With Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft showed Wednesday it's trying to retake the browser initiative.
IE remains the Net's dominant browser. But perversely, it became something of a technology underdog after Microsoft vanquished Netscape in the browser wars of the 1990s and scaled back its browser effort.
That left an opportunity for rivals to blossom--most notably Firefox, which now is used by a quarter of Web surfers, but also Apple's Safari, which now runs on Windows as well as Mac OS X, and Google's Chrome, which aims to make the Web faster and a better foundation for applications.
Microsoft has been pouring resources back into the IE effort, though, and at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, some fruits of that labor were on display. In particular, Windows unit president Steven Sinofsky showed off IE 9's new hardware-accelerated text and graphics.
The acceleration feature takes advantage of hitherto untapped computing power in a way that's more useful than other browser-boosting technology--Google's Native Client to directly employ PC's processor and Mozilla's WebGL for accelerated 3D graphics, for example--according to Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer.
"This is a direct improvement to everybody's usage of the Web on a daily basis," Hachamovitch said in an interview after Sinofsky's speech. "Web developers are doing what they did before, only now they can tap directly into a PC's graphics hardware to make their text work better and graphics work better."
... Read moreWith a project called Closure Tools, Google plans on Thursday to start helping developers who aspire to match the company's proficiency in creating Web sites and Web applications.
Google is a strong proponent of using JavaScript to write Web-based programs, part of its Web-centric ethos. Indeed, the company has pushed the language to its limits with services such as Gmail and Google Docs, and it developed its Chrome browser in part to enable JavaScript programs to run faster.
But writing, debugging, and optimizing heavy-duty JavaScript can be difficult--in part because a given JavaScript program sometimes works differently on different browsers. Google's open-source Closure Tools project is an attempt to help with some of these challenges.
The first in the suite of tools is the Closure Compiler, a software package designed to boil down a JavaScript program so it's smaller and runs faster. For example, a function named DisplayAddress() could be replaced with just a().
Along with the compiler come some extra tools that run in the Firefox browser. One, Closure Inspector, is an extension for Firefox's Firebug add-on designed to help programmers understand and debug the rewritten JavaScript--linking a() back to DisplayAddress(), for example. Another add-on for the Google Page Speed extension lets programmers see how much the compiler helped.
Google also plans to make the compiler available as a Web application hosted on its Google App Engine service.
The second element is called the Closure Library, a collection of prebuilt JavaScript code that lets programmers handle relatively sophisticated technology--arrays and string manipulation, for example.
Last are Closure Templates, more prewritten code to ease creation of JavaScript and HTML user interfaces.
In an earlier era, programming tools were expensive packages bought by a select few, but open-source software, new marketing strategies, and new business methods have made that approach the exception rather than the rule these days. Now programming tools are often a means to another end--encouraging programmers to produce the software that will make Windows or the Palm Pre useful and therefore popular, for example.
In Google's case, the objective is often to make the Web more popular because it sees more activity on the Web as corresponding directly with more activity on its revenue-generating search site. Among the high-profile projects to this end are Chrome, Chrome OS, and Android, all subsidized by Google's powerful search-advertising business.
One interesting contrast to Closure is another Google project called Google Web Toolkit. It's designed to accomplish some of the same goals as Closure, including paving over browser incompatibilities and producing high-performance JavaScript. But with GWT, coders write programs in Java that gets translated into JavaScript.
So one last question: why the name?
Google's reply: "Being a functional language, the concept of a function closure is fundamental to the JavaScript language."
(Credit:
Google)
Google released an Internet Explorer plug-in Tuesday designed to let Microsoft's browser use the features and performance of Google's own Chrome browser.
The software, called Google Chrome Frame, lets IE 6, 7, or 8 use Chrome to render Web pages and execute their JavaScript programs, Google said. To use it, people must install the open-source plug-in, currently in the developer preview stage, and Web developers must insert a line of code onto their Web sites that engages Chrome Frame when a person visits the site.
"For users, installing Google Chrome Frame will allow them to seamlessly enjoy modern Web apps at blazing speeds, through the familiar interface of the version of IE that they are currently using," said Google programmer Alex Russell and product manager Mike Smith in a blog post.
But the plug-in might needle its rival more than revolutionize Web browsing. For one thing, it takes a long time to get a lot of Web developers to update their sites. For another, how many people dissatisfied with IE's performance haven't already installed a higher-powered browser?
Google argues that the feature will appeal to some folks, though, including people in corporate settings who might not have a choice of browser and people who prefer IE's interface, said spokesman Eitan Bencuya. And people are familiar with plug-ins as a way to expand what browsers can do.
"It's a much lower barrier to entry than switching browsers," Bencuya said.
He added that Google has built support for the feature into one of its own Web sites, the Google Wave project that's a hybrid of e-mail, instant messaging, and wiki collaboration.
Google has fixed two high-severity vulnerabilities in the stable version of its Chrome browser that could have let an attacker remotely take over a person's computer.
With one attack on Google's V8 JavaScript engine, malicious JavaScript on a Web site could let an attacker gain access to sensitive data or run arbitrary code on the computer within a Chrome protected area called the sandbox, Google said in a blog post Tuesday. With the other, a page with XML-encoded information could cause a browser tab crash that could let an attacker run arbitrary code within the sandbox.
Chrome 2.0.172.43 (click to download for Windows) fixes the issues and another medium-severity issue. Once Chrome is installed, it retrieves updates automatically and applies them when people restart the browser.
Google won't release details of the vulnerabilities until "a majority of users are up to date with the fix," Engineering Program Manager Jonathan Conradt said in the blog post.
Opera Software has completed its first release candidate of Opera 10, a browser that the company says has better performance, a Turbo mode for slow Internet connections, support for a variety of Web standards such as Web fonts, and improvements to the Opera Mail feature.
"Now, we are very close to releasing the best browser in Opera's long history," Jan Standal, Opera's vice president of desktop products, said in a statement. "We hope everyone who has helped us test our browser thus far will put the release candidate through its paces."
The new Carakan JavaScript engine, which is used to run Web-based applications such as Google Docs, isn't done yet.
"It won't be ready for (Opera) 10 final, but rest assured that it will be impressive when it comes," spokesman Thomas Ford said. He said Opera won't comment on the timing of the new engine's release until it enters alpha testing.
Firefox, Safari, and Chrome also all are working furiously on better JavaScript performance too, in an effort to make the Web a better foundation for applications.
The new Opera release candidate is available for download for Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Opera has been available for years as an alternative to the dominant Microsoft Internet Explorer, the second-ranked Firefox, and Apple's Safari. It was pushed into fifth place with the arrival of Google Chrome. The Opera browser often charts new territory, though. For example, its Speed Dial feature, which presents an array of Web site thumbnails when a person opens a new browser tab, was first introduced in 2007. A similar feature can now be found in Chrome and Safari, and Firefox may add something comparable.
Mozilla has released the first alpha version of Firefox 3.6 for Windows, Mac, and Linux, a browser with speed improvements and new features the organization hopes to finalize faster than its predecessor.
"Unlike the year that passed between Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5, we expect that this 3.6 release will be released in a small number of months," Mozilla evangelist Chris Blizzard said in a blog post Friday.
Firefox 3.6, code-named Namoroka, has a variety of changes, but it's not as dramatic a departure as 3.5 was from 3.0. Among the 3.6 features are faster JavaScript, the Web programming language Firefox executes with its TraceMonkey engine; faster page-rendering speed; some new features for CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) technology for controlling some of the look of a Web site; and a feature called the compositor that handles complicated layout circumstances better.
Performance is a big issue with browsers these days as people spend more time using them and programmers create more sophisticated sites and applications that live on the Web. All major browser makers are emphasizing performance improvements in their newest versions.
Download links for the first Firefox 3.6 alpha are at the Mozilla Developer Center.
Apple is touting Safari 4 as the fastest browser on the Web for both Windows and Mac. Depending on your computer's specs, that may indeed be true. However, if you need more than speed, Safari may not be the best choice. It's zippy with the JavaScript, but on Windows machines it still consumes a huge amount of RAM and still doesn't support extensions--something the Mac version can do.
What it does offer, though, is a uniquely visual browser right out of the box. Top Sites and Cover Flow for History and Bookmark browsing will either entice or annoy, but there's no doubt that Apple is finally taking its browser seriously.
Yesterday's introduction of Chrome version 2.0.172.28 was touted by Google as being up to 30 percent faster for handling JavaScript. After using the update to the stable release extensively for the past day and running it through two JavaScript tests on two computers, it's conclusively faster than the previous stable version of Chrome.
In addition to being faster, the new Chrome now has a full screen mode.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)The two computers I used were a Windows Vista Service Pack 1 desktop with a Pentium 4 processor running at 3.00 GHz and 2 GB of RAM, and a Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3 laptop with a Core Duo T9400 processor running at 2.53 GHz and 3 GB of RAM. Chrome was benchmarked by the Webkit test, SunSpider, and the JavaScript-only sections of the Mozilla test Dromaeo. Chrome was tested with no other tabs open and no other programs running on the computer.
When testing SunSpider, Chrome v1.0.154.65 scored 919.2ms on the laptop, and 1864.2ms on the desktop. Chrome v2.0.172.28 scored 583.6ms on the laptop, and 1323.4ms on the desktop. The laptop score was 36.6 percent faster, and the desktop was 29 percent faster.
Running both versions of Chrome through Dromaeo came up with similar results. Keeping in mind that the higher number is better for Dromaeo's tests, the older Chrome scored an overall 113.25 runs/s on the laptop. The newer one hit 139.90 runs/s, an improvement of 23.5 percent. The desktop results were the inverse of the laptop's.
Where the SunSpider results showed greater gains for the new Chrome on the laptop, the Dromaeo desktop tests showed an improvement of 33.8 percent. Chrome v1.0.154.65 hit 146.63 runs/s while v2.0.172.28 scored 196.29 runs/s.
Also new: Users can set forms to autofill in the Options menu (foreground, right), and selectively remove thumbnails on the New Tab landing page (background, left).
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)Actual results will vary based on your hardware and other program running simultaneously, but it's irrefutable that the new version of Chrome, with its updates to the WebKit rendering engine and Google's V8 JavaScript engine, is significantly faster than its predecessor. I strongly recommend that you upgrade if you've been using Chrome for script-intensive Web apps.
Also new in this version of Chrome is the F11 hot key to toggle full screen mode, which drops all hints of the browser frame except for the scroll bars--but only if they're appearing on that site in standard mode. There's also a new form autofill under Options in the Tools menu, and users can selectively remove thumbnails from the New Tab landing page.
Google has shifted the JavaScript engine that powers its Chrome Web browser into a higher gear.
The company announced Thursday that an update to Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine, combined with a new version of the Webkit browser engine, should improve the loading speed of JavaScript-heavy Web pages by up to 30 percent. The updates will be automatically downloaded to existing copies of Chrome.
JavaScript engines are one of the new fronts in the browser wars, with various vendors touting the performance of their browsers this year in hopes of unseating the competition. Chrome did very well on CNET JavaScript tests earlier this year, besting Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer.
Google also announced a few other changes to Chrome, including the addition of new features that let you erase embarrassing (or NSFW) Web sites from the most-visited list that appears when you open a new tab in Chrome. And Chrome now has a feature found in many browsers: form autofill.
Even at the cutting edge of cloud computing, Web-based applications can be frustrating to write and to use.
Spreadsheets can't sort data well, there are lags between mouse clicks and the program's response, graphics look Mickey Mouse rather than lavish. But Google, among the most aggressive cloud computing advocates, is trying to address some of those shortcomings.
The company has released experimental but still very much real software that brings in some of the power of the PC, where people often use Web applications. Google Native Client--first released in 2008 but updated with a new version Thursday--is a browser plug-in for securely running computationally intense software downloaded from a Web site. And on Tuesday, Google released O3D, a plug-in that lets Web-based applications tap into a computer's graphics chip, too.
The projects are rough around the edges, to say the least. Native Client--NaCl for short--is more security research project than usable programming foundation right now, and O3D exists in part to try to accelerate the arrival of some future, not necessarily compatible, standard for building 3D abilities into Web applications.
Google Native Client is shown here running a fractal landscape explorer.
(Credit: Google)But both fundamentally challenge the idea that Web apps necessarily are stripped-down, feeble counterparts to the software that runs natively on a personal computer, and they come from a company that has engineering skill, a yen for moving activity to the Internet, and search-ad profits that can fund projects that don't immediately or directly make money.
"There are things you can do in desktop apps that you can't do in Web apps. We're working very hard to close that gap, so anything you can do in a desktop application you can do safely and securely from a Web application," said Linus Upson, a Google engineering director.
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