Chrome Wins Tom’s Hardware Browser Test
March 6, 2010
Not too many years ago, threads on online forums would often have titles like "New Ferrari Pics (56K users, make coffee)" as a way of warning people with slow connections that they'd be stuck for a while. Now, Tom's Hardware has established which modern Web browsers will slow folks down - and which won't.
Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari were pitted against each other in a test focused purely on speed and performance. Startup times, memory usage, page load times, JavaScript tests, and a number of other factors were weighed.
Here's the upshot (if you somehow missed this article's title): Chrome won. It did best in several categories and placed second in a number of others, defeating many of its rivals by a clear margin.
This led Adam Overa to write, "Any way you want to analyze the data, Google's Chrome comes out on top. That's why we're not only calling Chrome the winner of our Web Browser Grand Prix, but we're also awarding it the Best of Tom's Hardware Award - the first time we've given such an honor to a software product. If you haven't yet downloaded Google Chrome, you just don't know what you're missing."
Opera, Safari, Firefox, and Internet Explorer ranked second, third, fourth, and fifth, respectively, in the browser speed test.
Microsoft Presents European Web Browser Choice Screen
February 21, 2010
Starting sometime around the first of March, Microsoft is going to give Europeans an obvious chance to pick something other than Internet Explorer as their Web browser. And starting today, Microsoft's given the whole world a chance to see what its "Web browser choice screen" looks like.
This ballot screen has been in the works for a long time. The process began when European regulators objected to Windows and Internet Explorer being bundled together. Then, a proposal that would have put all of the different browser choices in alphabetical order was vetoed.
Eventually, all of the parties agreed upon displaying the browser's names in a random order.
Now tests are set to begin next week in Belgium, France, and the U.K., with a full-scale rollout planned for early March. The browser choice screen software will reach people via Windows Update, and should (except for the order of the browsers) resemble the picture below.
Microsoft seemed rather pleased to announce that all of this is taking place ahead of the European Commission's schedule. We're just very curious to see what Internet Explorer's market share will look like come April.
Microsoft Presents European Web Browser Choice Screen
February 19, 2010
Starting sometime around the first of March, Microsoft is going to give Europeans an obvious chance to pick something other than Internet Explorer as their Web browser. And starting today, Microsoft's given the whole world a chance to see what its "Web browser choice screen" looks like.
This ballot screen has been in the works for a long time. The process began when European regulators objected to Windows and Internet Explorer being bundled together. Then, a proposal that would have put all of the different browser choices in alphabetical order was vetoed.
Eventually, all of the parties agreed upon displaying the browser's names in a random order.
Now tests are set to begin next week in Belgium, France, and the U.K., with a full-scale rollout planned for early March. The browser choice screen software will reach people via Windows Update, and should (except for the order of the browsers) resemble the picture below.
Microsoft seemed rather pleased to announce that all of this is taking place ahead of the European Commission's schedule. We're just very curious to see what Internet Explorer's market share will look like come April.
Firefox 3.5 Currently Most Popular Browser in the World
December 21, 2009
According to data from StatCounter, Mozilla's web browser Firefox 3.5 is now the world's most popular browser. It has just surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7, which has beend steadily declining.
For December 20, StatCounter has IE 7 at 21.2% market share, and Firefox 3.5 at 21.93%. Microsoft's IE 8 is closing in though. Its share has been steadily increasing, presumably making up for most of the lost IE 7 share, and has approached 20.33%.
The top browsers are as follows:
1. Firefox 3.5
2. IE 7
3. IE 8
4. IE 6
5. Firefox 3.0
6. Other
7. Safari 4.0
8. Firefox 2.0
9. Opera 9.6
Last month Mozilla celebrated the fifth birthday of the Firefox browser. They said that in the first four days of launch, over a million people downloaded Firefox 1.0. Firefox is available in over 70 languages and offers over 7,000 add-ons.
Firefox 3.5 also had over a million downloads in its first day of launch, and Mozilla surpassed a billion downloads in late July. Firefox has come a long way in five years and has really given Microsoft a run for its money in the web browser space.
Have You Read This?
> Mozilla Celebrates The Fifth Birthday Of Firefox
> 8 Firefox Add-Ons to Boost Productivity
> Firefox Nears 1 Billion Downloads
