Digitivity » browser

Google Chrome Browser Third Place Behind Internet Explorer and Firefox

Digitivity — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:05:37 +0000

A new survey is showing that Google’s Chrome browser is moving to third place in the browser standings.

Granted, the percentage for Chrome is nowhere near Internet Explorer, but I still think this is important.

The most important lesson is: You should code your websites to HTML standards as opposed to targeting a single browser’s quirks (like IE 6.0).

It’s a mistake to dismiss Google Chrome because it doesn’t have a lot of market share at the moment. Firefox likewise didn’t have a lot of market share, but it’s at about 25% right now. Who in their right mind would turn away 1 out of 4 of their customers?

But I think Google can increase its market share much more rapidly. For one thing, they can promote Chrome on their websites, like they’re doing on Youtube now. The number one video site on the Internet telling people to download Chrome gives it instant credibility.

In addition, Google can promote Chrome outside the digital sphere, as they are doing on the busses of certain cities currently. If Google can make google a household word, Chrome’s not too far behind.

Resources

Download Google Chrome here.
Slashdot discussion
Browser survey
ComputerWorld article

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Firefox 3.1 Beta Has New, Faster TraceMonkey Javascript Engine

Digitivity — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:49:35 +0000

InfoPackets reports that the Firefox 3.1 beta is getting faster at JavaScript and CSS rendering. It’s going to need it for upcoming competition from Google Chrome and Microsoft IE.

But the original article’s test numbers aren’t quite promising. While Firefox 3.1 may be faster than previous Firefox versions, it’s still slower than the current Safari beta.

HowToCreate.co.uk CSS rendering benchmark: Firefox 3.1 beta loads in 456 ms and renders in 38 ms. Safari 4 beta loads in an amazing 54 ms and renders in 7 ms.
Sean Patrick Kane’s JavaScript test: 344 ms for Firefox and 174 for Safari.
Acid3 standards compliance test: 93 for Firefox and 100 for Safari.

Sorry to say, but this is really pathetic performance. Here’s hoping the Firefox devs can bring their game up by release time.

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How to Play a Quicktime Movie That Isn’t Playing in Your Browser

Digitivity — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:08:25 +0000

Even though Flash FLV movies have become something of an Internet standard, some sites persist in presenting movies in Quicktime format. Here’s how to view them if you have trouble playing them in your browser.

Reasons Quicktime movies might not play in your browser might include:

You don’t have the latest Quicktime plugin installed.
You don’t care to launch the Quicktime plugin.

I usually skip embedded Quicktime movies just because the plugin is so heavy. It takes a while to start up, and it takes up additional memory after it’s done. This is unlike the Flash plugin, which is always loaded since it’s needed for so many websites.

So what I do is just do a “View Source” on the page (View: Page Source in Firefox). Then I search for the Quicktime movie URL. You can do this by searching for the text string “.mov”. An example would be:

Just get the URL:

http://www.colorguides.net/movies/pantone_solid_colors_movie.mov

Take it and paste it into VLC at the File: Open dialog.
Of course, this means that you need to have VLC installed, but you should already have it installed.

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