Browser Shares Stable

After a month of availability of Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4, it appears that the browser market remains stable.

Internet Explorer is down slightly, dropping 0.81 points to 55.11 percent. Firefox experienced a small drop of 0.17 points, to 21.63 percent. Chrome was up 0.37 points to 11.94 percent, and Safari was up 0.54 points to 7.15 percent.

The implication is that people adopting the latest versions are upgraders, and that little major change has occurred.

Web Browser Preferred Over Content Apps On The iPad

"I've tried a few content apps on the iPad, including the much discussed Wired app. But I don't like reading content via apps on the iPad and I gravitate to the Safari browser," says Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures partner.

Among the reasons: the apps treat pages as monolithic objects so users cannot cut and paste text, follow links to other content apps, keep multiple pages open, use a common interface, or connect with social media.

Content apps do not allow use of search functions and cannot be aggreated using apps such as techmeme.

I Prefer The Web Browser Over Content Apps On The iPad:

Will Firefox Mobile Displace App Stores?

Right now mobile apps are hard to develop if what one wants is access to the widest range of browser-equipped smartphones and application stores. Basically, each application has to be re-coded for each mobile operating system.

Mozilla.org thinks it has a better solution: write apps directly for the Firefox mobile browser, using HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, and be done with it.

Firefox Mobile (known informally as "Fennec") will launch for Nokia's N900 handset "soon," with versions for Windows Mobile and Android planned for 2010. In developing its new mobile browser, Mozilla.org is trying to replicate and preserve as much of the current user experience as possible, a sore point with some users.

Firefox for mmobile phones will include "The Awesome Bar" that searches a user's history, bookmarks and tags, allowing users to go to their favorite sites instantly by auto-completing entries.

Firefox preferences, history, and bookmarks can be shared between a desktop and mobile, providing a convenient way to sync important elements of the Web experience. The mobile browser will be continually synchronised with the PC.

If a user starts typing a specific address, and the user has visited that site before, the site will pop up, Mozilla.org says.

Tabs will allow users to browse multiple sites at once and one-touch bookmarking will allow users to quickly organize and add new sites. If a user is working on a PC with multiple tabs open, and then wants to resume on a mobile, the tabs will be available on Firefox Mobile when the user opens it up.

Also, users will be able to "add on" new widgets for the browser itself, something difficult-to-impossible to do at the moment.

For developers, the ability to create apps directly for the Firefox browser will simplify the development process, if not the business model. Developers who simply want people to use an applicatons will find the browser model quite attractive.

Developers who want to create a "for fee" business model might have to stick with the application stores, though, as the billing process will be an issue.

Writing for Firefox should make easier the task of integrating geolocation, camera and calling features of the phone.

Firefox Mobile will offer the fastest Javascript engine of any mobile browser, Mozilla.org says.

"Anyone who knows JavaScript and HTML can develop a great app without having to learn a specific mobile platform," says Jay Sullivan, Mozilla.org VP.

Opera Mini: More Evidence of Rapid Mobile Web Use

In March 2009, Opera Mini had over 23 million users, a 12.1 percent increase from February 2009 and more than 157 percent compared to March 2008.

Opera Mini users viewed over 8.6 billion pages in March 2009. Since February 2009, page views have gone up 17.4 percent. Since March 2008, page views have increased 255 percent.

In March 2009, Opera Mini users generated more than 148 million MBytes of data worldwide. Since February, the data consumed went up by 19.3 percent.

Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90 percent. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed up to 1.4 PBytes of data in March. Since March 2008, data traffic is up 319 percent.

http://www.opera.com/media/smw/2009/pdf/smw032009.pdf

Safari for PCs

As part of a recent update of my Apple iTunes software for my Windows-driven PC, I discovered that the Safari browser also was available. I suppose I didn't realize Apple was working on PC versions of Safari. I haven't had time to play with it yet.

Android Web Browser Renders Well

The Android Web browser seems to render Web pages nicely, based on these screenshots from Google Operating System.