Ilya Kozhevnikov

Browser Newsletter #27

June 23, 2008

Speed Testing the Latest Web Browsers

Read the hype on every new web browser released or due out this year, and you’ll see claims that every one of them is “faster” than all the others. You could compare super-specific tests and decipher all the code-brain terminology, and you’d still be left wondering which browser starts quicker, uses less memory, and slides through dynamic interfaces like Gmail the fastest. Since our squadron of independent analysts had the week off, we ran the latest editions of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera 9.5, and Safari for Windows through some unscientific but highly geeky tests ourselves on a plain old Windows computer. Take a look at the full (and somewhat unexpected) results after the jump.

Mozilla’s mobile browser due out in September

While the world rightly awaits Firefox 3.0 with anticipation, it’s actually the mobile Firefox browser Fennec that I am looking most forward to seeing. According to the head of Mozilla Europe, we should be seeing Fennec in September, with a beta release later in 2008.

Get under the hood of Opera 9.50

The browser wars are heating up again, and the first major browser update of 2008 is Opera 9.50. Available for Windows and Mac, there are some impressive new features worked into this release, even though it’s not listed as a major-point update.

IE8 development: Microsoft should learn from Apple, Mozilla

Internet Explorer 8 is set to be Microsoft’s most standards compliant browser ever. After originally stating that IE8 would default to the same noncompliant behavior exhibited by IE7, Microsoft relented and plumped for standard-by-default. The first beta of IE8 was released in March and it did indeed default to standards compliance. Web developers have been clamouring for standards compliance for a long time; IE is a long way behind the competition, requiring considerable hacks and workarounds to get pages working properly. IE8 should make things a lot better—but it will still fall far short of the standards set by Firefox, Safari, and Opera. Some of these problems are technical, but others are cultural. Where the other browser developers are open and communicative, Microsoft is still leaving web developers in the dark.

Flock catches up with Firefox 3 in sophomore release

Flock, the self-proclaimed social browser, is catching up with the times this week with a new version for brave Windows and Mac beta testers that employs technology from the upcoming Firefox 3. Dubbed version 2.0, the new Flock is largely a behind-the-scenes operation, including such FF3 niceties as the controversial “awesome bar”, improved render speeds, and the new bookmarking system, along with in-browser security notifications–which should keep the phishing sites at bay.

More Internet Users to Benefit From VeriSign EV SSL Protection as Mozilla Launches Firefox 3

The latest version of the Mozilla Firefox Web browser features advanced security protections that can help Mozilla’s 175 million users from unwittingly giving sensitive information to e-criminals. That’s because Mozilla Firefox 3, launched today as part of a global download event, supports Extended Validation (EV) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates from CA vendors including VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the networked world.

Another quick update

Mozilla.com web traffic is pushing well over 2 Gigabits a second of just pure HTTP traffic. That is in addition to the 13 Gigabits a second or so of download traffic. We are still at around 14,000 download/minute and mozilla.com is responding well! Go Mozilla community and IT team!

Firefox 3.0 Doesn’t Focus On Business IT

Mozilla released Firefox 3.0 this week, but don’t expect the new version to come entirely business-ready. The company’s approach is to keep the end user first in mind, not the IT manager.

“Give people the things they want and then they’ll take it into the enterprise,” Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s VP of engineering, said in an interview. “Our approach for a long time now has been pull rather than push.” Mozilla has no enterprise sales or support staff to speak of, and the company relies on third-party add-ons such as FrontMotion Firefox MSI, CCK Wizard, or FirefoxADM for business features like centralized deployment and management.

Read more…
© InformationWeek, 18/06/08

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Vulnerability

What we can confirm is that about five hours after the official release of Firefox 3.0 on June 17th, our Zero Day Initiative program received a critical vulnerability affecting Firefox 3.0 as well as prior versions of Firefox 2.0.x. We verified the vulnerability in our lab, acquired it from the researcher, then promptly reported the vulnerability to the Mozilla security team shortly after. Successful exploitation of the vulnerability could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. Not unlike most browser based vulnerabilities that we see these days, user interaction is required such as clicking on a link in email or visiting a malicious web page.

Firefox 3 launch a success: 8 million downloads in 24 hours

Mozilla’s Firefox 3 release event yesterday was an epic success. The servers logged over 8 million downloads during the 24-hour download day, and Mozilla has declared victory after exceeding its initial goal of 5 million downloads.

Browser bruiser: Opera 9.5 versus Firefox 3

Two of the four major browsers have undergone some big changes in the past two weeks. Firefox 3 is, of course, the big news of the week, pulling down eight million or so downloads in its first 24 hours in the wild. However, the Opera browser updated to its much-awaited version 9.5 last week. Since both of them have got game but for different reasons, let’s take a look at how they match up.

New in standards: Acid4 and HTML 5 update

Some interesting news in the standards world. First, we have an updated HTML 5 working draft. You can read the notes from what is updated or a visual diff which includes very low level details [...]

Acid4 will be primarily a visual test, not especially scripted. Focus will probably be on SVG, CSS, and mixing namespaces, probably with the main document being an XML file with an SVG root element.

Slipstreaming IE8

As James and I mentioned in our blog post What’s coming in IE8 for IT Pros?, IE8 can now be slipstreamed into Vista and Window Server 2008 OS images. If you manage the desktop images for your organization, slipstream saves you time by simplifying the task of adding Internet Explorer 8 and any IE updates. If you’re adding Internet Explorer 7 to a Windows XP image you’ll typically install XP and then add IE7 before capturing the image -this can take 2 hours! With IE8 and Windows Vista, you are able to integrate IE8 into the image file of the original operating system in about 15 minutes. No more booting the OS image, manually installing IE and re-capturing the image. The slipstreaming support also extends to IE8 cumulative updates and language packages. Slipstreaming IE8 into an OS image will only be supported on Vista and Windows Server 2008 platforms. Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 do not currently offer a solution for slipstreaming Windows components, which are built using update.exe.

Second look and invites for AT&T’s improved Pogo web browser (Updated)

AT&T both intrigued and confused us back in April when it announced Pogo, a new Mozilla-based web browser (of all things) that they’re testing in a very private beta. It’s notable for some new ideas about how web browsers should present information, and we found some of them interesting when we gave Pogo a thorough testing. But the remarkably heavy system requirements needed to come down out of the clouds for Pogo to attract much of an audience. Today, AT&T told us that a new private beta is ready to roll, and the system requirements have been significantly reduced [...]

Apple Fixes Safari “Carpet Bomb” Windows Vulnerability

Apple has released a new version of Safari that fixes the carpet bomb vulnerability in Safari 3.1 for Windows. This comes in the heels of Microsoft recommending against using Safari in Windows, as well as the release of code exploiting this vulnerability.