Jon von Tetzchner is the chief executive of the Norwegian browser company Opera. (Download for Windows and Mac.) Although Opera first became known for its desktop product, the company has also become well known for its Opera Mini handset-based Web browser.
Opera has become heavily involved in the development of standards for widgets--the lightweight, Web-based applications that are starting to become prevalent on new handsets. It has also been working hard on the development of HTML 5, which has more built-in rich media functionality than the current version of the Web standard.
ZDNet UK caught up with von Tetzchner at the Wireless '09 event in London on Wednesday to discuss standards processes and how Flash may soon become unnecessary.
Jon von Tetzchner
(Credit: ZDNet UK) Q: Tell us about the work Opera has been doing with widget standards.
Von Tetzchner: We work mostly through the W3C, which is where the widget standard per se is being worked on. The widget standard (as far as it has been established) is more about the packaging--on the relation of how you connect to the underlying device, it hasn't been standardized fully. Bondi is trying to standardize that, and we have engaged with Bondi and with (the Joint Innovation Labs). (Editors' note: Bondi is a Web/widget specification endorsed by the LiMo Foundation.)
There are already quite a few initiatives, and there is a risk of fragmentation, and obviously our goal is always to try to make things migrate...to a single standard. Sometimes, on the way, people are eager to get started, but we try to engage as much as possible to make sure that this gets standardized in a way that works for everyone.
What does Opera gain from these widget standards bodies?
Von Tetzchner: I don't want to say this is a philosophical thing for us, but we do believe the Internet is too important to be limited. There is a significant risk of the fragmentation of technology. It'll be like on the PC: you'll write an application for a platform, and it will only run on that platform. We're already seeing some of this (in widget development), where Web technologies may be in the mix. But you're mixing all those things in, and suddenly you have to write for the platform instead of for the technology.
Our goal is to try and make this work because we believe that's the right thing to do. We've seen the benefits of this from the PC side, where there are differences between the different operating systems, but you can still run all the applications. That's the benefit of having things standardized.
We have a lot of people that know how to write standards, how to implement standards and how to engage in the standards bodies. We have the biggest active group in the W3C to do just that. Considering that our competitors tend to be a lot bigger than us, that shows our commitment to this.
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Updated at 11:32 a.m. PST with a summary of the bug fixes.
Mozilla released an update to Firefox 3 on Tuesday that patches 12 security vulnerabilities, four of which it rated as critical.
Firefox 3.0.9, the Web browser's third update this year, fixes two critical vulnerabilities in the Firefox browser engine and two in its JavaScript engine, according to a security advisory posted Tuesday:
Mozilla developers identified and fixed several stability bugs in the browser engine used in Firefox and other Mozilla-based products. Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances, and we presume that with enough effort, at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code.
One critical security bug fixed crashes caused by memory corruption, which the developers felt could have been used at some point to run arbitrary code.
Two other high-profile bugs involved a misinterpretation of a particular Adobe Flash code that could have been exploited, and a URI mismatch that also could have led to arbitrary JavaScript executions. However, there's no evidence in the bugs that these security holes had been exploited.
AOL.com and AIM.com Web mail users should once again be able to view attached images inline and without hiccups. A bug created in Firefox 3.0.7 caused images to break where they had loaded properly in Firefox 3.0.6. Also, users who noticed previously stored cookies mysteriously disappearing should find that bug repaired.
The release comes as Mozilla prepares to release the fourth beta test of Firefox 3.5--the next version of the open-source browser. Mozilla had originally planned to release its new "Shiretoko" version of Firefox in early 2009. But after releasing Firefox 3.1 beta 3 last month, the organization behind the browser said a fourth beta is planned--and with the new version number, 3.5.
Expected changes in Firefox 3.5 include faster execution of Web-based JavaScript programs, a private-browsing mode, native support for the JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) technology for exchanging data between servers and browsers, and built-in audio and video abilities for bypassing Flash or other multimedia technologies.
In March, security-testing company Secunia reported that Mozilla had more vulnerabilities in its Web browser last year than Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera combined, but that Mozilla dealt with those flaws more quickly than Microsoft did.
Meanwhile, Firefox continues to chip away at Internet Explorer's market dominance. Mozilla now has 22.05 percent of the global browser market share, compared with IE's 66.82 percent, a drop of more than seven percentage points in a year, according to figures from Web metrics company Net Applications.
Updates for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available at the Mozilla site. (Downloads in all languages are available here.) Firefox 3 users will receive an update notification within 48 hours, or they can download the update manually by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu.
CNET's Seth Rosenblatt contributed to this report.
Correction: Contributing editor Lowell Heddings compiled the scripts for Lifehacker, not Better Gmail for Firefox compiler Gina Trapani.
If you're the antsy type, you can grab the "Chromed" version of the popular Firefox extension Better Gmail right here, right now. However, you'll need a little patience to install it: this is a collection of the raw Greasemonkey scripts, and it will require some fiddling before you can get them to work in Chrome.
Two of Better Gmail's scripts, message highlighting and attachment icons, work in Chrome.
(Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)First off, you'll need at least the most recent beta release of Google's browser, which supports scripts. If you don't know which you've got, go to Tools and About Google Chrome. If you've got a version 1.x, you'll need to upgrade, and we're going to take a detour to explain a quick way to do it.
This part's actually fairly easy. Grab the Google Chrome Channel Changer. When you double-click on it, change from the stable build to either the beta or the developer's build. The beta is the more stable of the two, if this is entirely new territory for you.
Close the Channel Changer and run Google Chrome, opening the About window again. It should prompt you almost instantaneously to upgrade to a newer version. Once you've installed it, grab Better Gmail for Chrome and shut down the browser.
Next, point your Windows Explorer to your Chrome User Data folder. For Windows XP users, the path should look something like this:
%userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 users should look for this path:
%userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default.
Inside the Default folder, create a new folder called User Scripts, and then extract the contents of the Better Gmail for Chrome Zip file into it.
Last step: in your shortcut for Google Chrome, add -enable-user-scripts to the end of the Target field. There should be a space in between "...chrome.exe" and the scripts command. Open up Google Chrome, log in to Gmail, and you should begin to see the effects of the scripts on your Gmail's behavior.
Utilizing scripts in Chrome is nothing more than a way-station on the road to full extension support, but there are some usability problems that an extension and its interface wouldn't have. For starters, removing a script from the folder is the only way to deactivate it. Likewise, to discover what each script can do, you must either look at their names in the User Scripts folder or check out their descriptions online. As simple an interface as the Firefox version has, it not only lets you quickly turn the extension's features on and off, it also tells you how to use them. Without those details at your fingertips, you'll have to hit the original announcement from script-wrangler Lowell Heddings.
The whole process is a definite drawback that is not meant to appeal to average users, and its utility is questionable at best to all but those who are writing scripts and extensions for Chrome. Not all of the scripts are even expected to work.
Complaints aside, it's also an interesting look at how Chrome functions when burdened with third-party features and potentially gives us a small taste of the browser's future.
(h/t Lifehacker)
Mozilla on Wednesday released an update to the Firefox Web browser that its developers said fixes eight security issues found in Firefox 3.0.6, six of which were rated critical.
The most serious of the vulnerabilities fixed in version 3.0.7 for Windows, Mac, and Linux could allow attackers to run arbitrary code on a victim's computer, Mozilla warned in security advisories Wednesday.
The six critical flaws affect the browser's garbage collection--which monitors how Firefox modules use the computer's memory--as well as the browser's PNG libraries and in the layout and JavaScript engines.
Mozilla developers said they weren't sure the layout and JavaScript flaws could be exploited.
"Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," Mozilla said in an advisory.
Updates for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux are available at the Mozilla site. Firefox 3 users will receive an update notification within 48 hours, or they can download the update manually by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu.
The update--Mozilla's second this year--comes as Firefox continues to chip away at Internet Explorer's market dominance. Mozilla now has 21.77 percent of the global browser market share, compared with IE's 67.44 percent, a drop of more than 7 percentage points in a year, according to figures from Web metrics company Net Applications.
When Google Chrome was released a week ago, I bravely volunteered to use the browser exclusively for the next seven days. That means no Firefox, no IE, no Opera, only Chrome, with no exceptions. I was fully expecting a week of frustrations, incompatibilities, and annoyances. I was ready to criticize all of the fatal flaws that were sure to turn up. I am happy to say that I was wrong. Google Chrome passes the full-time use test with flying colors.
(You can get Chrome from CNET Download.com.)One of the first things that people notice when they load up Google Chrome is the gigantic viewing window. Chrome's presentation is very elegant, with the larger than usual viewing window, beautiful animations, browser bar that searches, suggests, and shows history, and a good-looking and highly functional start page. Page searches also show the locations in which your search terms appear in the scroll bar. Surfing has been way easier on my eyes in the past week.
Chrome shows the locations of search terms in the scroll bar.
As everyone else has mentioned, Chrome is really snappy when using Google apps. Gmail and Google Reader work like a dream. Loading each tab in its own process also makes a difference. If you are in the middle of something important, a balky page or Flash element in a different tab doesn't crash everything. During my entire test of Chrome, there was only one instance when the whole browser started choking, but it was able to pull itself out of it. Chrome certainly showed nothing like the crashing issues that pop up with Firefox (although they have been made better with Firefox 3).
Windows Live Mail is incompatible with Google Chrome, suggesting that you "Upgrade your web browser."
The most serious issue I ran into was incompatibility with Windows Live Hotmail (seen above), which is a showstopper if you are a Hotmail user. It seems like this is an easily correctable issue and probably not the fault of Google. Chrome also suffers from the same insanely annoying bug as Firefox, where Flash videos sometimes stop after two seconds.
The thing I missed the most by switching from Firefox to Chrome for the week is the absence of my Remember The Milk todo list in Gmail. Google is promising extensions for Chrome, but doesn't support them yet, so you lose a lot of the functionality that Firefox's extensions provide.
All in all, my experience with Chrome was very positive and it really did not give me any major difficulties. I see Google Chrome potentially winning over some of Firefox's users, especially if they add extensions and get support from the developer community.
Chrome is more than a bright and shiny Google lab experiment. It's a useful browser that is going to steal share from the existing products.
Google's Chrome gets a 78 out of 100 on the Acid3 test
Even though Google has the stable builds edged out, we have to remember that Chrome is still in development, where it is topped by a number of other "unstable," development builds, including Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 (85), Opera (91), and Safari 4 (100). It is interesting that the Safari 4 Developer Preview performs so much better than Chrome, given that they are both built on Apple's WebKit framework.
Whenever a new browser or an update to a browser is released, one of the first things that techies tend to look at is how it fares on the Acid test. The latest iteration of the test, Acid3, is the hardest yet and no "stable" browser builds have achieved a 100 out of 100 on the test, although the Safari 4 Developer Preview has.
Passing the Acid3 test is an important goal for browser developers and it's great to see that Chrome is performing so well on its first attempt.
Update:
A reader, Benjamin, writes in saying that under Vista SP1, Chrome shows scores ranging from 74 to 79 on the Acid3 test. Running it again right now, the test showed a score of a 79. Some of the initial variability could have been due to the servers for the Acid3 test being hammered as a result of Chrome's release.
Sometime last night, Firefox downloads crossed the 500 million threshold.
Mozilla congratulated itself on attaining 500 million downloads of the Firefox Web browser.
(Credit: Mozilla)It's an arbitrary but interesting milestone for the open-source Web browser, whose development is overseen by Mozilla but that's also developed and extended by a large number of outside programmers. In September 2007, Firefox crossed the 400 million download mark, indicating an average rate a bit shy of 20 million per month at present.
According to the Spread Firefox site, there had been 500,168,448 downloads as of 6:15 a.m. PST. About 12 hours earlier, there had been more than 499,900,000.
Firefox has spread widely in the years since its release. The project originally was named Phoenix to symbolize a rising from the ashes of the Netscape open-source browser project that began in 1998 but languished for many years as Microsoft's Internet Explorer solidified its lead.
Now Firefox programmers are working on version 3, which brings performance improvements and interface changes, and Mozilla also is working on a mobile version of the browser for handheld devices.
A sister subsidiary of Mozilla, Mozilla Messaging, is working to reproduce the successes of Firefox with the open-source Thunderbird e-mail software.
(Credit:
Eric Meyer / CNET Networks)
Here's an evening treat for your eyes. CSS guru Eric Meyer has put together a spiffy-looking timeline chronicling the lives (and versions) of five popular Web browsers. Internet Explorer makes it on there twice as Meyer has opted to split up the versions between 6 and the (soon to be mandatory) Version 7. the PC and now defunct Mac version, which Microsoft capped in 2003.
The most interesting takeaways from the graph? Opera's gotten the most versioning love for its age, and all of the browsers share a fairly similar updating schedule at various parts of each year.
Meyer notes that he created the graph after getting fed up with Wikipedia's vertical charts. The result is a chart that will likely require you to do the dreaded horizontal scroll--that is unless you've got your hands on one of those NEC wide-screen displays.
Note: viewing the chart in IE6 won't work.
[Found on Digg]
- Viacom sued over Colbert parody on YouTube. A takedown notice for a parody video clip of The Colbert Report was the cause for a lawsuit against Viacom by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The video featured several short clips from the popular late-night TV show, along with user-generated content. Viacom said it doesn't mind the video being shown on the service.
- MySpace photos upgraded. MySpace rolled out an update to its photo service last night, giving users the option to create albums and manage shots en masse with a batch uploading tool. Size limits on uploaded photos have also doubled to 1200KB per photo, up from 600KB. The update was long overdue; competitor Facebook's photo service has had batch uploading and album support for over a year now. (Found on Mashable.)
- Wii browser delayed until April. The full version of Opera's Web browser for the Nintendo Wii was originally scheduled for release this month. Opera issued a press release this morning that said it would be available in April. The current trial version of the browser has fairly limited features that we've complained about before. Opera originally offered Wii users the full version for free until June and for $5 thereafter. That offer is expected to be extended given the release delay.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
Is it possible to have a positive Webware experience on something besides a PC? Cell phones and small handheld Internet devices don't cut it with their tiny screens and awful browsers (at least until the iPhone arrives). So what if you could use that nice bandwidth you get at home and combine it with that large HDTV sitting in your living room? That question has recently been answered with Nintendo and Sony's more recent gaming consoles: the Wii and the PS3, respectively. Microsoft's Xbox 360 doesn't have a browser, likely because of the company's failure with MSN TV several years ago. So which of these two rules the roost, and more importantly, is worth using over your three-year old PC?
The short answer is that the PS3 blows the Wii out of the water, and it offers a decent Web experience for casual browsing. Want more detail? Read on.
Before you do read more, though, note that my test setup was a 37-inch LCD HDTV that I fed with component cabling. Running either system on a standard-definition TV that's less than a 30-incher results in tiny, blurry text. And neither system comes with component cables--you must purchase them separately.
Test 1: Speed
Speed is a combination of application start-up time, page rendering, and text input.
The Wii's bookmark manager
(Credit: CNET Networks)The PS3's browser starts up almost instantly, unlike the Wii's, which takes about 30 seconds to load up from the Wii home menu. Both browsers render pages at about the same speed, although from a user standpoint, I give a nod to the Wii's status bar, which is much more useful than the PS3's water-droplet status icon. Text input on the PS3 is cumbersome, no thanks to clumsy predictive text and a cell phone-like onscreen keypad. The saving grace is that you can use a USB or Bluetooth keyboard. The Wii has an onscreen QWERTY keyboard, which, compared to using a PS3 controller, is incredibly fast.
Winner: PS3. Waiting for a browser to load is so '90s. Nintendo missed the boat by not letting you plug a real keyboard into one of its USB ports.
Test 2: Browsing
Browsing is a combination of multiple window management, pop-up control, file format compatibility, and page navigation.
The PS3 is very nearly a tabbed browser (like Firefox and IE 7), thanks to its window mode where you can view thumbnails of all the open windows at once. The Wii has only a single-window browser, similar to Internet Explorer before version 7. What's worse, on the Wii, a rogue pop-up will take over the window, forcing you to hit the Back button, which takes you back to the page with the pop-up. This creates an endless loop that can make for controller-throwing frustration. Pop-ups on the PS3 browser show up as separate windows, which can easily be closed.
The PS3's 'window mode'
(Credit: Sony Computer Entertainment)But as far as file formats go, the Wii has the edge. My test machine loaded up Flash 7 videos much faster than the PS3 did, but I found both to be choppy, which interfered with my enjoyment of YouTube. The Wii also displays RSS feeds, complete with pictures, whereas the PS3 just doesn't recognize them.
Navigation on the PS3 isn't as easy as it is on the Wii, but it's much more powerful. Its controller has more buttons, which makes doing several things at once much easier. And with the PS3, you can plug in a USB mouse and zip around the page as you would on your PC. However, the Wii's remote has a zoom feature and a laser pointer feel, which makes browsing from the couch easy.
Winner: PS3. It may not understand RSS feeds, but for most users, an actual RSS reader is more useful anyway. Since you can't install one, you can use a Web-based one, such as Google Reader.
Test 3: Advanced options
This category covers bookmarks, passwords, history, and settings management.
The Wii's bookmark manager is very limited. In fact, navigating to your bookmarks requires you to leave whatever page you're on just to bring up the menu. There are some neat icon previews of what each page looks like, but they take up space and force you to scroll down to find all your entries. The PS3 has a bookmarks menu that can be toggled by pressing the select button. This brings up an overlay to the page you're currently on, giving you a simple list of pages you've bookmarked. To bookmark the page you're currently on, you click the "Add page to bookmarks" option while in the bookmarks overlay.
Neither system saves usernames or passwords. This is a pain if you intend to use either browser extensively.
For a comparison chart, click
The PS3 has a history and settings manager that's about on a par with what you'd find on a mobile phone browser. It's not quite up to spec with a desktop-class browsing app, such as Firefox, but there are a ton of options on there. One of the most important ones is a browsing history, which the Wii doesn't even keep track of.
Winner: The PS3 wipes the floor with the Wii in this category. Most importantly, the Wii makes opening up a bookmarked page a lengthy process.
Conclusion: The PS3 wins in all three tests. But the Wii is half the price of a PS3, so if you're matching these two up dollar for dollar, it's an unfair fight. The Wii's Opera-based browser is also a trial version, which means there will definitely be a more full-featured iteration later on. In the meantime, your best bet is to use these consoles for what they were meant for, which is watching Blu-ray movies and swinging your arms around like an idiot. For real browsing, stick to your PC.
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