According to Google's blog post about the beta release, the sync feature has to first be activated on each of your computers where Google Chrome is used. To do this, you'll need to download the beta build of the browser available here. Once installed, click the "wrench" menu (yes, the one with the wrench icon) in Google Chrome and select "Synchronize my bookmarks" from the menu that appears. Sign into your Google account in the dialog box that pops up. If you've already set up Sync on another computer, you'll then be prompted to confirm that your different sets of bookmarks should be merged together. In that case, click "Merge and Sync" to complete the process. Finally, click "OK" when you've finished.

Not only does this feature sync your bookmarks, it also creates a copy of your bookmarks file on Google Docs in a new folder called "Google Chrome." (Wonder what else will go in that folder in the future?)

What's in Store for Sync

For now, the Sync feature is only synchronizing browser bookmarks, but the framework behind Sync is ultimately designed to handle the synchronization of other kinds of browser data as well. As to what sort of data that could be, Google can't provide any official confirmation just yet. However, they did say that you could imagine that "this type of infrastructure could be extended to other types of user data such as passwords" in the future. We'll speculate that it will eventually include those passwords, your browser history, and whatever favorite websites appear as thumbnails on the New Tab page. After all, if Mozilla's Weave Sync prototype can handle those sorts of tasks already, there's no reason to believe that Google couldn't do the same.

Because the new Sync feature uses an XMPP connection to synchronize the changes, changes made on one computer are synchronized immediately to another. Not just quickly, mind you, but immediately. This is possible because XMPP is what's known as a "real-time" communication protocol - the same one that powers Google Talk, the company's IM service.

The use of this sort of technology hints at how Google plans to make their Chrome web browser the core of their upcoming netbook operating system, Google Chrome OS. The new OS will run web applications "in the cloud," a radical change from current OS offerings where many applications are still installed on the computer's hard drive itself. With Chrome (the browser's) ability to synchronize data in real-time between computers, it's easy to see how a cloud OS could operate. It wouldn't matter which machine you used, your data would be available, stored in the cloud, synchronized, and all accessible upon login to your Google account. That prospect is either amazing or terrifying depending on your trust level when it comes to Google. Perhaps it's even both. 

Chrome Gets Faster, Too

While Bookmark Sync is the most interesting feature to debut in the new beta, there are some notable speed improvements to mention, too. The latest build improves performance by 30% since the current stable release of Chrome and by 400% since the very first stable release, as measured by Mozilla's Dromeao DOM Core Tests. 

As noted earlier, speed was a major factor in Firefox's 3.6 beta 1, released just this Friday. Both companies are going head-to-head when it comes to browser speed, JavaScript performance and startup times, but no official speed tests have been done yet to compare the two new beta releases.

To download the latest build of Google Chrome beta, head over to the Chrome beta site here. The official beta requires Windows XP SP2 or higher.

In the mobile market, Fennec goes up against Opera Mobile and Skyfire, which are available on a wide variety of platforms. The most important competitor, however, is probably Safari, though Apple only makes its browser available on its own phones. Safari may not be available on a large number of different phones, but it has set the bar pretty high when it comes to the user experience that users now expect from a mobile browser. With the Awesome bar and Weave bookmark synchronization, Firefox, however, will offer a number of features that Safari doesn't currently offer. Fennec will also offer support for plugins.

Om Malik looked at an early version of Fennec on the Nokia N900 and thinks that the browser "is perhaps its single biggest standout feature" on the device.

Mozilla on the iPhone

Earlier last week, a number of rumors about a Mozilla app for the iPhone also started to make the rounds, though it remains unclear what this app would look like. Apple, after all, isn't likely to allow a full Firefox-based browser on the iPhone.

"Some folks at Google," as the project team is quaintly described on Google's new What Browser site, were charged with explaining what a browser is and what choices consumers have. They got halfway there; but as far as helping consumers make informed choices, information is still limited to pretty colors and shiny logos.

The cornerstone of the site is this average user-friendly animated video explaining in painfully simple terms what a web browser does. It's not an OS, and it's not a search engine. It was simple enough that my 8-year-old niece didn't have too much of a problem with the post-video comprehension check I gave her.

The site gives equally simple text tutorials on how to change a homepage, a default search engine, and a default browser. Credit must go to the "folks" at Google for making these parts of the site accessible to the average Internet user, something that is difficult for a justifiably biased technology company to do.

Talk Nerdy to Me

The "Under the Hood" section of the site seemed like it might give the geekier among us some food for thought with regard to browser performance. It contained this history lesson of a browser timeline from Wikipedia and a series of diagnostic tests, mostly related to browsers' processing of JavaScript.

We ran the Google-developed V8 Benchmark Suite on four major browsers. It broke Internet Explorer, and returned seemingly arbitrary results of 164, 673, and 1794 for Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, respectively, on a scale of "bigger is better." We ran the WebKit SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark on all four browsers, as well. You can click through to see our results for Chrome, IE, Safari, and Firefox.

Google's Still Got Some 'Splainin' To Do

We also opened the site with Epiphany, and WhatBrowser said it was Firefox 3. When we tried it out on Konqueror, well...

What browser? indeed. We're still waiting to see what result the Google site will return.

Which brings us to our final and most serious criticism. The site features the logos of the five major web browsers: Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Opera. No mention is made of the many other available options nor of their current existence.

The reason we feel these browsers should have been in some way included in Google's browser icebreaker is the same reason we feel there should have been at least some discussion of each browser's corporate affiliations, best uses, and technical capabilities: Out of fairness to the aforementioned casual Internet user who, after looking at this page, might know what his browser is but still won't have a clear idea of whether or why he should consider using other browsers.

I'm primarily a Chrome user, and I love the lightweight interface and speed. But it's not the most reliable for enterprise web-based software such as WebEx and certain other web applications. When I'm testing web apps for work, I very often have to break out one of my standby browsers.

The flip side of that coin is that, since IE is still a dominant figure in the territory, most apps and sites will still perform well enough in Internet Explorer. I can think of just one app I've tested this year that didn't have any IE support.

Some users will care whether or not their browser is open-sourced, or whether or not it's standards-compliant. Some will care much more that it's reliable for using enterprise web-based software. But the glaring absence of this information from Google's presentation shows us that, in the effort to avoid obvious accusations of favoritism, they've neglected a great opportunity to create an informed consumer culture around web browsers.

By presenting just the logos of five browsers, Google has done something to make consumers slightly more aware of their options but nothing to break down the rhetoric- and sentiment-driven attitudes of average users toward technology products.

So, let's have a little conversation about that now: What's your browser of choice, and why? When did you start thinking critically about your browser? What performance or other issues trouble you most? Let us know in the comments.

After testing Opera 10 for a while, it quickly becomes clear that it is a perfectly capable browser. It's got everything the majority of users would ever want, ranging from the 'speed dial' homepage to a sidebar for taking notes, which are synced between different machines, just like your bookmarks. There is a 'magic wand' that automatically fills in passwords from Opera 10's built-in password manager, mouse-gestures, real-time fraud protection, a BitTorrent client,  and the tabs now optionally show a rendered version of the page for a more visual experience. The 'visual tabs' can also be put into a sidebar, a nice feature in the age where vertical space is limited as users have moved to wide-screen displays.

Opera 10 is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris.

Speed

In our informal tests, Opera 10 couldn't match Firefox, Safari 4, and Chrome in most benchmarks. On a MacBook, Safari finished the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in 711ms while Opera needed over 5700ms. In daily use, however, these benchmarks tend to mean very little and we barely noticed any difference.

Even though Opera has always been a good browser with a very passionate user base, it never quite caught on with mainstream users. Opera 10 is definitely Opera's best browser to date, but chances are that even this new version won't help Opera to gain a lot of market share as other browsers now have the momentum. However, if you haven't looked at Opera for a while, now is a good time to give it a try again. And if you often find yourself in a situation where you have to deal with a sluggish Internet connection (airports, hotels, etc.), Opera Turbo alone makes this a handy browser to have around, even if you don't make it your default browser.

One quarter of those surveyed who reverted back to Firefox 2 cited privacy as their biggest issue with Firefox 3. In an effort to curb privacy fears, Firefox 3.5 allows for private browsing, the ability to clear a portion of the history and website blocking to stop certain websites from appearing in browser history.

If Mozilla's little location bar raised this much attention, imagine the barriers facing shared browsing services and history trackers. Skabble, Hooeey and Me.dium (Now OneRiot) must have faced enormous scrutiny around user privacy. It's interesting to see privacy become an issue with browsing habits while in other areas we allow so much of our private lives to trickle into the ether.

Recently, Mozilla released Fennec 3, the third beta version of the company's open-source touch mobile browser. In January 2008, ReadWriteWeb compared Opera Mini to the promises of the much anticipated Firefox mobile browser. A year later, Mozilla fans are still waiting and Opera Mini users continue to enjoy synced bookmarks and notes, skinning features, relatively fast downloads and increased video capabilities. From more than 1500 votes within the GetJar community, Opera Mini 4.2 has earned an 8.1 out of 10 user rating. But it will be interesting to see if die-hard Mozilla fans will sing the praises of Fennec.

To read GetJar's Opera Mini reviews or to download the app, visit the community's browser page. Or if you've got a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet and would like to test Fennec, download it here.

Your favorite current affairs news blog, which couldn't survive on Viagra ads, is now charging subscriptions. Your e-tail site of choice keeps recommending country music, which you outgrew years ago. And your default social network's constant entreaties for donations finally annoy you so much that you do the unthinkable: switch to MySpace (at least it is supported by News Corp's old-media money).

This is too much. So, you pick up a copy of Portfolio magazine and browse the ads for financial products, reassured that at least this medium knows how to target its audience.

Anyway, this extreme scenario plainly won't happen, even if Congress has its way and regulates behavioral targeting in some fashion. The advertising lobby is far too strong to let policing efforts slingshot us back to Web 1.0.

But the battle continues. We'll likely see some form of Congressional hearings, with consumer advocacy groups and watchdog legislators like Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) trying to sort out whether behavioral targeting companies are really just stealth spy networks. The ability of ad networks, social networking sites, ISPs, and Web publishers to capture user data without disclosing that they're doing so will remain under the microscope. Who knows? We may one day see a national "Do Not Target" registry.

Let's hope not.

The main argument for behavioral targeting is obvious: profitable CPM advertising, which allows advertisers to better reach buyers, supports free sites. Users, in turn, inhabit a less cluttered ad environment with far more relevant advertising.

But it goes deeper than that. Targeting, when it works well, creates a seamless relationship between you, a site's content and the ads on it. Consider magazines like Architectural Digest, Vogue and Travel + Leisure. If you're interested in design, fashion, or travel, you might ending up scanning the ads as much as the articles. Now, consider that the Web can deliver those ads in a far more segmented way (if you're traveling to Turin, you're likely interested in Piedmont wines).

In October 2007, Microsoft paid $240 million to power Facebook's ads, driven by private user data. While jaws dropped over the $15 billion valuation, Facebook has used the capital to quietly build an advertising environment that shows what behavioral targeting can do. You may be too busy browsing your friends' baby pictures to notice the ads (and that is a downside: social networks are not purchasing environments), but as an exercise, go to your personal page and click the "More ads" link. If you're a regular user, chances are it's getting ever closer to nailing who you are.

Rather than showing a succession of Netflix ads, Facebook now more closely resembles a neighborhood store, run by a knowledgeable proprietor who makes smart suggestions about what you might want. Yes, that creepy spy is really just Mr. Hooper. Seriously. The dozens of clerks at your local Barnes & Noble can't possibly remember what you bought a month ago. But Mr. Hooper? He knows.

Let's face it: Facebook's targeting has gotten much better because it uses your personal data without explicitly telling you. Were you given the opportunity to opt out, you probably would. It's almost reflexive for us now: "No, thanks. I don't have time to read the fine print and consider the implications."

So when the behavioralists are trotted before the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, their first order of business will be the basics: that, fundamentally, the Web is behavioral targeting. LastFM introduces you to people who like what you listen to; DoubleClick tracks your browsing history to display relevant ads; Amazon tells you a new Dylan album is available because, well, that's what it does best. Digital advertising is killing the magazine industry not because it is a cheap boorish alternative, but because it can simply embed a little Java tag in your cookie and follow you until it (or you) expires.

That is not a bad thing.

Yes, targeting has its downsides:

• Small sample sizes. Remember that gardening book you bought for your grandmother last year? Amazon sure does.
• Psychographic characteristics cannot be determined by browsing alone. Clicking on a Rolex ad doesn't mean you can afford a Mercedes; gawking at eye candy does not a luxury buyer make.
• Perhaps most critically, every behavioral targeting company has to toss out user data on a regular basis or else invest in endless storage. AudienceScience, for example, can track 2 billion events per day but purges data every 90 days.)

Congress should in fact be looking for ways to foster better targeting, not limit it. The more an ad network knows about you, the more likely it will be able to serve an relevant ad and improve your user experience. iTunes makes better recommendations than most for a simple reason: more often than not, it operates from a larger collection of data. You may frequent only one or two sites powered by 24/7 Real Media's Open AdStream, but if you've got an iPod, you've spent time building an iTunes database of, say, a few thousand songs, which directly feeds iTunes' Genius.

To see if Genius is better constructed than other recommendation platforms, create an iTunes database of only 10 songs (which could very well be the number of books you purchased from Amazon in the last year). Then ask Genius to recommend a playlist. You will almost certainly not get that eerie "How does it know?" feeling.

What's the solution? The digital lobby certainly has to do a better job of educating Congress on the benefits of targeting. And self-regulation is critical: NebuAd's clumsy efforts to track browsing histories directly through ISPs hit every wrong note possible for privacy advocates.

The solution, though, may be more technological than regulatory. Suppose ad networks, social networking sites, e-tailers and search engines were to share IP data. The overall sample size would shoot through the roof, and both advertisers and users would benefit from ad placement that is as spot on as iTunes' Genius. Some kind of universal cookie, perhaps, could let e-tailers notify ad networks that, despite your apsirational browsing of ArchiteturalDigest.com, you still shop at Ikea, and so that $40,000 George Nakashima coffee table really is not a good fit.

Suppose further that consumers could control this data. For example, once you returned from your European vacation, you could simply delete your old browsing history on travel, eliminating any more ads for hotels in the Mediterranean.

"Yeah right," you say, "Google would never share its users' search histories with e-tailers, much less other ad networks."

Well, it doesn't have to. Your browser already contains that information. Having this URL...

http://www.google.com/search?q=kindle

... means that you Googled "Kindle." And having this one...

http://www.amazon.com/Free-ebook/dp/B002DYJR4G

... means that you searched Amazon for the Kindle version of Chris Anderson's book Free. Solely by parsing URLs, your browser could even tell whether your Amazon session ended with a checkout.

For certain advertisers, that is valuable information. And if that personal data were kept safe, you probably wouldn't mind if targeting companies used it to display an ad for Free on ad networks.

But let's say you did mind. Let's say you preferred random Viagra and Disney ads. Your browser could resolve this, too. It already stores thousands of cookies for you—in fact, it stores all of the non-logged-in data for sites across the Web. Mostly, this is the Web pages you visit, user names and passwords, and other form data, and it's not easy to discern what cookies are storing what. But your ability to monitor and manage your cookies could be enhanced with a simple extension.

If this extension could communicate with third-party cookie-based systems through a standard protocol, you could set simple controls for how much and what kind of data to broadcast. "Okay, re-targeting bot. If you want to drop a Java tag on me and follow me around the Web, here are the ground rules."

The rise and fall of NebuAd illustrates a rather simple truth of behavioral targeting: the data is yours, not theirs. Yes, ISPs could track your browsing history universally, unlike individual ad networks, social networking sites and search engines. And shared data would enhance the user experience. But because the data is yours, controlling it should be in your hands, not theirs.

Which brings us to the real treasure trove: data you've entered on password-protected sites. Why is Facebook, for example, the only beneficiary of the personal data you enter on that social network? It knows you're an iPhone user, New York resident, Ivy Leaguer, travel lover, and Texas Hold 'Em player for one simple reason: you told it.

If communicating that data through a browser-based protocol, at your discretion, turns Viagra ads into iPhone app ads across the Internet, wouldn't that be something? We all understand the nature of free: someone has to pay. So, why not turn your browser into Mr. Hooper?

Guest author: Chris Kincade is co-founder of DesignBuggy.

Additional Opera 10 features include web mail and web feed reader integration and an inline spell-checker for blogs, Twitter and Facebook posts. To find out more info on Opera 10 beta 3 or to install it, visit opera.com/browser/next.

The creators of Firefox had the sense to realize that their uphill battle against Microsoft's IE was not going to be fought between equal armies. Internet Explorer was already pre-installed on almost every PC, and the Redmond company had ten times the resources to spend on development and research than their open-source competitor. Spread Firefox began as an effort to harness the collective voices of the programmers, marketers and enthusiasts contributing to the Mozilla project. Rather than positioning themselves as a corporate competitor, Firefox likened itself to a political cause. Externally, the group referred to itself as a "movement", and internally, the very infrastructure of the community site was powered by CivicSpace (formerly DeanSpace). The site is a modified version of the Drupal content management system created for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

Spread Firefox became a rallying hub for open-source advocates and Microsoft dissenters. Since the very beginning, Firefox was humanized as the eager young candidate with a can-do attitude, while Microsoft's IE was portrayed as being bloated, corrupt and resting on his laurels.

In this world, the initial political platforms had nothing to do with health care or fiscal responsibility, but rather the impending threats of spyware and Trojan horses. Instead of putting signs on their lawns, volunteers put "Get Firefox" buttons on their personal websites. Instead of holding bake sales, they held hack-a-thons to build new extensions.

It's not unreasonable to compare the browser's fans to Howard Dean's leaflet-touting Deaniacs. While most enthusiasts opt to don t-shirts or work on web development, there are certainly zealots. One group of hardcore Oregon State University fans went so far as to create a 220 ft. Firefox crop circle.

Both Dean's campaign strategies and Spread Firefox are testament to small contributions and the power of the internet. The race to 1 billion downloads is a huge step in the browser territory struggle; however, as with Dean's campaign, it's still a long way from single-handedly toppling the status quo. Nevertheless, the Firefox campaign may be aided by Microsoft's antitrust case and the company's recent proposal to include rival web browsers in the Windows OS throughout Europe.

Mozilla's bid to become commander in chief, at least in Europe, may actually be achieved in the foreseeable future. It will be interesting to see if Opera, Safari and Chrome will step in to split the vote.

For more information on Firefox, visit the Spread Firefox site, or to download the browser, visit the product page.

Firefox just isn't dazzling us the way it used to. In fact, in some cases, it's as if the browser is playing a game of catch-up instead. With new features like Private Browsing and TraceMonkey, an engine that speeds up web applications, Firefox isn't exactly blowing us away - they're simply introducing features that put them on par with Google Chrome and even, gasp, IE.

One of the most notable of the new additions to Firefox 3.5 is the Private Browsing feature. Often jokingly (or perhaps not) called "porn mode," this special browsing mode keeps all traces of your web activity off your computer, including everything from browser history to passwords to search bar entries and more.

Although we're certainly happy to see Firefox add this now-standard web browser feature, it's the first time we can remember Firefox copying something from Internet Explorer and not the other way around. For the browser that brought us a revolution of tabbed browsing and extensions, copying IE seems like a sad state of affairs. IE8 has offered private browsing since March of this year, Chrome had it from day one - back in 2008, and Safari had it before both of those. What took Firefox so long?

At the very least, can we hope that Firefox does private browsing better somehow? Well, it does let you individually remove sites from your history via a new "Forget About This Site" option in case you forgot to "go private." But then again, erasing your browsing history accomplishes this task, too. In 3.5, you can also specify time ranges of history to clear - anywhere from the past hour to the past day. That's a nice little added tweak, but nothing ground-shaking. In the end, private browsing is more of a "me-too" feature than anything extraordinary.

Speed: TraceMonkey

Under the hood, Firefox 3.5 is introducing a new engine called TraceMonkey, which is said to result in a "massive speed increase both in the browser chrome and web page content." Specifically, this improvement affects programs written in JavaScript, as many rich internet applications (RIAs) are today. Historically, web apps running in JavaScript haven't been able to match the speed with which native software runs on the PC, but TraceMonkey brings that gap much closer together.

However, although Firefox 3.5 is faster - a lot faster, in fact - it's not the fastest browser out there. A SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark test (courtesy of PCPro) shows that it's currently being beaten by both Google Chrome and Safari 4.0.

Location-Aware Browsing

Finally, location-aware browsing - a feature that is innovative! In Firefox 3.5, the browser can tell web sites where you're physically located in the world so you can find relevant information more quickly. In other words, if you're searching for a nearby restaurant, you can simply search for "sushi" and the search will return localized results. However, this all depends on whether or not the web site in question is a "location-aware" site. If it is, it will ask you if you want to share your location. It's too bad there's not an all or nothing switch for this feature, though. Instead, you're prompted to allow the feature to be switched on whenever you visit a location-aware site for the first time.

Still, this one's a point for Firefox.

HTML 5 Support & Other Geeky Stuff

HTML5, the next version of markup language used to build web sites, won't be ratified into a standard for another year, but Firefox 3.5 is already supporting many of its capabilities. For example, the new browser will support audio and video embeds without the need for the Flash plugin.

Also supported are offline data storage, support for native JSON, the <canvas> element for drawing vector graphics and animations, and new CSS options that let designers create text with shadows and draw border images.

However, although the offline data storage feature of HTML5 will eventually lead to a standardized way for web applications to work offline (that is, when you're without a net connection), it already has a competitor: Google Gears. Gears, now an open-source technology, is currently used for the same purpose as HTML5 when it comes to offline data storage. And unlike HTML5, Gears works in older browsers too.

Finally, there is the addition of "web workers," a way for web content to run resource-intensive scripts in the background, a feature that will make the browser feel faster while also helping improve stability. But will it "feel" as fast as Chrome? Well, it might, especially when you take into consideration the memory usage issues of Chrome.

Conclusion

Overall, the latest upgrade to Firefox is definitely worthwhile and filled with improvements that will please its users. With its new features, speed increases for web apps, and support for standards, 3.5 represents a major upgrade, not a minor release.

Firefox continues to dominate the other "alternative" web browsers at 22.5% marketshare compared to Safari's 8.43%, Chrome's 1.80%, and others who haven't even reached 1.0% yet (stats via Net Applications). However, this time around, a few of Firefox's "upgrades" aren't entirely new to us as web browser connoisseurs. The browser is late to offer private browsing and although speedier, it's not the speediest anymore.

All that being said, Firefox is still the one to beat when it comes to IE alternatives. But with all these new contenders cutting into its marketshare, it may never topple IE from its throne after all.

Good for Mobile Web Developers

Of course, these are benchmarks and don't necessarily correlate directly into a superior user experience, but it is good to see that even iPhone 3G users will see significant speed gains from the 3.0 release. This should give mobile developers quite a boost, as they can now develop and run more complex, cross-platform compatible web apps that won't be hindered by the mobile browser's performance, though the Android-powered G1 is still pretty slow according to Medialets and the Palm Pre sees the same performance as a 3G with the 3.0 OS.

For now, however, there are also still a few million iPhone 3G users who haven't updated their phones' operating system yet...

The concept of Gaggle is simple: browse the web and when you see something you want to share and click the "Share" button at the bottom of the screen. You have the option to post the link to Twitter or Facebook or you can choose to bookmark it instead. Setting up Facebook involves authenticating via Facebook Connect and to configure Twitter you'll need to enter your username and password. Once that's done, you're able to quickly share anything you see on the web with just the push of a button.

Gaggle performs the sharing actions quickly and well, but it's clear they haven't given the same attention to the rest of the application.

Problems, Problems, Problems

Unfortunately, the app is still a little buggy at the moment. The first time I noticed an issue was when I was entering in my Facebook email address. Switching over from the letters keyboard to the numbers keyboard was delayed - I had to hit the button a few times before it would work. This continued to be an issue when using the app.

Another problem was that Gaggle seemed to be unaware of the internet connection at times, popping up a message "no internet connection" even though the iPhone was indeed connected. This often happened on first launch.

Finally, as a browser, Gaggle can't compare to Safari...it's not even close. You have to hit a button to get the search box to appear, you can't open multiple windows, and it even struggled to display one of my most visited mobile web sites: Google Reader. In fact, Reader wasn't even usable within Gaggle. You could open an item in a feed, but it would read "undefined" above the article's text. There was no way to then close the item or move to the next one. If you refreshed the page, that item was still showing as unread.

Overall, the promise of the application to be a useful Safari alternative for social media users is overshadowed by a number of issues that need to be corrected if the app is ever going to be worth a download. That being said, if Gaggle could work out the kinks and improve the experience, it could even be worth purchasing a paid version one day so as to remove the ad from the bottom of the screen. In the meantime, it's back to Tweetie and the iPhone Facebook app for me. Gaggle just isn't ready.

Compared to Safari and Google Chrome, Firefox's JavaScript engine (TraceMonkey) is still a bit slower, though in day-to-day use, most users aren't likely to notice any real differences.

Obviously, this is a beta product and you will inevitably run into some problems (here is a list of known issues), but in our own tests with Windows 7 and on OSX, beta 4 felt very fast and, maybe more importantly, extremely stable. You should, however, be aware that a lot of plugins and extensions like Greasemonkey will not work in beta 4 yet, though usually it only takes a few days before developers update their programs.

Oliver Reichenstein and Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla, have been thinking about the future of tabs in Firefox, and some of the resulting mockups are quite intriguing.

Reichenstein argues that tabs were a good solution for an earlier age of the Internet, when users hardly ever had more than ten tabs open at any given time. Now, however, as browsers are slowly turning into operating systems, a new paradigm for organizing this information has become necessary.

The current generation of browsers does a decent job when it comes to keeping a current browser session organized, but Reichenstein wants to create a system that structures the browser more like a mutimedia file system. He proposes a new interface that looks more like iTunes than today's Firefox, with folders, libraries, and bookmarks in a sidebar.

Try Tree Tabs

If you would like to get a glimpse of what tabs on the side look like, have a look at Tree Tabs, a nifty addon that puts tabs on the side and that features a huge number of options for customizing the experience.

If you are on a netbook, for example, where vertical space is very limited, Tree Tabs (maybe in combination with Tiny Menu) will allow you to reclaim some of your screen estate.

Coming Soon: Built-In Ubiquity

Mozilla is also moving ahead with the integration of Ubiquity, a command-line style interface for common browser tasks, into Firefox's 'awesome bar.' Mozilla plans to add this project, dubbed Taskfox, into the main Firefox interface by the time version 3.6 of Firefox is released.

You can find an interactive demo here, or have a look at the mockups on this page.

Granted, most of the new features in Safari 4 are not exactly new, but, as Apple does so often, it exceeds at putting all of these features together in a very attractive package.

New Features

Just like Chrome, Safari 4 has moved its tabs all the way to the top of the browser window. Apple, however, did not copy Google's unified search and address bar but stuck with the more traditional separation of the two.

Cover Flow

The new Cover Flow interface for bookmarks and your browser history is partly just eye-candy, but it also does work surprisingly well and can come in handy when you just remember the layout of a page, but not the exact name. The interface displays a screenshot of the bookmarked pages. Secure pages are blacked out.

Top Sites

The speed-dial startup page, named 'Top Sites' by Apple, is quite similar to what we have seen from Google and Opera. The page is generated automatically, based on the sites you visit most often, but Safari 4 also allows you to rearrange items on the page and pin certain sites to the page, so that they won't disappear even if you don't visit them as frequently. You can set Top Sites to display 6, 12, or 24 pages. Top Sites will also notify you when a page has been updated.

Full History Search

Safari now also features a 'full history search,' which not only remembers the page titles and URLs you went to, but also indexes the text from every page you visit. It should be noted that Opera also offers full history search.

Performance

In our informal tests, running the Sunspider JavaScript benchmarks, Safari beat out Firefox 3.0.6 by a wide margin (800ms vs. 2280ms), though the latest developer version of Chrome came out on top (617ms). While using the browser, however, it didn't feel like there was a significant difference between Chrome and Safari 4. Emails in Gmail opened almost instantly, and even complex pages rendered very quickly.

Safari on Windows

On Windows machines, Safari finally feels like a native application that mostly blends into the environment - though the plain gray background still makes it stand out a bit.

Developer Tools

Safari 4 now includes a wide range of developer tools. Among those are a new resources pane, a tools for managing databases, and a JavaScript debugger and profiler.

Verdict

Safari 4 is a significant update to Apple's browser. In terms of features and usability, it might actually now be ahead of most of its competition, and Safari's performance is on par or better than its competition as well. Where it lacks, however, is in its support for third-party plugins (though the existing plugins do tend to be of a rather high quality). For mainstream users, this is often not an issue, and these users will be more than happy with Safari. As you would expect from Apple, Safari's user interface is extremely well thought out, and features like Top Sites or the full history search make it a browser that is both functional and fun to use.