credentials that you save in Firefox. When you save your master password, you will be prompted to enter it before signing into a site where you have stored passwords. Firefox for Android also provides more granular controls such as the ability to enable or disable cookies, clear private history or send performance data back to Mozilla.

HTML5: Taking the Next Step

Firefox for Android, as a stand-alone entity, is a decent addition to the third-party Android browser ecosystem. But features, speed and security only tell a portion of the story.

Mozilla is creating its own browser-based mobile operating system that could eventually compete with Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone on the smartphone market. The project, called Boot2Gecko (B2G), is an attempt to create an OS that is free and open, and push the technological standards of the mobile Web. 

It is still very much a work in progress. Mozilla's priorities for B2G can be seen directly in what the company has released in the latest Firefox for Android. Many of the capabilities for B2G are being developed in concert with Android. The idea is to make a browser-based operating system act like the native environments in iOS and Android. This is no easy feat. 

“One of the great things about building on a shared engine across platforms (like Gecko) is that a lot of the performance optimization on one platform immediately benefits another. So what we are doing on Firefox for Android contributes to our work on Boot2Gecko, and vice versa,” said Jonathan Nightingale, director of Firefox engineering. 

The difference between the mobile Web and native environments is that the Web (accessed through browsers like Firefox) lacks device-specific functionality. Mobile browsers cannot historically perform functions like accessing a smartphone’s camera, orientation settings, geo-location features or even things that seem simple and common to users like vibration, contacts or audio and video playback. To create a true mobile OS, these problems need to be tackled. Mozilla is spearheading development of these capabilities through Web technologies like HTML5, CSS, WebGL, Canvas and others.

“As the advocate for the Web, Mozilla helps build new Web APIs and submits them to standards groups to move the Web forward as a platform," Nightingale said. "Among the standards that Mozilla helped build are Camera API, Vibration API, Mobile Connection API, Battery Status API, Screen Orientation API and Geolocation API. Firefox for Android also has the latest HTML5 technologies enabled, including WebSockets, Canvas, Web workers, localStorage, CSS3, HTML5 audio." 

Mozilla’s primary avenue for creating new device functions for HTML5 is called WebAPIs. These are application programming interfaces - that is, sets of commands that let programmers control specific functions - that connect the browser to a smartphone or tablet and can do things that a browser could not do on its own. The APIs will directly inform what makes B2G a functional platform, and many of them can already be found in Firefox for Android.

When will we start seeing Firefox B2G smartphones on the market? Probably within the next year or so. Mozilla has been in talks with manufacturers and mobile carriers. Nightingale promised to keep us posted.

As for bringing Firefox to other mobile platforms, Mozilla does not have plans for an iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry version of the browser. It is developing a browser for Windows Metro that will run on Windows 8. 

Performance Tests

But, try as it might, Firefox for Android does not lead the HTML5 pack. In a variety of tests, the new version trails Apple’s mobile Safari and Google’s Chrome for Android Beta in HTML5 functionality. Ringmark, an open source HTML5 testing tool developed by Facebook, shows that Firefox for Android still needs work on some of the lower levels of HTML5 development. See our coverage of Ringmark here for a fuller picture of how the tool works. In a standard test, Firefox for Android could not get out of “Ring 0” as it failed on one function out of 97. If a browser fails one test in a particular ring, Ringmark will not test the next ring. Chrome Beta and mobile Safari both pass Ring 0. 

For a more detailed test, we ran the new Firefox for Android through the evaluation site html5test.com. The site checks the specific HTML5 functions of any browser that visits and scores it from 0 to 500. The highest a mobile browser we have tested has performed on the site was 371 (Chrome Beta). Mobile Safari comes in at a 324 while Firefox for Android trails at 311. Each browser shows particular strengths on the testing site. Firefox for Android performed particularly well in the Web application department. 

Mozilla is positioning itself to be a leader in innovation on the mobile Web. It will take a bit of time to tackle all the problems, but Mozilla’s motivations are sincere: a better Web that benefits everybody that uses it. As the Web becomes more mobile, that means that a lot of work needs to be done to optimize the experience. Mozilla has taken the first steps. 

"If you look at Safari on the iPad, it's a pretty miserable experience," said Alex Limi, a Firefox product designer. In response, Mozilla is designing a tablet browser from the ground up, discarding traditional user interface elements and conventions to craft an experience that's better tailored to tablets. No tabs. No needless chrome. Just the Web, full-screen and accessible through a user interface that's about as bare-bones as they come. 

Before Junior lands in the App Store, we will likely see an iPad browser from Google, which is rumored to be working on Chrome for iOS. This is another positive development. The iPad represents a rapidly growing segment of consumer computing. Users deserve choices when it comes to  doing something as fundamental as browsing the Web.

Mozilla's new project, which is only a prototype at this point, isn't without challenges. For one, Apple won't allow non-WebKit browsers into the App Store, so Junior can't use Firefox's Gecko rendering engine. That's probably better for developers, since it's one less browser into which one needs to wrangle their CSS layouts. 

Apple's Obsession with Control

The biggest obstacle to Mozilla (or other third-party iOS browser makers) achieving meaningful market share is the fact that Apple won't let users change the default browser on iOS. You can tap open Opera Mini, Dolphin, Skyfire or Junior all the livelong day, but any time you follow a link from an email or another app, guess which browser is going to launch?

This is an area in which even the most ardent Apple defenders have to admit that the company isn't doing users any favors. Yes, Apple likes to control the user experience, and most of the time that's a blessing. It's why my 2-year old niece can pick up my iPad and immediately find her way around the home screen. But this control sometimes works against the interests of users, who also want some degree of control. Whenever that tension arises - and no strong argument exists that Apple can save users from a nightmare experience - it's time for Cupertino to lighten up and let users craft their own experience a bit. 

Take email, for example. Apple's default Mail app for iOS is plain in its design and sports only the most basic, essential features. By comparison, Sparrow has a well-designed UI with fluid, subtle animations that make it a delight to use. For my money, Sparrow offers a far better way to read and manage my Gmail account than Mail. So when I jailbroke my iPhone, one of the first things I did was make Sparrow my default mail app. The user experience of reading my email on my iPhone didn't suddenly spring a leak and hemmorage its inherent usefulness everywhere. The system works perfectly, and I get to use my email client of choice. My experience has improved to an extent that Apple's rules don't allow. 

Why Apple Should Let Users Change the Default Browser in iOS

Swapping out the default iOS Web browser would have the same effect. The way pages render would be identical, thanks to the WebKit requirement. But the UI and the way people interact with the Web could be improved. The user experience would be degraded only to the extent that Apple allows hideous, unusably buggy third-party apps into the App Store - which is to say, practically never. 

Apple would remain very much in control even if it allowed users to change their default browser. It would still have the App Store guidelines and approval process, as well as the requirement that browser developers use WebKit. It could reject any third-party browsers that didn't meet its rigid standards. It would be ceding only a modicum of control to users, who might or might not choose to use it.         

Perhaps that day is coming. After all, it wasn't long ago that third-party browsers were forbidden on iOS all together, as were other apps that mimicked native iOS functionality. Apple has relaxed its restrictions in some of these areas as the ecosystem continues to evolve and grow. Maybe it will relax a little further.

When Australian retailer Kogan.com enacted a “tax” on customers using Internet Explorer 7 last week, it may not have been trying to become the poster child for worldwide Web-developer frustration with Microsoft browsers. But the stunt seems to have tapped into a seething undercurrent of animosity for Internet Explorer that could bring new combatants to the ongoing browser wars.

What Is an IE Tax?

Russell Kogan, owner of the Kogan.com site, announced the 6.8% surcharge Wednesday for any goods purchased on Kogan.com by users still surfing with IE 7. Kogan’s admonishment was tongue-in-cheek, but his motivation was based on serious economic considerations.

“The way we’ve been able to keep our prices so low is by using technology to make our business efficient and streamlined. One of the things stopping that is our Web team having to spend a lot of time making our new website look normal on IE7,” Kogan wrote.

Kogan’s post, and the message dialog that pops up for users who arrive at the site using IE 7, make it very clear that all that’s needed to avoid the “tax” is a simple upgrade to a newer version of IE - or another browser altogether. But his call for even lighthearted punitive action is underpinned by a very real issue that seems to be gaining traction within Web development circles: a deep and abiding loathing for any version of Internet Explorer.

Why Developers Won’t Support IE Anymore

This hatred of IE is starting to manifest in wholesale rejection of the browser, as many developers begin to refuse to support IE features on their websites. In most cases, the reason is the time and effort that has to be invested to properly deal with IE’s nonstandard ways of rendering Web pages.

Greek Web developer Lea Verou eloquently described the magnitude of the problem last Fall:

“If we choose to make a website pixel-perfect in Internet Explorer 6 to 8, then we are doing up to 100% more work. No matter how many frameworks, polyfills and other scripts we use to ease our pain, we will always be doing at least 30% more work for those browsers,” Verou wrote. “How many of us actually charge 30-100% extra for this work?”

Verou’s solution to the problem of dealing with IE Web development is to actually tack on a surcharge of her own.

IE 7 Costs Developers Money

“I don’t do much client work these days, but every time I’ve taken on a client project in my career, I’ve always presented options for browser support to my client. They want pixel perfection in IE 7? It will cost them more. They want IE 6 support? It will cost double,” she wrote.

Some Web developers have gone even further. Toronto-based startup 4ormat outright refuses to let any IE user sign in to their site. Co-founder Tyler Rooney outlined the online portfolio service provider’s 2008 decision to block IE this past April, citing Verou’s earlier estimates of the effort needed for IE Web development:

“Within a week it was painfully obvious that for every great idea we came up with we had to create equally terrible hacks to support IE7 or even IE8. Supporting variants of IE can easily increase design work by 30% to 100%, but complex features can easily double (or even triple) development time. It doesn’t take many developer salaries before this ‘IE tax’ can cost you well over $100,000,” Rooney wrote this spring.

Not unexpectedly, Rooney was generally positive about Kogan.com’s IE “tax.”

“I think Kogan’s decision is definitely a novel way to educate their customers about the perils of using an out-of-date Web browser,” Rooney commented in an email today.

“When we decided to not support any version of Internet Explorer back in 2008 it was a simple business decision. Not supporting browsers which our target market weren’t even using enabled us to ship a better product in a shorter period of time,” Rooney added. “Kogan mentioned that he doesn’t expect anyone to pay the tax so I’d suspect that their decision won’t have much of an effect on revenue. Kogan probably also came to the same conclusion that we did about all the other benefits that come with not supporting out-of-date browsers: huge productivity gains, shorter release cycles and happier employees.”

Good News for Chrome and Firefox?

If this sentiment against IE continues to gain traction, Microsoft could be facing a sharper migration away from one of its flagship products to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

It’s clear that the browser wars of old are taking a very new turn: Web developers are no longer rolling over and letting a single vendor dictate how websites are put together. Real standards, not just ones for which Microsoft lobbies, seem to be the order of the day.

And if developers aren’t satisfied with a browser, they are now unafraid to fight back.

shopfront: the front side of a store facing the street; usually contains display windows (Dictionary.com)

Yahoo's search app Axis, launched earlier today, is being marketed as "a new kind of browser." It's not a browser though, it's an app that is available on PC, iPhone and iPad. On the PC, it's a plug-in (which is a type of app) for actual browsers, like Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari. So what is Axis, exactly? It's a new shopfront to entice people to use Yahoo. Yahoo has always been a shopfront, from the online directory in the mid-90s to the personalized homepage of the past few years. What's different about this new shopfront is that it's a group of apps, instead of a webpage. The question is: will people use it? Let's give it a test drive...

The main feature of Axis is search. In the apps, you search for things - just like you would on yahoo.com or google.com. A key part of Axis is that it syncs a user's search activity across computer, iPhone and iPad. It also taps into one of this year's biggest trends, the Visual Web, by showing visual previews and promoting sharing via image-based social network Pinterest. Another noteworthy feature is its "personal homepage," where you can save articles and webpages.

Axis in Action

When you start using Axis, it becomes apparent that Yahoo is prioritizing its own web properties in search results. For example a search I conducted on my iPhone for "Spiritualized" (a British band I've come to like) had a Yahoo Music page as the first result. This is a dangerous practice for a shopfront. People expect a search engine to be unbiased and to provide the best result first. Sure, Google has flirted with its users' trust too, by ranking its own properties like YouTube and Google News high in search results. But Axis takes it a notch further, by nearly always making a Yahoo property the top search result.

Despite the bias in search results, Axis is a slick product and feels great to use. The visual previews are attractive and it makes searching fun. The Axis iOS apps are also very well designed, for example using swiping navigation effectively.

The so-called "personal homepage" is disappointing. This is supposed to be a home page for you, where you can access websites and pages that you have bookmarked. But for a company which prides itself on its personalized portal, My Yahoo!, the Axis homepage feels bare and unoriginal ("Read Later" - why would I want to use that, when I have Instapaper or Pocket?).

The sharing functionality in Axis is also curiously threadbare. Only Pinterest and Twitter are available. The biggest sharing service on the planet, Facebook, is nowhere to be seen. I also found the Pinterest functionality to be buggy on iPad - it attempted to open the iPhone app for Pinterest first and only after various closing and cancel clicks, did the iPad version of Pinterest display.

The Verdict

So does Axis stand a chance against Google (the search king), or Facebook and Twitter (where millions of people discover content these days)? Axis is a slick product and the sync functionality is nifty. But there are a couple of main reasons why Axis won't take off:

1. The search is too biased. It may appeal to heavy Yahoo users (of which there are still millions), but it won't appeal to others.
2. The plug-in and app paradigm is very dependent on people a) downloading the plug-in and/or app; and b) opening the app regularly. The browser plug-in at least is persistent, via the search box that displays in the bottom-left of every webpage you're on. But iOS apps need to be manually opened and very few of them are every day. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of apps I open on a daily basis, on either iPhone or iPad. Also it should be mentioned that this is iOS-only at this stage, another limiting factor.

I applaud Yahoo for trying to adapt to the mobile era with a well-designed group of apps. This is the Yahoo we all want to see: one that innovates with technology, instead of in-fighting and trying to make money with patents.

Axis has some nice features, such as visual previews and solid sync. But I think it's stretching it to call Axis a "browser". It's a shopfront for Yahoo search, but there really isn't enough reason to use it over Google search (whether by app or HTML webpage, Google covers all bases). Also people are already using Facebook as a shopfront for Web content. So, Axis has its work cut out to make an impact in this landscape. Let us know your thoughts on Axis in the comments.

Photo credit: Bellaphon

Yahoo just joined the browser game. The veteran Web company, which has been struggling to define its focus for years, is suddenly betting on the mobile space with a new browser called Axis.

The product combines an iOS Web browser with a plugin for most major desktop browsers that syncs a user's Web history and bookmarks across their devices. How does Axis stack up? 

Effective Design and Seamless Cross-Device Syncing 

One feature that Axis offers - and should be standard in any tablet or smartphone Web browser - is its ability to sync bookmarks and recent activity across devices. Safari does this to some extent, but could go further. Frankly, this is one area in which Google could do a better job on iOS. Its official iPad app could almost serve as a Web browser, but it doesn't sync with a user's Chrome browsing or search history.

Web browsing is far too fractured across our desktops, smartphones and tablets. Axis makes a noble attempt to address this issue. 

Yahoo has taken great care to ensure that Axis takes advantage of the tablet form factor when it comes to design. It reimagines search results and instead of presenting them as a list of links, shows tiled thumbnails that preview each page.

The design could be more mind-blowing, but it does a better job of being tablet-centric than a lot of other search and browsing apps.  

Too Yahoo-Focused

We understand that the whole purpose of this product is to keep users engaged with Yahoo's brands (and ultimately drive search volume and ad dollars), but its aggressive efforts feel excessive. 

For example, when we type the letter "f" into the search query box, the auto-suggestions are Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Fantasy Baseball, Yahoo Horoscopes and Flickr.  Not Facebook. Not any commonly-used search query term that start with "f." This is something that Google would get lambasted for doing. It doesn't serve the user anywhere near as well as it serves Yahoo. 

Social Integration: The Pros and Cons

Like any Web browser worth using, Axis has social sharing options built right into the toolbar. Twitter is there, of course. Its Pinterest integration is tighter than we've ever seen in a browser, which is nice to see with such a young social network. 

Conspicuously absent, however, is the world's largest social network. Facebook doesn't make an appearance in the browser's default sharing options, nor does Tumblr or any other popular tool besides Pinterest, Twitter and good old-fashioned email. Weird.

Social integration in any app needs to go deeper than simple sharing buttons at this point. The Dolphin browser is a good model to follow in this regard. 

Wait, Is This a Browser or a Search App? 

Yahoo is marketing this as a new browser, but is it really? Sure, it can navigate to any URL on the Web, but it feels more geared toward searching, which makes sense considering who built it. 

People who uses Yahoo's Web services - and there are quite a lot of them - will likely find Axis to be pretty useful. Any hope Yahoo had of making headway into the mobile browser space, however, is limited by Apple's refusal to allow users to change the default browser on iOS devices. 

There's so much potential that exists in the tablet browser space in particular. Apple certainly hasn't fulfilled it. In launching what sometimes feels like a glorified search engine for iOS, Yahoo doesn't quite fulfill it either, but overall the effort is a step in the right direction.  

Once upon a time, that little blue "E" logo was practically synomous with the Internet itself. Double-clicking the Internet Explorer icon was, for so many people, the only gateway to the World Wide Web, aside from Netscape Navigator. 

Today, the desktop browser landscape is very different. Netscape's long gone, and Internet Explorer has other competitors. Its fiercest, without a doubt, is Google's Chrome.

As IE's market share has slowly dropped, Chrome's has quickly risen. Recently, the two trend lines crossed one another, and Chrome became the most widely used desktop browser, according to StatCounter. 

This is a very remarkable feat for a browser that didn't exist four years ago. Prior to Chrome, Firefox arose as a popular alternative to IE, but never came close to dethroning it. The open-source, extensible option from Mozilla took several years to even begin to challenge IE, but was abruptly surpassed by Chrome late last year. 

It certainly doesn't hurt that Chrome has the might of one of tech's biggest and most influential corporations behind it. Yet so does Internet Explorer. 

What happened? So much of IE's dominance was due to the fact that for years, it came as the default browser with the world's most widely used desktop operating system. For a while, it was a relatively stagnant product that many users either tolerated or passively used without even an awareness that other options were out there, or that loving a Web browser was even possible. 

Internet Explorer has improved. After years of reliably serving as the primary source of headaches and nightmares for just about every Web designer alive, IE has matured into something more innovative and standards-compliant than it used to be. Is it too little too late? Maybe. A bigger question comes to mind, though. 

Desktop Browser Market Share: Does It Even Matter Anymore? 

Does it even matter who's winning this battle when the battlefield is morphing so dramatically? The desktop was, for many years, the only way for consumers to access the Web. Today we have smart TVs, smartphones, smart cars and tablets. And this is just the beginning. 

Most crucially, smartphones and tablets have become the primary way that many people access the Web. While Windows Phone has promise, Microsoft is not a huge player in the mobile browser. Firefox's Fennec is but a blip on the radar. Instead, Apple and Google are duking it out for smartphone dominance, with their default Web browsers serving as the primary means of connecting to the mobile Web for millions of people. 

Tablets are a happy medium between desktops and phones when it comes to browsing the Web. For now, Apple rules that space with its iPad. While the device is not yet a complete substitute for a laptop, the tablet market is brand new and has a lot of evolving to do. 

Of all the biggest players in the desktop browser market, Google stands the best chance of remaining competitive in the tablet space. Rumors of Chrome for iOS may or may not have merit, but ultimately it won't matter much as long as Apple refuses to allow users to change the default browser on the iPad.