CSSquirrel A look at web development and web design by Kyle Weems

I don’t believe that Google Chrome is going to kill Firefox as today’s comic implies (with a Portal-inspired twist), but I do believe that if there’s a non-Microsoft browser that stands a chance of overtaking Firefox’s #2 position in the browser usage market, I see Chrome as the most likely candidate.

The reasons seem pretty straightforward to me, but I’ll enumerate them for those that think I’m off my rocker:

1. Safari is too Apple-centric to ever catch Firefox, with the possible exception of a far future where Mac OS is in the market position Windows is. Of course, it won’t ever be, because Mac OS is tied exclusively to Apple hardware, and I don’t foresee Apple computers reaching the price point where they’ll take such a commanding lead in sales. Then, if Apple reached that point, they’d probably be sued for monolopy-related software bundling just like the challenges IE/Window is always receiving.

2. Opera is too preachy to ever escape its small market share. They don’t want to build the software that people want. They’d rather build the software that they think is best and then try to evangelize to the masses until they convert to Opera’s way of thinking. One example of what I mean here: addons. It’s more than clear at this point that end-users want to customize their browser with any doodad they can dream up. Opera’s adamantly against that. It’s a shame, because they have a GREAT browser.

3. Google’s a verb of the 21st century. It’s gone past being a product, or a web app, or a service. It’s something you do to find something on the Internet. And with their main portal and their other big sites like YouTube quietly recommending Chrome, it’s going to get exposure to hundreds of millions of “average” web surfers who’ve never even heard of Opera or Firefox.

4. So far, Google appears to be positioned to making Chrome into the kind of browser people want. It’s fast and streamlined, but at the same time they plan to make it capable of supporting addons and other features that will let people make of it what they will. Give someone a car, and they’ll drive it. Give someone a fast car and a garage to tinker in, and they’ll obsess over it their entire life.

Take into account all that and the fact that many major hardware vendors are talking about making Chrome the default installed browser on machines they ship, and you’ve got a good reason to claim that Chrome could rapidly rise in the ranks.

To me, the question isn’t whether Chrome will overtake Safari and Opera. It will (and as it finally gets Apple and Linux versions that should accelerate adoption). The question will be whether Firefox’s head start, existing community of users and addon-makers, and equal devotion to constantly improving standard compliance and JavaScript speed increases will be enough to keep the lead.

Frankly, whichever keeps ahead in standards support, speed, and expandibility (addons, etc) will be the one that I make my browser of choice. Regardless of which wins, I hope they collectively continue to chip away at the undeserved lead of clunky, slow Internet Explorer.

I doubt anyone needs me to tell them this, but Firefox 3 is launched. Go get it. Well, get it if you can manage to load Mozilla’s page. Talk about a heavy server load.

When it comes to browsers, Firefox is my primary choice. It’s combination of strong standards support and large addons library makes it not only desirable, but indispensable in how I browse and work on the Net. I know I can do web development without Firebug, but I certainly don’t know why I’d want to.

Although I’ve been running the beta (then later the release candidates) for some time now, I’m excited for the upcoming official release of Firefox 3 tomorrow. Although I hadn’t planned out a release party like Mozilla has encouraged as part of their Download Day 2008 event, I’ll definitely be upgrading to the release version to help with their “most downloads in one day” goal.

In related news, while I’ve made it clear how much I dislike their tendancy to swing at IE without checking if their own zipper is up, I am also glad to see Opera 9.5 has been officially released, bringing with it a slick upgraded interface, more speed, and overall better standards support (but still no CSS3 rgba color support yet.) Between those two and Safari, a lot more CSS3 and other standards-related features are becoming available in 2008.

Now if only Microsoft would get off it’s lazy rear and announce a general target for when they plan to release IE8. Preferably this year…

When I first started thinking up the idea for this week’s comic, I thought it was an absurd intrusion of the adoration video games receive into an the stately field of browser software. After all, despite the fact that web browsers are probably some of the most ubiquitous bits of software floating around on people’s computers, your average Joe doesn’t go bananas for a new release, do they?

Apparently, as I learned from this little tidbit at the Web Standards Project, the idea isn’t as far fetched as I thought. It turns out that Mozilla is looking to get Firefox 3 to be the most downloaded piece of software in a single day, with an event they call Download Day 2008, and among other things they’re building excitement for it by encouraging people to have launch parties.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m super excited for Firefox 3. I’ve been using the beta (now the release candidate) for weeks now, and I can’t help but feel that it’s an upgrade in every way, shape, and form. It’s faster, it’s sleeker, has sweet add-ons, and among many other things it now supports inline-block (the most neglected of CSS display types). Of course, it doesn’t have multiple-backgrounds yet, and is only supporting border-radius with a proprietary version… but I’m not expecting it to be perfect out of the gate (this doesn’t mean you have carte blanche to drag your feet on that, Mozilla.)

However, I never thought that browser software actually needed a launch party (well, outside of the company that slaved and toiled to make it.) But now that the topic has arisen, why not? As web professionals, we rely on constantly improving, standards compliant browsers to render our websites and run our web apps properly. Approaching 20% of the user browser share, Firefox is the forerunner in providing us with just that. It’s not only acceptable to encourage and celebrate it’s success, it makes great sense.

Of course, as near as I can tell from my short time in the field as a paid ‘professional’, developers don’t need a lot of excuses for a party.

Anyone going to be celebrating in Bellingham?

It’s been three days so far with the Firefox 3 beta on my home computer, and I’m loving it. I’ve manged to find FF3-capable versions of the add-ons I use the most, including Firebug, FireFTP, and del.icio.us, which was the major hurdle in my experimenting with earlier betas.

It is tremendously faster. I can’t get over how quickly it loads by comparison to version 2. Also, the interface is looking pretty slick. There’s bound to be a number of feature upgrades and functionality that I haven’t even noticed yet, but everything just feels like it’s working more smoothly.

Good work, Mozilla.