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 Windows users in Europe who have Internet Explorer as their default browser are now being offered a variety of choices.

Windows users in Europe will now see a browser "Choice Screen," designed to give them an effective and unbiased choice between their default and competing web browsers.

The European Commission said it welcomes Microsoft’s roll-out of web browser choice. The Commission says the move will ensure competition and allow consumers to benefit from technical developments and innovation both on the web browser market and other related markets, such as web-based applications.

"Web browsers are the gateway to the internet. Giving consumers the possibility to switch or try a browser other than that included in Windows will bring more competition and innovation in this important area to the benefit of European internet users," said Joaquin Almunia, Competition Commissioner.

"More competition between web browsers should also boost the use of open web standards which is critical for the further development of an open internet."

Starting today users will be able to choose between eleven additional browsers, including Apple Safari, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera which will be prominently displayed alongside Internet Exloper. If usrs scroll sideways they will be able to see Avant Browser, Flock, Green Browser, K-Meleon, Maxthon, Sleipnir and Slim Browser.

The European Commission says the browser "Choice Screen" will be displayed on over 100 million PCs between now and mid-May.

Most major browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera, didn’t fare well in February, losing market share.  Net Applications found that Chrome managed to attract more than a few new users, however, increasing its market share by 0.39 percent on a month-over-month basis.

The fact that Chrome beat all of its competitors (at least at least with respect to short-term changes) is quite impressive.  The small surge in popularity it experienced wouldn’t exactly qualify as embarrassing under other circumstances, either, even if 0.39 percent isn’t an overwhelming amount.

This may be only the start of a trend, too, since Microsoft is due to introduce its browser ballot box in Europe soon.  Given an obvious choice, lots more people may decide to try Chrome instead of one of the more established options.

Anyway, Net Applications indicated that all of this left Chrome with a market share of 5.61 percent.  Internet Explorer, meanwhile, wound up lording over 61.58 percent of the market after suffering a month-over-month loss of 0.54 percent.  Firefox lost 0.20 percent, Safari lost 0.08 percent, and Opera lost 0.03 percent, as well, if you’re curious.

We’ll be sure to see if Chrome can maintain this momentum in March.

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.

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.

A new way for Android users to get around the Web should debut this year.  Jay Sullivan, Vice President of Mobile at Mozilla, has indicated that Firefox Mobile for Android will land sometime in 2010.

The nonexistence of this product might have troubled some fans of Mozilla and Google.  It’s no secret that the two companies have been growing apart as Chrome came out and Mozilla’s director of community development endorsed Bing over Google.  Also, the search deal between them is set to expire in 2011.

Sullivan, who’s worked at Mozilla for about two and a half years, told Gareth Beavers that the main obstacle to developing Firefox Mobile for Android was the rift between C and C++ code and Java, however.

Indeed, he sounded quite upbeat about Android and about what Mozilla has in the works.  "It’s a modern OS, and it’s a great fit with us," Sullivan said.  "It’s the type of platform that has a high affinity with the early adopter, and it’s seen a lot of uptake."

So we can expect to see Firefox Mobile for Android "late this year."

Here are a couple odd facts for you: compared to people everywhere else, folks in North America dislike Chrome.  And individuals who live in Mexico, the U.S., and Canada are unusually big fans of Internet Explorer.  That’s what new Quantcast data implies, anyway.

Quantcast, which measures and profiles audiences all over the world for advertisers, recently released some statistics concerning browsers’ market shares.  The stats addressed usage in seven different geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Oceania, and South America.

It turns out that Chrome is least successful in North America.  Firefox has also failed to catch on here the way it has everywhere else, and somehow, North America remains Internet Explorer’s best stronghold.

Now for the flip side of things.  According to Quantcast, Chrome actually does best in South America.  Also, Europe is where Firefox has won the largest market share, and where Internet Explorer has cornered the smallest.

Confused?  Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote, "At the very least it means that we North Americans should remember where we stand in terms of online sophistication by our mainstream population, relative to some other places in the world."

Opera is set to unveil its Opera Mini browser at a press event during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We contacted Opera to get some details.

When asked what Opera Mini will be able to offer iPhone users that they haven’t been able to get elsewhere, Opera’s Katrin Jackson tells WebProNews that Opera Mini will provide speed, cost-savings, and usability features like tabs, speed dial, and password manager.

"Opera Mini on iPhone is several times faster than the native Safari browser," Jackson says. "Our internal tests conclude up to 6 times faster."

"For many users on pay per MB or while roaming, Opera Mini will reduce browsing cost up to 90%," Jackson adds.

Currently, Opera is only providing a sneak peek of Opera Mini on iPhone only (not iPod Touch). "We are thrilled to offer journalists and partners an exclusive preview of Opera Mini for iPhone during the year’s biggest mobile event," says Opera Co-founder Jon von Tetzchner. "This is a unique opportunity to introduce the fast, feature-rich Opera Mini experience for the iPhone, and to showcase our latest beta releases of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini on other platforms and devices. Opera’s mission is to bring the Web to the world, and by making Opera Mini available on yet another platform, we are one step closer."

Opera has not provided a date for a public release of Opera Mini for the iPhone. The company tells us that it has not yet submitted it to the Apple App store.
 

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Mozilla has launched the first mobile version of the Firefox web browser. This is now available for the Nokia N900 device, supported on Nokia’s Maemo 5 platform.

Features of Firefox for mobile include:

• Awesome Bar – Go to your favorite sites in just a couple of keystrokes with intelligent and personalized searching
• Weave Sync – Sync your Firefox tabs, history, bookmarks and passwords between your desktop and mobile device for a seamless browsing experience
• Add-ons – Customize your Firefox by adding small pieces of functionality, like games and news readers, that help make the mobile Web browser your own
• Location-Aware Browsing – Get maps and information relevant to your location
• Tabbed browsing – View open tabs as thumbnails to easily identify and select the Web page you’d like to go to next
• Safe Browsing – Get an Instant Web Site ID and easily access and edit security settings
• Available in more than 30 languages and counting

Mozilla notes that the mobile version of Firefox is the first mobile web browser that supports add-ons. This is one of the biggest features that has contributed to the still-growing popularity of Firefox for the desktop. Right now there are over 40 add-ons available for Firefox for Mobile.

"Add-ons like AdBlock Plus, URL Fixer, TwitterBar, language translators, and geo guides become especially handy when you’re out and about on your mobile device," says Mozilla’s Erica Jostedt. "You can both discover and install add-ons directly from your Nokia N900."

"Just as Firefox does for the desktop, Firefox for mobile provides a platform for developers to create rich applications," she adds. "Developers can use the latest Web technologies like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to improve, modify and customize the browser."

Mozilla emphasizes that this is just the beginning for Firefox for mobile. They tell users that there will be "lots more" to come this year.
 

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Two years ago, Google’s Chrome browser didn’t exist.  Now, it might be the best browser available.  New test results claim that it beats all competitors by a significant amount, at least in terms of speed.

Lifehacker’s Kevin Purdy recently put Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome 4.0.249.78 (which is considered stable), Google Chrome 4.0.302.3 (which is a developer version), Opera 10.01, Opera 10.5 (which is a pre-alpha version), and Safari 4.0.4 through their paces.  Experiments related to load times, JavaScript, DOM/CSS, and memory use were performed.

Chrome came out on top in a couple of categories, and according to Purdy’s scoring system ("we took the numeric score placement of each browser in each category and ranked them from 7, as best in category, to 1, as worst.  We totaled those numbers up, and present them here as a total out of 35") won the comparison, with the developer version placing first and the stable version securing second.

Then Opera 10.5, Firefox 3.5.4, Firefox 3.6, Safari 4.0.4, and Opera 10.01 followed, in that order.

Purdy’s article has been viewed about 92,000 times, and it’s a good bet that his findings have driven a lot of people to try Chrome for themselves.  Assuming those individuals don’t find the browser wanting in some area other than speed, Chrome may get quite a bump thanks to this experiment.

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Rick Spencer of Canonical, which distributes the Ubuntu version of Linux, revealed that Canonical has formed a revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, which will see Yahoo become the default search engine in the Mozilla Firefox browser in the upcoming 10.04 version (aka "Lucid Lynx") of the operating system.

Spencer shared the information via a public mailing list (hat tip to Ars Technica), where he said:

Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any personally identifiable or usage information.

I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

The move is an interesting one for both Canonical and Yahoo. Yahoo needs to do whatever it can to gain search market share, and Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux.

"Canonical is unusual among major commercial Linux distributors in the sense that it doesn’t sell an ‘enterprise’ or ‘pro’ version of its software," notes Ars Technica author Ryan Paul. "In an effort to make this approach sustainable, Canonical is experimenting with a number of different business models, including commercial support for end users, subscription-based Web services, and integration support for hardware makers. In the announcement about the search engine change, Spencer says that Canonical’s partnership with Yahoo will help to fund the ongoing development of the distribution."

Terms of the deal between Canoncial and Yahoo were not made available. Meanwhile, the search and advertising deal between Microsoft and Yahoo is still pending. The effects of that on Yahoo’s market share remain to be seen.
 

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Thanks to Google, PayPal, and Mozilla, the anti-malware organization borne out of Harvard’s Berkman center has become an independent entity.  StopBadware.org is now a non-profit known simply as StopBadware.

This change should be viewed as more evolutionary than revolutionary; like before, StopBadware will work to minimize the threat of malware, and at the moment, nothing more significant than some colors, logos, and site content has been changed.

Urs Gasser, executive director of the Berkman Center, also explained in a statement that StopBadware is just following a path taken by previous Berkman Center ventures like Creative Commons and Global Voices.

And as mentioned earlier, it’s doing so with the support of a lot of important companies.  Google, PayPal, and Mozilla all provided funding for StopBadware’s launch, and one person from each group will now sit on its board of directors.  Notably, "father of the Internet" Vint Cerf is Google’s representative.

Anyway, a hat tip goes to Elinor Mills, and we’ll see what happens.  In a blog post, Maxim Weinstein, StopBadware’s executive director, did encourage onlookers to "watch for more changes, both aesthetic and substantive, as we embark on this new adventure."
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According to data released by the AT Internet Institute, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has fallen to under 60% of visits in Europe. The firm suggests that with widely publicized news of a major security flaw and moves being made by competing browsers, IE’s fall may not be reversed in the very near future.

"Out of the 23 countries that were studied, Internet Explorer experienced the largest decline in visit shares for websites in Ireland, United Kingdom, Greece and Czech Republic," the firm notes.

Additional findings from the AT Internet Institute include: 

- Google Chrome exceeded 4% of visit shares with a gain of 2 points in 6 months

- attained 29.4% of traffic to a website in a European country in December 2009

- gained almost 1 point and exceeded 5% of visit shares

- On average 2.3% of visits to a European website through Opera in December 2009 compared to 2.2% in June 2009.

"It is interesting to note that the growth of Safari coincided with the growth of Google Chrome," says the firm. "Based on the same engine Webkit, would Google Chrome indirectly encourage the use of Safari?"

Last week, Mozilla launched the latest version of Firefox, and Google has just released the latest version of Chrome for Windows, complete with extensions and Bookmark Sync.

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Google is launching the latest stable release of its Chrome Browser for Windows. This version comes with the heavily requested extensions and bookmark sync features.

"Bookmark sync is a handy feature for those of you who use several computers — say, a laptop at work and a desktop at home," explains product manager Nick Baum. "You can enable bookmark sync to synchronize your bookmarks on all of your computers so that when you create a bookmark on one computer, it’s automatically added across all your computers. This means that you won’t need to manually recreate the bookmark each time you switch computers." There’s a step-by-step guide here for using bookmark sync.

Google recently launched its extensions gallery in beta, and it now has over 1,500 extensions.

Baum appears in the following video explaining how to use extensions on Chrome: 

For developers, Google has integrated some new HTML5 APIs like LocalStorage, Database API, WebSockets, etc. in the new stable release. These are elaborated on here. In addition, Google has improved the performance by 42% from its last stable release (400% from the first one), the company says.

Google says that for Linux users, extensions are enabled in the beta channel, and for Mac users, they’re working on bringing extensions, bookmark sync and other features to the beta version soon. Users of the current stable version of Chrome for Windows will be automatically upgraded over the next week.

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Mozilla has launched the latest version of its popular Firefox web browser – version 3.6. They say this version is a whopping 20% faster than version 3.5. New features in Firefox 3.6  include:

• Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart

• Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins

• Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way

• Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field

• Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time

• Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

Here’s a video from Mike Beltzner, Director of Firefox Development, who gives an overview of the new features.

For developers, Firefox 3.6 supports the latest HTML5 specification, including the file API for local file handling, font support (in addition to OpenType and TrueType fonts, it supports the new Web Open Font Format), CSS gradients (linear and radical), and device orientation – it exposes the orientation of the laptop or device to web pages.

The browser is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux in over 70 languages, which Mozilla claims is more platforms and languages than any other browser. It can be found here.
 

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