Filed under: Software, Internet, Internet Tools Head on over to Getfirefox.com, Firefox fans. Version 3.6 of your favorite browser is now ready. The video explains the major changes in this version, but here are the highlights.

One-click themes. Using the Personals Gallery, you can assign a new look and theme to Firefox with a click. The way it works couldn't be simpler. Roll over any theme to preview it and click to commit. I found most of them annoying, but I'm old and crotchety.
Out-of-date plugin warnings. This super-handy feature lets you know when you've got an out-of-date and potentially virus-friendly plugin installed and provides an update link.
Speed! This version promises improved speed with javascript, rendering and startup.

There's more, of course, so watch the video above. Or better yet, grab a copy and start playing. In my extremely limited testing, content heavy pages did seem to load quicker (I typically visit StarWars.com), and all of my plugins continued to work. If you experience any issues or have a plugin that refuses to work, please let us (and your fellow Firefox users) know.

The Mac beta became available last year on Halloween (spooky) and the final release candidate dropped on January 11, 2009.TUAWFirefox 3.6 now available originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Apple

Here's an interesting fact that dropped over the weekend: Google Chrome, the browser by the search company with a silly name, actually beat Apple's Safari browser in overall usage during the last month of 2009 (Chrome first beat Safari midway through the month, but new month-long data shows that Chrome is here to stay). Internet Explorer continues to lose users, but Chrome has been taking over the ranks pretty quickly, moving in above Safari as the number three browser of choice (after IE and Firefox, of course).

Bad news for Apple -- after their release of Safari for Windows in 2009, you'd think they'd have hoped for a little more in terms of browser share at the end of the year. But it looks like they're going to have to do something even bigger than that to fight the current on this one -- that is, if they want to do so at all. With a relative newcomer topping Safari so quickly, it's possible Apple could back off of promoting and upgrading their proprietary browser entirely. Still, with Chrome using Webkit, the fact is that for the average user, things are getting better all the time.TUAWChrome beat Safari in December originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Software, Internet, Internet Tools, AppleComputerWorld is reporting that Chrome has surpassed Safari as the third-most popular browser.

According to Net Applications, which tracks the browser habits of 160 million unique visitors each month to the 40,000 sites it monitors for customers, Chrome's share jumped to 4.4% for the week of Dec. 6-12, an increase of 0.4 percentage points over Google's slice of the browser pie for the month of November.

Chrome's share during the week topped Safari's 4.37%, said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of Net Applications. "It appears that Chrome has made a substantial surge in usage market share," Vizzaccaro said in an e-mail.

Not surprising considering how much Google is pushing it. In the last two days I've seen dozens of Chrome ads on Facebook and (more surprisingly) the Amazon.co.uk home page.

Chrome is based on WebKit - an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the WebKit browser engine that's used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. I've only played around with Chrome for a few days, but I'm happy to stick with Safari for now (I love my MobileMe sync).

Here's how the top four browsers play out in market share:

Internet Explorer 63.6% Firefox 24.7% Chrome 4.4% Safari 4.37%

What about you guys? Firefox, Chrome, IE (if you're on a PC) or Safari? Tell us what you use in the poll!

View PollTUAWChrome makes Safari take a back seat originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Beta BeatWant to see something scary this Halloween? Like, perhaps, a browser that doesn't coddle you with all that silly stability and reliable performance? Feel like spending a little time on the bleeding edge? You too can taste the future (which, I am told, has a distinctive metallic tang) by downloading the first public beta of Firefox 3.6, now featured over at the Mozilla developer blog.

The next release of the open-source browser includes more flexible video options, better Javascript performance, updated font support and single-click appearance customization through the Personas skinning system. You can read more about the 3.6 changes from a web development perspective here.

The Mac version requires Mac OS X 10.4 or higher, and you can get it from the beta download page. Happy surfing!TUAWBeta version of Firefox 3.6 for Mac now available originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Ever since the new Firefox 3.5 came out about a month ago, I’ve been using it as my main browser. Generally I am very happy with it. Pages load a lot faster than they did before, the plus-sign feature in tabs which launches a new one is a godsend, and I am very excited about the prospects for all of the open video technologies built into it. But there is one persistent bug that might push me to another browser: it keeps crashing on me. This usually happens when I have too many tabs open (like 15 or 20, which is not unusual for me towards the end of the day). The whole thing will just freeze and I’ll have to force the browser to quit. When I relaunch I get a message like the one above, sheepishly saying, “Well, this is embarrassing.” Yes, it is embarrassing. A modern browser should be able to handle dozens of open tabs, and if there is a problem with one, it should be able to isolate it and allow you to carry with your business in the other tabs. Without basic stability, none of the other great features or add-ons really matter much. Mozilla needs to fix this issue fast because Firefox 3.5 is already gaining a lot of traction. Net Applications has it at a 4.5 percent market share at the end of July, while StatCounter has it at 9.4 percent as of today. People are using this as their main browser, despite the beta label, and there are plenty of other powerful choices out there from Safari to Chrome to, yes, even IE8. I realize that Firefox 3.5 is a just came out of beta, and to be fair, it has become slightly more stable over the past month (it was crashing every day in the beginning, now it is just every few days). I’ve been patiently waiting for the crashing to stop as Mozilla releases patches and updates. And I’m on a developer build, so maybe I’m just asking for crashes. But plenty of other people are complaining as well. Is Firefox 3.5 crashing for you?

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Mozilla’s Firefox browser is about to hit a major milestone: 1 billion total downloads. As you can see on this Twitter account set up to monitor the download numbers, it just crossed the 999,000,000 threshold earlier today. Judging by the rate at which it’s increasing, it could hit the milestone as early as tomorrow [update below, it will hit it tomorrow]. And Mozilla is preparing for the big day with a new site (not live yet), called http://www.onebillionplusyou.com, which will go live on Monday. There, you’ll find information about the one billion downloads Firefox has seen, we’re told. When the browser hits the milestone, more information should also be available here. Firefox has made a major dent in Internet Explorer’s marketshare over the past few years. The latest numbers put IE’s share just over 54%, while Firefox approaches 30%. That’s pretty incredible when you consider that just a few years ago, IE had over 90% marketshare. This one billion number is obviously for all the versions of Firefox, since it was launched in 2002 (though the Firefox name officially took hold in 2004). The most recent version, 3.5, launched exactly a month ago. It zoomed past a million downloads very quickly, and had 5 million downloads after day one — a huge number, though not quite as huge as the Firefox 3.0 launch. Update: Mozilla has just sent a note confirming that it will hit the milestone tomorrow: It’s looking like Firefox will reach 1 billion downloads tomorrow (around 3:45 a.m. PT)! You can find out more here: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/fxbillion. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

To celebrate this week’s launch of the superb Firefox 3.5, we’ve put together a collection of the WebWorkerDaily team’s favorite Firefox extensions. You can subscribe to our collection here; as we discover useful new add-ons, we’ll add to it over time. The great thing about add-on collections is that you can pick and choose which add-ons to install, so if you don’t agree with all of our choices, you can just pick the ones that you like. Here are the add-ons that made our collection (they’re all compatible with Firefox 3.5):

FaviconizeTab Long URL Please Better Gmail 2 Adblock Plus Tiny Menu Download Statusbar Gmail Manager LastPass Password Manager Greasemonkey ScribeFire Blog Editor Read It Later Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks) Shareaholic for Firefox

These are our favorites, but if we’re missing any, please let us know in the comments.

Market research you can use: Keep informed about Cloud Computing and IT Infrastructure. Learn more »

Mozilla today released Firefox 3.5 into the wild. Not surprisingly, it’s flying off the virtual shelves. And unlike when Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 last year, its servers are staying up and reliable, so the rate of downloads is pretty incredible. This site, run by Mozilla, shows the download stats for the new browser. Overall downloads are now approaching 1.3 million worldwide, with over 350,000 of those in the U.S. But even more amazing is the number of downloads occurring each second, it’s ranging from 59 to 95 right now. Again, that’s every second. Outside of the U.S., the browser is moving quickly in Germany, France and the UK. The claim is that it’s much faster than the previous iterations of Firefox, and based on just a quick run-through of my favorite sites, I’d say that is in fact the case. Though, to be fair, it’s hard to know if that has something to do with the fact that just about all my browser plugins are not yet working with this version. Not surprisingly, the emphasis on speed in this version of Firefox is on its JavaScript performance. Both Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari have been making headlines recently claiming to be the fastest browsers in this regard. As you can see in the SunSpider test chart below, it appears that Firefox has made huge strides since the slow days of Firefox 2, and has now more than doubled performance over even Firefox 3. As Apple recently touted in a press release: “Safari quickly loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3.” So how does 1.3 million downloads in a few hours stack up against its rivals? Well, the most recent browser to offer a major upgrade was Safari, which claimed 11 million downloads in 3 days. But those numbers are tricky because Apple includes Safari updates in its regular OS X software updates, so pretty much all OS X users were at least asked to upgrade after its launch. Still, Apple claimed that of the 11 million, some 6 million were users on Windows machines. And Firefox also pings users to do auto-updates when a new version is available. Despite its launch hiccups, Firefox 3 set the Guinness World Record for software downloads last summer. In just 24 hours, over 8 million people downloaded the browser around the world. We’ll see how this version stacks up. You can watch the live-updating chart and map for Firefox 3.5 downloads here.

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After some rather impressive RC builds, Firefox 3.5 is all packaged up and ready for public consumption. Mozilla is saying its new browser is more than two times faster than Firefox 3, but what has us more excited is the support for plugin-free "open codec" video and audio playback using Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora-- it's still in its infancy, but the subtle glimpse we've seen so far of a world without Flash video reducing our CPU to jelly is rather compelling.Filed under: Desktops, LaptopsFirefox 3.5 arrives originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Firefox 3.5 is worlds better than 3.0 with powers like geo-location and serious speed to compete with Chrome and Safari 4, so grab it nownownow. Update: It's official! [Firefox, Softpedia via DS]

Written by Simon Mackie.

Firefox 3.5 is a superb browser — the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine’s performance and memory management mean that it’s great for working with resource-heavy web apps. The Mozilla team has now released the first Release Candidate (RC1) of Firefox 3.5 to beta users, which means that the final release is probably not very far away. I’ve been using the beta for some time now as my everyday browser. In my experience, the beta of 3.5 has been far more stable than 3.0, particularly when I have large numbers of web apps open, so I would recommend switching to 3.5 RC1 if you’re not using it already, even though it’s not the final version. I ran the new RC1 through the Sunspider JavaScript benchmarks. It appears to be about 12 percent faster than beta 4, scoring a time of 2200 ms compared with beta 4’s 2500 ms, but as I didn’t run the tests in parallel you should take that with a large pinch of salt. While it’s not quite as snappy as Google Chrome (by far the quickest browser available, which scores 1500 ms, according to my benchmarks), this new version of Firefox is still a very fast browser. This improved performance, coupled with the ever-increasing bandwidth available to users, should give developers much more scope to create powerful web apps with desktop app-like capabilities — leading to many more useful web apps becoming available for web workers. Have you switched to Firefox 3.5 yet?

Mike Beltzner, the director of Firefox, was in New York City today and dropped by my office to talk about Firefox 3.5, which is now officially being rolled out as a “preview” version (a very stable beta) to everyone using the current 3.5 beta. Firefox 3.5 is supposedly much faster than earlier versions, which is always a good thing. Honestly, the nanosecond speed differences between most of today’s latest browsers is becoming hard to detect. Three features of Firefox 3.5 which stand out for me are: 1) its embrace of open-source video standards, 2) its geo-location capabilities, and 3) support for downloadable fonts and other graphic tricks. In the video above, Beltzner demos some of the new video and graphics capabilities of Firefox 3.5. Built into the browser is a video player based on the open-source video formats Ogg Vorbis and Theora. The video player supports HTML5, which means that links and other interactive elements can easily be placed inside videos. The demo page Beltzner shows in the video can be found here (but the effects only work if you are looking at it in Firefox 3.5). Being able to treat the content inside videos like Web pages opens up a whole new world of possibilities for Web video. Already, DailyMotion offers all of its videos in the Ogg Theora format. If this takes off, Flash video could be come history. Look closely at what Beltzner is showing off in the video, because you can’t do any of that with Flash. Update: There is a lot of great debate in the comments about whether or not you can do this stuff in Flash. Technically, you can, but the only examples I’ve seen are where the entire page is done in Flash or a proprietary overlay is being used. The videos in the demo all sit within regular Web pages and are written in HTML5. What is interesting in my mind about the Ogg Vorbis format is that it makes videos programmable. Videos today are still for the most part siloed off from the rest of the Web in their Flash players as a separate experience. It is time to break down those walls. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Written by Samuel Dean.

The Google Chrome team has announced a new version of the open-source browser, touting up to 30 percent performance increases on JavaScript-heavy tasks. I’ve taken it for a spin, comparing it to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4, which also has very fast JavaScript performance thanks to its TraceMonkey technology. The new version of Chrome does indeed work faster than the Firefox beta at this point, and the performance is another way that Google’s browser is maturing and innovating. Google is putting its money where its mouth is on the performance increases in the new Chrome. If you go to this web page, it will automatically start running a series of seven separate JavaScript-centric browser benchmark tests. You can paste the same URL into Firefox or another browser, and compare the result to that of Chrome. I got significantly higher numbers (higher is better) on all the tests with the new version of Chrome, as compared to Firefox 3.5 Beta 4. The performance increases in Chrome come from an update to its V8 JavaScript engine, as well as a new version of the open-source WebKit rendering engine. It’s worth noting that Firefox 3.5 will be coming out in a Release Candidate version in early June, with the final version due shortly after that. The final version may outperform Chrome in JavaScript tasks, as both Mozilla and Google are targeting improvements there. As far as the latest beta of Firefox goes, though, Chrome performs faster. It also continues to have the advantage of running tasks within tabs as separate applications, which means far fewer browser crashes. However, Chrome does not yet have anywhere near the ecosystem of useful extensions that Firefox has. You can download the new version of Chrome here. If you’re already running Chrome, you’ll automatically be updated to the new version. What do you think of Google Chrome?

Filed under: Cool tools, Internet Tools, Open Source, Beta BeatThe concept of a single-site browser or site-specific browser (SSB, either way) is simple: give me a window with one website in it, preferably a desktop application replacement like Gmail, RTM, Basecamp or Zoho, and let that window behave like a regular application with its own Dock icon, notifications, etc. If you're spending a lot of your time on a particular site, this can simplify your life quite a bit; if you're mixing up GTD with ADD (as so many of us seem to be), an SSB can help limit your distraction horizon while you're trying to maintain focus and flow. The inspiration for many SSB offerings was the Firefox offshoot Webrunner, and the descendant of that project has now earned a 1.0 beta designation and its own website: Prism, from Mozilla Labs, gives you a power tool for creating your own SSBs at will, either via a Firefox extension or by launching the Prism config app and typing in the target URL. Aside from having a dockable icon for each website you convert, you can also set your SSBs to launch at login, or assign mailto: links to open your web email client (similarly achievable for Gmail with the Gmail Notifier tool). If you have to keep separate sets of credentials for work & personal accounts for web services, no need to log in and out repeatedly -- just set up a Prism SSB for one of the accounts, and the passwords & cookies will stay as they need to be. In my brief testing this morning, several sites worked just as expected; the only sticking point is that the Choosy extension gets confused about whether or not Firefox is running when an SSB is open. Safari 4 developer seeds had offered a "Save as Web Application" feature for creating SSBs, which has been stripped from the File menu in the current public beta but still looks to be part of the final release; meanwhile, you can still make WebKit-centric SSBs with the excellent and free Fluid. What site or webapp would you put in a single-site browser? Thanks to everyone who sent this in. [H/T to Lifehacker]TUAWPrism single-site browser goes 1.0 beta originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 10 May 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Location-based services haven’t yet caught fire, but location itself is increasingly finding its way to web services as a complimentary feature. The latest to use it is the Google Toolbar. If you have it installed, and open Google Maps, it will now auto-center on your location. That’s a small, but useful feature, but the ramifications of this move are potentially much large. This adds location capabilities to the millions of people who have Google Toolbar installed. You may be thinking that a lot of those users with the latest version of Firefox already had it — but this feature is for Internet Explorer only right now. That, combined with Mozilla’s use of its Geode location plug-in (which again, is built into the latest version of Firefox), puts location on a good percentage of browsers in the world. And while it doesn’t mention it, that’s important for Google’s own larger purposes. Its recently launched Latitude location-based network is only useful if it can automatically update your location, or make it really easy to do. Up until now, it has been a pain on a computer. But there are other big things Google could do with location information — such as serve you location-based ads. There are other companies working in that field, but you can bet Google wants to get out in front of them and lead the charge. And with its own toolbar to get your location, it could potentially do that. It also promises the ability to serve up location-based search results with feature. Google has been been working on location for a little while in the mobile space, but most users are still experiencing the web first and foremost through regular computer browsers. Google’s toolbar pulls location data from both IP addresses and nearby Wi-Fi access points — since most computers don’t have GPS built-in. Much like it does with Gmail, Google added a “Labs” area to Google Toolbar today, to test this new feature. It also has a new, simple Chinese version of the Toolbar in this Labs area. Both are IE-only for right now, as I mentioned. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

I wrote a few weeks ago about how anyone can easily change the Twitter web interface with Firefox and the GreaseMonkey plug-in (here). The great news is that this process is so easy that there’s little reason not to give this a go - you really are only a few clicks away from what’s shown below. Here’s some power UI enhancements I have chosen - and yes, this list goes to eleven. Have fun, @Eunmac Setup:

You’ll need Firefox. (here) You’ll need to install the GreaseMonkey Addon (here) Now click the links below to add new features to change your Twitter interface.

1. Nested Replies in Twitter: (install here)This is by far the most useful script for me. It collates a threaded conversation of replies inside the twitter page. Without this it is very hard to see what conversation took place.

2. Add Bio’s to Friend Following/Followers page (install here) When you’re checking out someone’s ‘following’ page you get no information other than a picture and a name. Useless! Anyway, if you add this script and you’ll see all their details including a bio, follower info and even last tweet. Here’s me checking out who Guy Kawasaki is following:

3. Sidebar Replies Panel (install here)See all other replies sent to another Twitter user.

4. Auto shortening of URL (install here)

5. Mentions and unread replies: (install here)

6. Add Friend Name Helper (install here)Auto suggests names from your following list.

7. Add Retweet Button (install here)  

8. Power Twitter. (install here)This is plug-in for Firefox. It displays videos and images nested inside conversations.

9. Expand Short URLs (install here)Don’t get fooled by those short bit.ly urls anymore, this plugin will reveal the full url inside the web interface.

10. Endless Tweets (install here) This is pretty cool, as you get to the bottom of the page, the page simply gets longer so you never have to move back and forth between pages.

11. Add search and Tools to sidebar (install here)  Other useful scripts:Hide All re-tweets. (install here)Block tweets with specific words (install here)Reveal followers. Places icon over those following you (install here)Shrink tweets with Tweetshrink (install here) Want to see all the twitter scripts? There are over 300 on userscripts.org (here) Found any more great tools? Add them to the comments please

Filed under: Internet Tools, Open Source, Beta BeatDo you feel the need... the need for speed? With more and more of our computing lives taking place via our web browsers, eking out even a slight performance improvement for Firefox or Safari (or a similar reduction of resource demands; I'm looking at you, Flash Player) can improve the user experience noticeably. One way to improve browser performance, if you've got the chops and the time, is to compile the open-source browser of choice yourself, with all the tweaks for the specific processor platform you're using.Web guru Neil Bruce Lee has offered the performance-hungry Firefox user the choice of G5 and Intel optimized versions of the 3.0 release; now, for those who want to live completely on the far side, Chris Latko has rolled out an Intel-optimized build of the beta Firefox 3.1 (Shiretoko) browser. With the architecture-specific tweaks Latko made, along with the inclusion of the TraceMonkey Javascript native compiler, this is the screaming-est version of Firefox ever to grace an Intel Mac screen... but be wary, it's going to be less stable than an official release, and many of your favorite plugins may not work (best to disable them all in the 3.0x version, then enable one at a time in the beta build to make sure they play nicely).Don't roll the Firefox way? There's a bleeding-edge choice for you too: WebKit nightly builds, based on the most current code that goes into future versions of Safari. Again, you should see a boost in speed and possibly a corresponding decrease in stability, so tread with caution.If you're running an optimized browser build, share your experiences with us below.Thanks Chris![Hat tip: Mac.Blorge]TUAWLivin' on the edge with optimized, beta Firefox builds originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Software, Internet, Internet Tools, Beta BeatDo you own one of those fanciful new MacBooks? You know, the ones with the cool multitouch trackpads? Do you envy Safari users that can take advantage of multi-finger scrolling, pinching and squeezing in their web browsing? If so, you might be a perfect candidate for the new Firefox 3.1b2 beta. Since October, Mozilla has been releasing preliminary builds of Firefox that allow you to use the gestures that are common among the Safari browsers out there; however, they've added some special gestures that are unique to Firefox. Some of these 3-finger gestures include:

Swipe Left/Right to move backward/forward through browsing history
Swipe Up/Down to move to top/bottom of web page
Pinch in/out to make the text larger or smaller
Twist left/right to move between open tabs

If you want to get your hands (quite literally) on the newest beta of Firefox, then head over to the Firefox 3 beta download website. There's still no word yet on when the final release of Firefox 3.1 with touch support is expected.Special thanks to Tom Dyas for sharing his early builds.[via MacRumors]TUAWBeta Beat: Firefox 3 betas add support for multitouch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Back in October, multitouch gestures for MacBooks showed up in an experimental Firefox build. Now these gestures have been officially folded in to the 3.1 beta 2. According to MacRumors, the list of supported gestures is as follows: •Swipe Left: Go back in history (hold Command to open it in a tab) •Swipe Right: Go forward in history •Swipe Up: Go to the top of the page •Swipe Down: Go to the end of the page •Pinch Together: Zoom out •Pinch Apart: Zoom in •Twist Right: Next tab •Twist Left: Previous tab Awesome. As Wired pointed out, this implementation may even better than Safari. [Mozilla via Wired]

There were several important updates on the browser front this week, from Mozilla, Microsoft and Google. From where I sit, there is very healthy competition going on in the browser market right now, and if you’re a web worker who favors only one browser, there may soon be some prompts for you to switch or mix up your usage.

Die-hard Internet Explorer users will have to wait until 2009 for a final version of Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft confirmed. There won’t even be another release candidate until the first quarter. It offers malware protection and other improvements, but is taking a relatively long time in development. Meanwhile, Google has confirmed that it will deliver Mac and Linux versions of the open source Chrome browser in the first half of next year. The company has also confirmed plans to strike deals with OEMs to put Chrome on new computers as the default browser. We discussed both pieces of news on OStatic today. The move to make Chrome the default browser on new computers is particularly significant. That’s how Internet Explorer gained its dominance. Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker delivered a post this week in which she discussed Mozilla’s financial position, which is key to keeping Firefox popular. Google, of course, provides massive funding for Firefox, and that arrangement is in place through 2011. However, eWeek is predicting that Firefox won’t survive the proliferation of Google Chrome, because Google won’t continue to support a competing open source product. I doubt that last point, because Google benefits from Firefox’s existence in several ways, one of which is simply that Firefox keeps Internet Explorer from having absolutely dominant market share. I use all three of the browsers discussed here, but I continue to find Firefox the best of all browsers because of the huge number of useful extensions available. I’ve been using the beta version 3.1 of Firefox and it is rocket fast, especially at JavaScript tasks. Still, we haven’t seen so much competition and innovation going on in browsers in a long time. We’re definitely going to see this stepped up as we move into 2009.