BlogAllAlong

The following is an interesting article from LifeHacker speed testing all major latest browsers, namely Firefox 3 RC 3(Releasse candidate 3), Opera 9.5, Safari 3.1.1 (win), and IE 7.0.6.  All tests have been carried out on Windows Vista OS. So it’s not Safari’s best place, and it definitely is what IE7 can best hope for, unless they admit Win XP is better ;).

What’s interesting is how Opera was the fastest in startup, followed by Firefox 3 and Safari was the last. A batch of 8 tabs opening at same time put Safari in the lead however, neck to neck with Opera, Firefox 2 seconds slower, and IE7 falling behind.  So Safari is best with concurrent tasking, however not very often you would want to do this in real life. Personally, I do it when opening multiple search results at once, but do you?

In terms of Javascript & CSS (important for AJAX), Safari was the best, Opera 2nd, Firefox 3rd and IE7 as always the last. (I didn’t do those test I swear!).

Memory use, what’s all Firefox fans been calling for. Firefox was #1 overall, IE7 only best at startup, when there is nothing more than MSN page probably.

A point to make however is that, Firefox was tested with their latest and greatest so far, while IE8 is still coming back and the older version was put under the test instead.

My opinion:  I am pretty much loving the Firefox 3 speed so far, no issues at all. It does fall behind Safari and Opera, OK! But doesn’t fall that bad to make me switch. Memory use as the benchmarks show are great, actually the best. The security of Firefox compared to Safari, which lacks anti-phishing is so much higher, and it has the richest plugins library amongs all. Firefox 3 has made it for me, more than Firefox 2 did to it’s successor. In the words of today’s generation I tell you “MAHALO!”

Please visit the original link for graphs and more details regarding the test.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Isn’t it funny? Since Microsoft started their monthly security update back in 2003, only few of the known as Patch Tuesdays did not have Microsoft patches coming. Otherwise, it is scheduled that every second Tuesday of the month there is a security update coming from Microsoft. Last time Microsoft did not have Patch Tuesday was in September 2005 imagine! But does that mean things have been going smooth for the past month? Absolutely not. Microsoft are working on security patches for known vulnerabilities in IE7, Office 2007, Publisher 2007, ohh yeah and Windows Vista OS ofcourse. Lucky me I am not using any of those. The patches are not ready yet for release, so hackers will get more time of joy before they have to find new holes in the next patch. Lucky me I am not using any of those. More from PC WORLD.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Last year, Browzar was released and marketed as the world’s most privacy maintaining browser. The basic idea behind this light weight browser is that it does not keep track of your browsing history, stored files, cookies or anything else. What it claims is that it deletes all it’s user history once you close the browser window. There is no need also for installation, you simply click the file and you are ready to serve the net. The small size of the browser comes from the fact that it’s heavily based on the Internet Explorer engine. Ow, yes that means it uses ActiveX, and along comes every security hole that goes with it. So if you ever heard this browser is more secured, it probably is a false statement. Privacy and security are two different things here. Privacy means disallowing people to see your browsing habits, while security means stopping unauthorized access to your login accounts, or system resources. The company behind Browzar makes its revenue from the ads that are delivered with search results, which some call it very annoying.
I have not given this browser much testing, but I can see now it’s tab based. GHacks wrote about how unsecured this browser is, and how it is promoting fake privacy features. The writer points to the slashdot post highlighting a possible issue when logging to Gmail from IE and Browzar consecutively. Looking at the scenario however, and trying it my self, I do not see any problems with that case at all. Every time you close your Browzar window, it clears all your session caches, history files, cookies and all. There have been reports however that the browser is being treated as malware by malware removal softwares. The reason behind this is that Browzar does redirection on web searches to online advertisements. The browser anyhow could be helpful if you want to go to a public place and use the net. Just take the small browser with you there, run it (no installation needed remember) and you are done. I wouldn’t recommend it for personal continuous use however for several reasons:

1. It is still based on IE, so it’s not secured and probably has all the same bugs in it.
2. It is not widely adapted, so you are likely to face problems with many sites
3. Using your home PC, I think you would be more convenient with the cookies enabled. After all, it is a technology for the good of the web.
4. If you can, you would probably prefer to get rid of unnecessary ads.
5. You cannot do any custom settings like Proxy, custom homepage and similar stuff.

Their theme is very nice however, iPod taste so obvious in it.

Popularity: 18% [?]

Slashdot posted a link to a washingtonpost article compiling the number of days IE6 had open exploit code with no fixes from Microsoft. The result is more than 9 months (284 days) of the year, the IE6 browser had known unpatched security flaws. There was also another 98 days without fixes to IE flaws that criminals were using to gain personal and financial data.

Could a customer sue Microsoft over his losses because of the lack of support for the browser? While Microsoft enforces Internet Explorer as the default browser in all it’s operating systems, this causes the majority of people to go with the crowd and use what’s already there. And with the results given from the article, I think Microsoft should be held legally accountable for the loss of millions of user data, and in the future, they have a choice of either removing IE from their system, or showing one of those scary warning signs they have to the user saying “We do not guarantee the confidentiality of the information you send and receive over the internet if you use our Internet Explorer” Just like what they did when they lost the lawsuit against Sun for licensing their own modified JRE.

Popularity: 11% [?]

When Microsoft provided the IE7 browser developer APIs, they didn’t think Google would actually use it against them. Google have officially released an IE7 version optimized for Google, with Google as the default page, Google Toolbar included, and Google as the default search engine. Interested people can download it from here.

While it might sound like a bad move against Microsoft Live.com, it may be a good one however for IE7 that now Google are promoting it. It all depends on which half of the glass you are talking about.

Popularity: 8% [?]