As ReadWriteWeb noted when G1 was released in September, the default browser isn't Google's Chrome - but Web-Kit, which is "Chrome-like". However Sergey Brin confirmed in early September that Chrome will be coming to Android in subsequent versions.

See last100's full post for more details of the current browser in G1.

Despite it being very early in the testing stages, the Fennec browser is already showing major performance gains. In the chart below, found on Mozilla technical evangelist Chirs Blizzard's blog, the blue bar is the "MicroB browser," which is the Mozilla-based browser based on source code from around the Firefox Alpha 1 timeframe that Nokia included with their OS2008 release. The red bar is Fennec. The chart shows that Fennec is 5.9x faster than the earlier Mozilla version!

Although Firefox enthusiasts may be tempted to try out Fennec now, they should be warned that much of the new browser's functionality isn't seen via the UI just yet - it's all very much still "under the hood."

However, this quick peek is enough to get us excited about Firefox Mobile and the features it plans to include in the future, like support for add-ons, support for web applications, an AwesomeBar, one-click bookmarking, and inertial scrolling - the last two of which are currently available in the Fennec browser. We only hope we don't have to wait too long before a solid beta is available.

Mobile Web browsers - Microsoft's downfall?: As we begin to use mobile devices more and more to access the Web, Microsoft's browser dominance may begin to ebb away. 2008-09 is predicted to be when the Mobile Internet hits big. So who are the early leaders in the mobile web browsing market? PC browser battler Opera is styling itself as "the world leader in mobile browsing technologies". In August this year, Opera Software launched Opera Mini - a browser for mobile phones. They also recently released a mobile AJAX Platform product, which impressed mobile expert Russell Beattie. Nokia has a product called Web Browser for S60, for browsing on a range of Nokia phones. Microsoft has its Smart Phone and Firefox has a mobile browser called Minimo. There have even been hints at a Yahoo! mobile browser.
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Browser Wars 2006 - Microsoft set to continue dominance: IE has been losing ground to Firefox over the past year and most tech bloggers (including me) report a higher percentage of Firefox than IE users. However in the mass market, IE is still by far the dominant browser. According to Web analytics company OneStat.com, as of late October 2005 almost 81 percent of Americans used IE, 14 percent used Firefox, and only a small percentage used Opera, Netscape, and all other browsers combined.
[full story here...]

I'd suggest then that the takeaway from the results so far is that people a) want the browser to remain the main platform for deploying web apps; and b) preferably they'd like it to be open source.

Here are the results so far. We've had 470 votes up till time of publishing this post, but there are still 3 days left in the week - so have your say by voting below.

Qst: Whose vision of web app deployment do you like the best?

Mozilla (open source, microformats, browser-based) 35% (166 votes)
Google (Ajax, mostly browser-based) 29% (135 votes)
Adobe (Apollo, browser/desktop) 22% (102 votes)
Microsoft (Silverlight, DotNet, browser/desktop) 11% (50 votes)
Sun (JavaFX, alternative to Ajax, browser/desktop) 2% (10 votes)
Other (please note in comments) 1% (7 votes)

I've been re-reading Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee. As inventer of the World Wide Web in 1990 and current director of the W3C, Berners-Lee is a visionary and innovator. His current obsession, the Semantic Web, is not yet widely understood or appreciated. Just like the Web 10 years ago. 

Indeed one of Berners-Lee's earliest Web innovations has still not been widely implemented, more than 10 years after he created it along with the World Wide Web. This invention was intended to be one of the foundation products of the Web, but it never took off. In 2003 the need for this product is more relevant than ever, at a time when "social software" and "collaboration" are the buzzwords of the Web. I'm talking about the Read/Write web browser, or the "web browser/editor" as Berners-Lee refers to it in his book.

The original web in 1990 was made up of a server at CERN (info.cern.ch) , and the 3 protocols URIs, HTTP and HTML. Berners-Lee also created a browser/editor with which to both view the web and create content for it. His browser/editor was actually called WorldWideWeb. As Berners-Lee described it - "the browser would decode URIs, and let me read, write, or edit Web pages in HTML". However during that period, 1990-93, Berners-Lee was frustrated that nobody else seemed willing to create a browser/editor. At best existing browsers were read-only and mostly text-only too.

Then in 1993 the Mosiac web browser was released - its graphical interface was its defining feature. Succeeding generations of web browsers, Netscape and Microsoft in particular, introduced new graphical and interactive features like tables, forms, and stylesheets. However writing and editing functionality for the browser were overlooked.

Berners-Lee's dream for a read/write browser remains unfulfilled to this day, although the advent of weblogs has lowered the barrier for people to write to the web. The open-source Mozilla browser has some interactive editing functionality. But Microsoft, with over 90% of the browser market, is showing little sign of further browser innovation. There has also been talk of a non-browser environment for the Web - co-called Rich Internet Applications or microcontent clients. But right here right now, most of us still surf the web with a web browser that is read-only.

Browsing is only half the fun. Contributing something new to the Web, to the world, is where the real rewards are. Berners-Lee of course sums it up best: "I have always imagined the information space (the Web) as something to which everyone has immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create."

Over the next week, I'll explore what few web browser/editor tools there are available. First of all I'll check out Amaya, which is the W3C's browser/editor. Stay tuned...

Presumably there's some money changing hands and we can't help but wonder how much. It's Google's payment to Mozilla for being the default search engine in Firefox that makes that browser financially viable.

Some people say (only partly in jest) that Google does in fact own a browser - Firefox. Have deals gone on behind the scenes than mean Google now effectively owns a mobile browser too? These up-front payments for default placement are later more than made up for through search ad click throughs - and mobile is a key emerging market in search advertising.

In this case there is probably not a major shift in power going on over Opera, since the company has what should be a major revenue stream in the sale of browser installs themselves. For some reason, people are willing to pay for a better mobile browser despite widespread insistence that web and desktop software should be free. A large portion of Opera customers are Europeans, though, so perhaps that explains it.

None the less, it was probably seen at Google as a major coup to score this deal and they may have been willing to spend a lot of money on it. If Safari on the iPhone is the elite upper class mobile browser, Opera is the browser of the growing middle class in that space.

Opera users in general tend to be vehement advocates of the browser. While Firefox users will sometimes go to the trouble of telling you how much they like their browser, the smaller number of Opera fans are much more outspoken. I could comfortably hold my breath between putting up this post and the time that it will take for an Opera lover to post a comment about how wonderful this fast, standards compliant browser is on the desktop and the phone. (Please don't prove me wrong.)

For more informed coverage of this news see the blog of mobile search specialists MSearchGroove, where presumably it will be covered soon. Readers interested in mobile news should check out the RWW toolkit for 2008, a package of resources for tracking key issues like mobile in the coming year.

Net Applications thinks that that the U.S. election, the Thanksgiving holiday, the rising unemployment in the U.S., and the extra weekend in November led to an increase in residential browsing during that month, but the general trends clearly also continued during December.

Will IE8 Make a Difference?

It will be interesting to see if the upcoming release of IE8 will be enough to turn Microsoft's fortunes in the browser market around. While we like the beta version of IE8 as a general purpose browser, it still doesn't have the extensibility and speed of Firefox. Google is also working on an extension architecture for Chrome, which will allow developers to port their Firefox plugins over to Google's browser and give users even more alternatives to IE7 and IE8.

Don Park reckons that weblogs and websites will converge within the next 2 years time:

"People [will] take it for granted that webpages can be edited using their browser. People will also take it for granted that any webpages can be subscribed to with a single-click. Web browsers will be changed to support all this and more like highlighting of changes."

Don is basically talking about browser/editors, which Tim Berners-Lee has always promoted and which is one of my pet topics. The W3C has one of the few WYSIWYG browser/editors around, called Amaya. But in order to write and edit content using Amaya, you need to publish with the HTTP PUT method which most web hosts won't support.

I'd love to see a mainstream web browser/editor on the Web. But as I talked about in yesterday's post, it looks like "Smart Clients" are about to usurp the browser in terms of providing interactive functionality. Smart Clients may be where all the writing/editing action is in 2 years time.

Jon Udell is exploring ways to write semantic content for the Web, which in the short term means XHTML. Microsoft is leaning towards Office tools for that type of writing - e.g. InfoPath and the next version of Word. I'd be surprised if Microsoft changed tack and moved XML writing functionality into the browser (which will be embedded in the OS in future).

So Don, I share your enthusiasm for a true web browser/editor. But I don't think it's even a glint in the milkman's eye for Microsoft.

As the worlds second most popular browser, and with their recent milestone of reaching 20 percent worldwide market share, the folks over at Mozilla certainly have some celebrating to do.

Well done Firefox, you've come a long way; a 329 percent market share increase over four years. So, theoretically, if Firefox continues at the same growth rate, in another four years it will hit 85.67 percent market share.

Interesting.

Isn't this pretty much where IE was when Firefox came onto the scene?

Browser market share December 2004

Browser market share December 2005

Browser market share December 2006

Browser market share December 2007

Browser market share October 2008

Most users who have a choice would probably switch away from IE6 in a heartbeat, but if the stats for YouTube are anything like what Digg found in regards to phasing out support for IE6, then most YouTube users who are actually still using IE6 do so from work. Digg found that 90% of its IE6 users were using this antiquated browser at work, where they probably have no other option. About 80% of those who responded to Digg's survey couldn't change to another browser because they had no administrator access to their computer, weren't allowed to upgrade, or simply couldn't upgrade because they were still running Windows 2000, ME, or 98. About 17% of Digg's users simply didn't feel the need to upgrade and 7% said they preferred IE6 to other browsers (we wonder how many of these people were serious, though).

Of course, it is also important to note that Google also uses messages like "Gmail runs better in Chrome" to push its own browser regularly and regularly runs ads for Chrome on YouTube.

Image Credit: Ajaxian.

Cruz lets you easily set up multiple panes in your browser, with sophisticated controls. That's just one of the many things it does, but it's the feature we like best.

In addition to the multiple panes, Cruz also offers a full-screen mode and a long list of other features.

We really like the idea of being able to set up any web app we like as a sidebar. We tested it with FriendFeed, setting Cruz to act as an iPhone in that panel. It worked pretty well, though the status bar's ability to preview URLs was lost.

We also like the idea of of side-by-side browsing, as we often like to compare two web pages at a time or drag text from one to another, and using two browser windows is less handy. Unfortunately, there's no ability to bulk-import bookmarks from another browser, something we'd want to do before using Cruz too extensively.

Finally, we wish we could run separate Google Accounts in this browser and in Firefox, simultaneously. Unfortunately, that's not possible with Cruz any more than it is with Fluid.

Despite its early shortcomings, Cruz is fun to use. We expect to fire it up in some circumstances and we wouldn't be surprised if it suits some people well all the time. Three cheers for innovation in the world of browsers!

Thanks to Chris Messina for discovering this, as he does so many things.

Thinks there's need for 3D on the Web. e.g. 3D online entertainment, e-commerce, product stuff, mobile.

Very heavy data - gigabytes. Current approach to 3D client-based, requires plug-ins, lossy, etc.

Server-based 3D --> RealityServer is their product. Let all computation happen on the server --> broadband will allow this in HD (high def). Mobile devices big driver.

Only need html browser on client side, because everything happens on the server. Need a lot of bandwidth to send commands down to the browser. very light clients possible, multiple users can collaborate, open and scalable, secure, standards compatible. Data complexity is terabytes.

e.g. satellite images - working with data set; architectural simulations; consumer designing car.

This is all browser-based, only constraint is bandwidth.

The idea behind Gazelle is to create a browser that is more secure for the now typical dynamic pages we find on the Web. According to Microsoft, Gazelle is different as no existing browsers, including new architectures, have a multi-principal operating system constructed in such a way that provides the browser-based OS exclusive control to manage the protection of all system resources.

The research team claims it has successfully browsed 19 of the 20 most popular sites as reported by Alexa with its prototype, but admits the performance of the prototype was only "acceptable." The paper also includes an in-depth comparison of Gazelle's architecture and security with Google Chrome, OP and IE8.

But before you go and read it, make sure you realize that it was written by the research team and in no way states it will be developed by the IE team; there is however a glimmer of hope for those who think it would be a good idea, and it can be found in the conclusion when the team points out that 'the implementation and evaluation of our IE-based prototype shows promise of a practical multiprincipal OS-based browser in the real world."

Still, it's an interesting read for those who are interested in the technology.

Installing The Fennec Extension

Shortly after Finke created the mobile-ready version of URL Fixer, the addons.mozilla.org web site was updated to include support for the Fennec browser. When Fennec users visit the site, it will recognize that they're coming from the mobile browser and will offer direct installation via an "Add to Fennec" button.

After a required browser restart, users will see the new extension available from the Fennec Add-ons Manager, where it's also possible to access preferences and disable or enable add-ons.

Mobile Add-Ons Are Fennec's Killer Feature

The idea of being able to use add-ons in a mobile browser is definitely going to be a huge selling point for the Fennec browser when it goes to launch as it will be the first to support third-party extensions. It opens up a world of possibilities that take advantage of the new platform, too. Is it possible we'll see add-ons that allow you to interact with your phone's functions itself like "click-to-all" or "copy to my contacts"? That may depend on the mobile phone itself and how locked down it is. Still, we imagine that developers will soon be thinking of all sorts of unique add-ons that work best in a mobilized environment.

What sort of add-ons would you want to see in a mobile browser? Let us know in the comments.

Screenshots courtesy of Madhava Enros and Mark Finkle