TechNama

I have been a fan of Firefox and i got a slight shock today when i came across the fact that Google Chrome is the fastest browser while my favorite Firefox 3.5 grabbed the second position. Even though the Firefox team claimed to come out with the fastest browser when they were releasing the Firefox 3.5 but it seems they missed on few things that Google implemented successfully in Google Chrome.

According to detail tests carried out by PC World, the average page opening time for Google Chrome tested against ten websites is 1.699 while the average page opening time for Firefox is 1.762, a close second.  The other competitors including Internet Explorer 8 and Safari 4 gave an average page opening time of 1.833 seconds and 1.964 seconds respectively. The worst thing is that Opera 10 beta took the last position in the ranking.

Anyways, i am still going to stick with the Firefox since the difference between Google Chrome and Firefox 3.5 was not big enough to convince me to change my web browser.

For those tech enthusiasts who want to know as to how this tests were performed, below is the brief methodology as shared by PC World:

In our browser speed comparison, we pitted Internet Explorer 8 against Firefox 3.5, Chrome 2, Safari 4, and the public beta of Opera 10. We used pages from a set of eight popular Web sites in our testing: PC World (of course), Amazon, Twitter, Yahoo, YouTube, The New York Times, eBay, and Wikipedia’s English-language home page. To ensure that we measured the page-loading times as accurately as possible, we recorded our testing on video for review later on.

We performed all of our testing on a Gateway P-7808U notebook running a clean installation of Windows Vista Service Pack 1; we reinstalled the operating system before testing each browser. For each browser, we cleared the browser’s cache and then loaded each page in our test suite. We repeated the process ten times per site per browser to ensure accurate results, to factor out fluctuations in network traffic, and to build a sufficiently large sample size to identify trends. In addition, we threw out the two best and the two worst scores for each page load test to further reduce the influence of fluctuations and to produce more consistent results.

Some browsers will report that a page has finished loading even though parts of the page haven’t yet appeared. We didn’t base our determination of when a page was loaded on the browser’s opinion. Instead, we relied on whether all visual elements of the page were loaded and ready to use. For example, on Yahoo’s home page, we judged the page to be ready when all of its graphics and images were loaded.

Lately Web Browsers are becoming the most important software’s in our computers since all the applications are shifting from our hard disks to the web. The concept of cloud computing is further increasing the importance of web based processing and less reliance on our local data. Even MS Office has decided to go online and offer its services on the web.

In such a world where things are shifting to web, the usage of browsers is bound to increase. Therefore we also need a powerful software to enable us to take a backup and restore our browser in case it crashes. Backup and Restore process of web browsers has been made easy by the FavBackup. FavBackup is a simple solution for you to backup and restore web browser settings and other data on Windows 7/Vista/XP/2000 systems. FavBackup is fully portable and hence does not require installation.

FavBackup current version supports the following browsers:

* Internet Explorer 8
* Internet Explorer 7
* Internet Explorer 6

* Firefox 3.5
* Firefox 3
* Firefox 2

* Opera 9

* Safari 4
* Safari 3

* Google Chrome 3
* Google Chrome 2
* Google Chrome 1

I was specifically looking for Opera 10 but i think its current version does not support it. The future version are expected to add it as well.

The FavBackup is simple to operate as it displays a list of options and browsers upon startup. We are displaying four Screen shots which explain the whole backup process and let our users see the different options that the FavBackup offers. I must add here that it gives a lot of flexibility to the users and they can choose between complete backup of their multiple browsers and then restore them fully or in a limited manner. They can choose to restore only cookies and bookmarks in Google Chrome and Plugins in the Firefox 3.5.  Carefully look at the screen shots below as they are shown in the order of actual steps in which our user will run it.

FavBackup can be downloaded by clicking here. If you like the post, don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS.

We have brought you Top awesome Linux wallpapers, windows 7 wallpapers,  wacky linux fart wallpaper , Google chrome wallpapers… and all of them got tremendous response .

So we thought we would add to that list. Now Mozilla’s firefox is expanding its market share, and all new services and themes, we thought it would be nice to provide some of the top wallpapers for Mozilla’s Firefox for our audience.  So sit back and choose a good wallpaper for your desk top.

Do leave feedback and we will try to improve on it…

I am a fan of Firefox and hence i rarely try other browsers. However, i have all three famous browsers installed on my laptop i.e FireFox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. My default browser is of course Mozilla Firefox. However, there are some Technology Geeks out there who need to switch between different browsers all the time as per their needs. For all such people, life has been made easy by BrowserTraySwitch, a free software that allows you to switch between different browsers with just a single click.

According to the developer of the software,

BrowserTraySwitch is a super tiny little system tray utility (only 90k) to help you quickly change your default browser. Just right-click to change your default browser – after that all launched files and urls will open in the selected browser. Want to just launch a specific browser once? Use the left click. The icon of the tool shows the currently selected default browser. Double-click to launch the current default browser.

Download BrowserTraySwitch and enjoy.

[via Mouser Software]

Internet Explorer’s main rival Firefox and other browsers have slammed Microsoft Corp for giving undue advantage to Internet explorer. Microsoft Corp’s new version Windows 7 is stirring fresh complaints of anti competitive behavior from rivals who say the new version of the operating system gives unfair advantage to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, the Financial Times reported.

“Our initial review suggests this is a blatant use of the Windows operating system to change the market dynamics of browser usage,” Mitchell Baker, chairperson of Mozilla, developer of open-source Firefox browser, told the paper.

No-one at Microsoft could immediately be reached for comment. Opera, the Norwegian browser company, echoed Mozilla’s complaints about Windows 7, the paper said.

Microsoft had earlier said users will be able to turn off key programs like Internet Explorer, making it easier to use other browsers. Microsoft is scheduled to respond to European Union antitrust regulators in a hearing next month on charges it sought to thwart rivals by tying the company’s Web browser to its Windows operating system.

Update: We have noticed that many users come to this page while looking for issues relating to Mozilla Firefox on Windows 7. In case you are one such visitor, we will recommend you to visit this forum as there are a lot of discussion going on there that will surely help you.

Source: Reuters

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 beta 4 version and Firefox mobile web browser aka Fennec will feature Geolocations, thanks to Google. Geo Locations is an opt in addon for the Firefox users that will ask their permission to give them results based on their current location. To figure our your current location the addon will rely on any technique i.e GPS, WiFi or cell tower triangulation or manual address entry. Once the location of the user has been identified, the tool will give the next browsing or searching results accordingly. For example, if you are searching for a “car” price, the Firefox Geolocation addon will get you results in the form of the nearest garages and show rooms based on your current location. This new app will surely increase the overall smartness of the web as well as increase the productivity of the clients. You will no more be getting car prices of UK if you are actually based in America.

Doug Turner from Mozilla has actually worked on the development of this new app and according to his blog,

This idea isn’t new. We have been researching meshing geolocation data and the web for a few years. Last year, Mozilla Labs released an experimental addon, Geode, which implemented the draft W3C Geolocation Specification. We added support for the spec to Firefox 3.5 and “Fennec” (our mobile browser which is in development) as well as a user interface that put the user in control of which websites could use location. However, we left it to add-ons to implement the code that would actually figure out your location, using any technique of their choosing. So, with Firefox 3.1, 3.5 or Fennec, plus a third-party add-on, users would be able to use location-enabled websites.

However, we were still left with a chicken-or-egg problem: unless lots and lots of users installed an add-on, websites wouldn’t have a significant audience for which to develop location-enabled services; and without lots of useful web content using the feature, users had no reason to install an add-on.

The Mozilla Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 version is expected to be made available soon while the mobile browser Fennec beta version will be launched in the Summer while the alpha version is expected anytime. Do you think Location Based Services has a real future unless the websites are optimized to provide the same services? Give us your comments as we really look forward to them.

To Download Alpha version of Fennec for testing , click here

Via Google Code Updates, Dough T Blog,