Where Internet Explorer uses Trident, Firefox uses Gecko, and Chrome & Safari using Webkit, this one uses all three. Of course not at the same time, but you can switch between engines on-the-fly. Claiming 3 times faster start-up time using the fastest javascript rendering engine in the world (as claimed on their site), this new piece of software is looking promising.

I think this might be a very good start-up and sure looks like such a project could have a bright future. Why installing and using three different programs, hogging your resources, while you can use one and have it all! Maybe this won’t become the mainstream browser for the big mass, but in the technical environment, things could really leap forward. For (web)-developers, this is surely a gift from heaven.

The competing browsers are Firefox 3, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer 7. Tests performed include the new V8 javascript test, browser extensions testing, the Acid 3 test, a Flash test, a Javascript test and a general speed test.

Firstly, they performed the V8-test. This is quite a new test for the rendering of javascript. When the V8 code is included in your browser, this test is blazing fast. Currently only Google Chrome & the new Firefox alpha (MineField) include this code. Since Minefield is not officially out yet, it speaks for itself that Chrome is the winner here.

Next up is the browser extension test. This is for testing XML capabilities. Here IE7 did not come out good at all, since this is not supported in it. The winner here is Firefox, but the differences between the other 2 browsers is minimal.

Third test, Acid 3. This tests the default settings of the browser, plays an animation and compares the result to a reference. To pass this test, the browser must have a final score of 100. None of the tested software passed, but the best one was Opera with a score of 85.

Fourth up is a flash test. Of course when you install flash it’s used by all browsers, but not all render the same flash animation/video at the same speed. This test is best performed by Firefox.

Next test is for javascript. The tester used the SlickSpeed test, which is normally used by developers to test for compatibility. Here, IE7 failed miserably since the test took a ridiculous amount of time to load. Safari didn’t complete it, and the rest went OK. The winner here is Google Chrome.

Last but not least is the Webspeed test. Testing some content-rich websites, the tester checked which browser was able to load them te fastest. Differences between all browsers are not that large, but again here Chrome wins.

The final score is 1st place for Google Chrome. Firefox finishes as second and Opera as third. Safari & IE7 both didn’t perform that well. This shows again that free is (at least in this case), better. Granted, you could consider all of the tested browsers ‘free’, but the differnce is that the three ‘winners’ aren’t usually shipped with an OS. Again Firefox here is a bit of an exception on this rule since it’s becoming more & more the default in a lot of Linux distributions.

All in all, I think both Chrome & Firefox are the best browsers currently available. Chrome might be the winner today, but Minefield is looking promising as well, and might just kick Chrome of that number one place soon.

This new database is to provide screenshots (duh!) of all the applications in their packages repository. Before installing you will now be able to see how an application will look before you actually install it. Even more impressive (to me at least), is that they allow anyone to upload screens, which of course provides a lot better view of a possible application-look.

Personally, I’m super-enthusiastic about this. I can’t seem to stop browsing all the screens, and while I’m currently running Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex at home myself, this makes me want to migrate to pure Debian (and I think I will since Intrepid has been kind of troublesome lately ).

As usual, Debian has done a stellar job on this one, and this is definetely worth checking out!

This version is currently only available for Linux users, and can be obtained here. This decission was made because 64-bit Linux distributions don’t ship with a 32-bit browser by default. Neither do they usually offer an extended 32-bit emulation layer. The need for a native 64-bit flash player thus is the greatest for this platform.

Windows and Mac users should not worry, a version for their platform is in the make as well, and will be released soon. In the end, the final versions will all be released on the same time anyway.

I think this is a very, very good development. The community has been screaming for this to come out for years now. Many of us already had given up hope. Yes it is true that with using a custom wrapper, emulating or other means you could solve a lot of flash problems, but working native is always better!

While this release is far from finished, it’s already gaining popularity on the web. One of the most amazing things about it is its speed. With what is reported to be fastest javascript-engine of the world, it’s even leaving Google’s Chrome browser behind by 10%.

Of course there are a few drawbacks. Not all your plugins will be supported, but a lot of them already seem to work. Since this is an alpha release, it’s bound to have some bugs, although no huge problems have been reported so far. A plus to counter these is that installing this version does not affect your current Firefox installation, so you can happily run both next to each other.

All in all, for this stage in the development, I’m very impressed. In fact, I’m considering replacing my usual Firefox 3.0 with this one for my day-to-day use. If you’re tired of slow browsing, give this newest Mozilla-child a chance!

The most significant improvement here is that with this new version, there is now support for effects and filters that are custom created by the designer. Also, for playing 3D elements and effects, the software can now directly make use of the computing power of your graphic-card. Further on, the layout possibilities for text and the audio-processing by the program have been improved.

To me, the most stunning fact however is that this release is so close to the new Silverlight by Microsoft. I don’t think it’s a coincidence these direct competitors both come up with their new version so close to each other.

Where Silverlight yesterday seemed hot news, and probably still is, it’s still in it’s infant shoes (although MS would like us to believe otherwise). The bad, or lack of, support in the cross-platform section, is definitely something to watch out for. Granted, Flash isn’t that wonderful on, for example, Linux either, but at least there is some support, and hopefully this will improve even more with version 10.

In my opinion Adobe has made a very smart move here, as it will probably result in slower adaptation of it’s competitor. For the moment, Flash player seems to stay the software of choice for multimedia content on the Web. Will it stay like this? Only time will tell…

This new version, which is supposed to be an even more fierceful competitor for Adobe’s popular Flash player, looks very promising. Among one of the most eye-catching improvements is the promise that this new version will be shipped with cross-platform and cross-browser support.

Supported platforms are Microsoft Windows (duh ), Mac OS X, but surprisingly, also Linux. For the browser world, you can use Internet Explorer (another big duh of course), but also Firefox and Safari.

I’m glad too see Microsoft has gotten the message from the community and is releasing this functionality also for Mac & Linux users. With version 1 so closely tied to their own Windows platform, they have had a lot of criticism to endure. Of course Mono (2) promised to partly cover these platforms, but it’s nice to see that our Redmond friends took a closer look at some other popular operating systems.

On the browser side, I’m a bit disappointed to not see any Opera support. Probably in the next few weeks we’ll see some workarounds and community patches surfacing for this, but nevertheless, I’m surprised it’s not natively supported. However I’m sure this is only a matter of time.

Whether this newest Silverlight release will be nibbling at the market share of Flash is still to be seen. So far, I haven’t really seen much use of it myself, apart from during the Beijing Olympics, where Microsoft had cleverly set up some partnerships in an attempt to boost their software use. The main drawback at the time was of course the lack of support for other browsers and platforms. Now that this has been solved (however yet to be proven), Silverlight can finally really take off. Probably more partnerships with big content providers are coming, but now at least it has a good chance of breaking through to the mainstream.

I’m sure that we’ll hear and mostly see more about this the coming weeks/months. For the time being, I’m going to take a look how Silverlight performs on my Ubuntu/Firefox setup . To be continued …

Update 15/10: Tried to download it yesterday for Linux, but currently the runtime for this platform is not yet available… Only Windows & Mac are to be found.

Welcome to my new blog! I’m going to try to write about my life in IT here… This will be about all kinds of topics, but most, if not all, IT related.

Some of the topics I will be covering:

• Operating systems
• Hardware
• Software
• General IT news
• …

Come back soon to see more!