The Four-eyed Journal » Web browsers

My thoughts on RockMelt the social browser - Top reasons I would not use it

jhay — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 05:01:25 +0000

The newest web browser on the internet is making quite a headline today. RockMelt dubbed the ‘social browser’ is now out as beta but already it has drawn some lukewarm response from tech pundits the world over.

ComputerWorld says that it has a tough uphill climb if it were to make a space for itself in the browser market that is already crowded. But what exactly is RockMelt?

For starters, it’s based on Chromium, the same technology behind Google Chrome. It’s main selling point is the built-in social networking features: seamless integration mainly with your Facebook and Twitter account.

You can chat with friends on Facebook, share links, pages and images directly to your wall or network while browsing. The same set of functionalities work with your Twitter account.

But this is not something totally new, Flock, also a Chromium-based browser was the first browser to sport this capabilities. Flock may not be gaining much traction compared to the big boys – IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari but it has a steady user-base of 9 million.

Though I consider my self as an early adopter, I just can’t see myself switching to RockMelt nor even downloading the Beta for the sake of hands-on testing.

Here are a few reasons:

I love Chrome and it’s my default browser now and in the years to come. One of the major reasons I switched from Firefox is to remove the bloatware and the annoyance/distraction that comes with all the plugins and add-ons I once used.

From what I’ve seen in the video above, I foresee myself being less able to write because of the distraction and information overload that is inevitable with RockMelt.

Besides, both Firefox and Chrome has enough plugins/add-ons to give the same built-in social networking features offered by RockMelt as demonstrated in Lifehacker.

But actually, I don’t use Chrome extensions for social networking that much. As Ubuntu already comes with a host of stand-alone social networking apps like Gwibber and Empathy.

I’m not saying stay ‘away from RockMelt’

Of course all these seemingly negative things about RockMelt are biased towards my browsing preferences and workflow as a geek/blogger.

For non-geeks who are really hooked to Facebook and Twitter RockMelt could provide the one-stop solution to staying connected to your network even if Facebook is not open in a tab or window.

With over 500 million Facebook users, RockMelt definitely has tons of opportunity. The question now is, would it go the same way of Flock and just be on the sidelines of the browser market? Would enough users and early-adopters jump on board and lay the foundations for a solid user-base before the leading browsers offer the same built-in social networking integration?

And how about you, would you switch to RockMelt or just take it for a spin?

Internet Explorer market share falls below 50% - Google Chrome is the new rising star

jhay — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:34:12 +0000

We all knew this was going to happen, but who would’ve thought it would this year? Especially at the heels of positive reviews Internet Explorer 9 has gained after the Beta version was released just last month.

Web analytics firm StatCounter, yes the one that offers free stats tools to bloggers and websites, have released a report saying that Microsoft Internet Explorer’s share of the world market of web browsers have fallen below 50%.

Internet Explorer's share of the world market has dropped to 50% (Click to zoom)

According to StatCounter’s press release:

Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.

Two things were the culprits: 1) Regulatory actions in Europe which mandated Microsoft to offer a choice of browsers instead of just Internet Explorer whenever they install a copy of Windows and 2) Google Chrome’s increasing popularity, over taking Apple’s Safari in June this year.

If other experts and stats firm agree, we may have just witnessed another moment in the web browser war history. The first one was the death of Netscape in 2007.

Is Internet Explorer next? Or will the IE 9′s stable release save it and win back converts to the other browsers? Well don’t look at me, I’m a loyal Chrome user since it came out. How about you?

Firefox 4.0 Beta 1 First Impressions

jhay — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 14:16:32 +0000

Lifehacker has a quick run down of what’s new with Firefox 4.0 Beta 1. Gave it a download a couple of minutes ago and so far, it’s great. The overhauled interface does take a little while to get used to but it does remind me more of Safari than Chrome.

They just look closely similar, Safari 4 and Firefox 4. Though the “tabs on top” sure is a page from Chrome and Opera. What’s unique though is the new “Firefox button” which replaces the venerable Menu bar. Or is this so Windows-like?

Though the slow start up is nothing new, I noticed that it did rendered web pages a bit faster than the current version of Firefox 3. It shows the page load progress via two ways: an animated circle at the top-right corner of each tab and the traditional progress bar at the foot of the browser. Which is kind of distracting really because my eyes were jumping from top to bottom just to see the progress animation.

Good job to the Firefox 4 team. Though it’s not enough to convince to switch back from Chrome. Since this is just Beta 1, I expect a lot of more goodies to come as we get closer to the final stable release.

Have you tried Firefox 4 Beat 1? What do you think about it?

Sony Vaio PCs come with Google Chrome

jhay — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:42:53 +0000

In its latest effort to gain a bigger share of the web browser market, Google has forged a partnership with Sony in which the latter’s PCs will ship with Google Chrome pre-installed, instead of Internet Explorer. The Financial Times reports:

Google confirmed that Sony PCs carrying Chrome had started to go on sale and said it was in talks for similar deals with other computer makers. It said the arrangement was “experimental” and part of wider efforts to boost distribution, including a deal to make Chrome available to internet users who download the RealPlayer software and the company’s first use of television advertising.

Who could resist the world’s most powerful web right? With a reported 2% share of the current web browser market, Google definitely needs to step up its efforts it if wants to dethrone IE as the world’s number web browser.

But what really interested me is this remark by Google executives as mentioned in the FT report:

Google executives express frustration at what they consider a lack of interest among internet users about browsers. “Awareness is shockingly low” given how much people rely on browsers, said Mr Rakowski. “It’s absolutely a problem that people don’t know what a browser is, or how to evaluate one.”

I believe this could be attributed to the fact that IE has been shipped with almost every version of Windows for years which gave Microsoft all the leverage it needed to capture the web browser market from the beginning. Others simply needed to be bold, creative and daring to be of serious competition to IE.

Will this partnership with Sony help Google Chrome grow its share of the web browser market? It remains to be seen, but for now, it is a step in the positive direction.

Firefox 3.5 – tab tearing, private browsing & HTML 5 video support

jhay — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:20:06 +0000

It’s probably late than never, but it’s great news that Firefox 3.5 has been released yesterday for the masses to download and enjoy.

Those who fell in love with Google Chrome and it’s many great features sans plugins & extensions support would probably switch back to Firefox 3.5 because the same cool features in Chrome like tab tearing, that awesome search bar and private browsing are now also found in Firefox. I know, because I’m starting to love Firefox again.

Tear tab feature in Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 from Percy Cabello on Vimeo.

I think the best new feature about this version of Firefox is the support for HTML 5 with video in an open-source format like Ogg Vorbis or Theora. It means that Firefox 3.5 treats videos as if they are just part of the page and not as embedded flash objects. This, in my theory, would be a key in by-passing some firewalls that filter out flash objects in webpages.

Of course there’s support for tab tearing in Firefox 3.5, which was first introduced by Chrome. Again, better to late than never right?

A minor qualm over Firefox 3.5’s private browsing mode

However, there’s one thing that I frown about Firefox 3.5. Sure it now has a porn private browsing mode but why does it have to devote the entire browser into that mode whenever private browsing is activated? I like Chrome’s implementation better. It’s version of private browsing called Incognito, allows me to open a regular Chrome window or tab and an Incognito window at the same time. It’s more flexible and less time consuming.

In Firefox 3.5 however, it interrupts your workflow because it stops your current regular browsing session and devotes the entire browser into private mode. What if you only wanted to view a single page in private browsing just to have a peek or do a quick transaction?

Hopefully, the Firefox team will consider this minor issue for the next version. Overall though, version 3.5 is a great update to Firefox because I almost made the complete return to using Firefox as my default browser.