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.

The new UI adds a more elegant way of displaying results and the ability to edit the UI, but the main difference between this version and the last update is that the plugin is now indeed noticeably faster.

When Mozilla first launched Ubiquity, we gave it a rave review, and it has quickly become one of our favorite Firefox plugins. Our own Sarah Perez called it a "whole new UI for Firefox."

A Command Line for Firefox

If you are not familiar with Ubiquity, the addon gives you the ability to quickly type commands into Firefox. You can, for example, update your Twitter status by invoking the command line by pressing 'ctrl-space" (or 'option-space' if you are on a Mac) and then type 'twitter [message].' Or you can search Google by simply typing 'g [search term].' Search results are updated live inside the Ubiquity UI. For a complete list of commands, just type 'command-list' after installing the extension.

If you want to try out Ubiquity, also have a look at the list of installable Ubiquity verbs we compiled earlier this year.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Another social browsing service we like a lot is Browzmi. When we first looked at Browzmi earlier this year, it was basically a browser inside of a browser, which was a cool technical achievement, but the experience was held back by the fact that you had to log in to the service and use Browzmi's own bookmarking service. Now, a newly released Firefox extension replaces the 'browser within a browser' and greatly enhances the social surfing experience.

Browzmi allows you to surf the web together with your friends or family. Whenever the service is turned on, all of your friends on Browzmi can see where you are on the Internet, the stories you commented on, and the pages you bookmarked on Browzmi - thanks to a smart implementation of XMPP, all of this happens in real-time. There is also a built-in chat function and the ability to see related content on YouTube and Flickr.

Thanks to Browzmi, you can follow your friends around the net, or chat with other users who are on the same web page as you.

Virtual Toolbar

Just like the first release of Browzmi featured the interesting 'browser within a browser' concept, this extension features another first: unlike other add-ons, Browzmi doesn't actually create a Firefox toolbar - instead, it adds a 'virtual' toolbar to every page you surf to while Browzmi is active. To protect your privacy, you can selectively turn Browzmi on or off for separate tabs and browser windows.

The biggest advantage of this new extension is that you can now use your own bookmarks and add-ons while using the service.

Browzmi's CEO Travis Parsons tells us that he is also working on integrating Facebook Connect in the near future.

Verdict

This new extension takes Browzmi to a completely new level and turns a fun tech experiment into a really useful service. You obviously want to be careful about where you surf to when you use the service, but feel free to follow us here if you decide to sign up.

We found using Browzmi to be surprisingly fun, and thanks to the new extension, it is now also extremely easy to use.

Opera has had to face stiff competition in the desktop browser market from Google's Chrome, and the company is clearly looking to gain back some ground by emphasizing the speed of the rendering engine over new features in this release.

In terms of its user interface, the changes between version 9.6 and this alpha of Opera 10 are minimal and mostly cosmetic.

As for new features, Opera finally supports inline spell-checking. This feature had been sorely missing from Opera until now. Opera 10 can now also auto-update without giving notification to the user, similar to Google's Chrome.

Opera 10 also still includes all the major new features of Opera 9, including Feed Preview, Opera Link for bookmark synchronization, and the updated version of Opera Mail.

Presto 2.2

The rendering engine easily scored 100 out of 100 on the Acid 3 test (and easily passed the Acid 2 test as well). We benchmarked this alpha version against Opera 9.62 using the Sunspider and Dromaeo benchmarks. In both cases, Opera 10 was clearly faster, but the performance gains were typically around 10-15% and nowhere near the 30% claimed by Opera (though in their defense, Opera's PR material talks about the faster 'browsing experience,' not about benchmarks). Presto also wasn't able to come close to our benchmarks for Chrome.

A Capable Browser

Overall, Opera 10, at least in its current state, looks like an evolutionary update to previous versions. This preview version, however, was mostly meant to showcase the new rendering engine, so chances are that Opera will roll out additional new features and changes to the user interface in upcoming alpha and beta releases.

We have always had a soft spot for Opera, but somehow, the browser never quite found the sweet spot between speed and functionality that Firefox (in large part due to its extensions) and Chrome have.

Opera 10 is a capable browser with a number of very interesting features. However, when compared to Google's Chrome, with its unified address and search bar, as well as its speedy rendering engine, Opera 10 still has a bit of ground to cover before it will be able to challenge Chrome and Firefox.

Features

Among Visual Explorer's more interesting features are its built-in themes, content filters, and its ability to use IE add-ons. Unlike the latest versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Google's Chrome, Visual Explorer does not feature any private browsing modes, but it does feature an interesting 'cloaking mode' which hides the browser after it has been inactive for a set amount of time.

Some of Visual Explorer's other interesting features that are not available in IE7 or the latest public beta of IE8 are its ability to save web pages as images, an enhanced download manager, and easy access to RSS subscriptions (though no integration with third-party RSS readers).

Oddly missing, however, is a bookmark bar where you can drag-and-drop your most often used bookmarks for quick and easy access. Visual Explorer also doesn't support IE8's Accelerators.

Just as Slow as IE8

Just as expected, when we ran Visual Explorer through the SunSpider benchmark, the results were identical to those for Microsoft's IE8 - and just as unimpressive, especially when compared to Google's Chrome or the latest nightly releases of Firefox 3.1. It is worth pointing out, however, that the Visual Explorer, just like IE8, feels just as fast as Google's Chrome when browsing regular web sites.

Can it Find its Niche?

The browser market is obviously huge, so even getting a small piece of this pie would be a huge success for Visual Explorer. Other companies like Maxthon and Flock have been able to carve out a niche for themselves, and Visual Explorer might be able to do the same by giving users who need to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer more flexibility and useful features than the original product.

"We could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed," he was quoted as saying. Thanks to the anti-trust rulings that came out of the IE / Netscape battle back in the 1990's, there's nothing to prevent Google from doing deals of their own with computer makers, if they desire.

Once Google has a glitch-free version of Chrome sometime early next year, "we will throw our weight behind it," said Pinchai. "We've been conservative because its still in beta, but once we get it out of beta we will work hard at getting the word out, promoting to users, and marketing will be a part of that." (A link on Google's homepage might help with those marketing efforts, but not as much as we previously thought).

Pichai also noted that versions of Chrome for Linux and Mac computers will become available in the first half of next year which would allow the browser to work on almost 99% of computers worldwide.

Is It Ready?

Just because Google whips off the "beta" label (perhaps making Chrome one of the first products to leave beta with such speed) that doesn't necessarily mean the browser is ready for prime time.

Shortly after its launch, a serious security flaw was discovered in the browser. The exploit took advantage of an underlying vulnerability in WebKit that had already been known about for more than two months. Apple had patched their Safari browser against this flaw back in July, but Google Chrome launched in September with the flaw still in place. Google's overlooking of this risk is concerning.

Also, for some Windows users, it wasn't until the most recent update the scroll-up functionality on their laptop's trackpad even worked (this author was affected and was pinged by several Twitter friends that were, too). And even now Chrome is misbehaving on a pre-beta build of Windows 7. Googling from the address bar no longer works since the upgrade on my test machine.

Before the product goes gold, we at ReadWriteWeb would like to see the browser add support for RSS feeds, a surprising omission in the feature set. As fans of Google Reader, we had hoped to see deeper integration with other Google products in Chrome, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Subscribing via the browser doesn't even work, let alone allow us to subscribe via Google's own RSS Reader.

Still, these problems may only be a patch or two away from being repaired. Hopefully, Google wouldn't release their browser before it's ready, especially if they plan on promoting it so heavily among mainstream computer users, many of whom have already switched over to Firefox and seem to be happy with their selection. For these individuals, Firefox addons are now also a major part of the browsing experience - will people willingly give those up and move to Chrome? We suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

According to Evan's email:

Extensions.flock.com has had a bumpy history. There's a fundamental issue here: there are very few Flock-specific extensions, and a great many Firefox extensions that are already hosted on addons.mozilla.org. The architecture behind extensions.flock.com is not mature, and we have historically been unable to devote valuable developer resources to this.  It's unrealistic (and doesn't make a lot of sense) to try to create our own system on the level of addons.mozilla.org until we have more Flock-specific extensions. Our admiration for the work Mozilla has done extends to addons.mozilla.org...AMO really is the best experience for getting extensions. With that in mind, we have cut the fat that is our unwieldy extensions system.

Sorry Developers, We Took Down Your Flock Extensions

The email goes on to inform the developers that the company had removed all the extensions from the site that are not Flock-specific - that is, any extensions that take advantage of some unique feature within the Flock browser itself. In addition, the Drupal back-end from extensions.flock.com has been removed which means no more comments or ratings on posts and no more automatic submission system. Any developer wanting to submit an extension going forward will need to email extension-submission@flock.com instead.

For visitors to the Flock web site, the new extensions page will point them directly to addons.mozilla.org.

According to Flock, the changes will allow the company to move forward focusing only on Flock-specific extensions, and finally, themes. As we noted earlier, customization is an important aspect to the browser experience. Something as simple as being able to skin Flock could make the transition easier for those making the switch.

Flock's Real Message: We're Just A Version Of Firefox

We think Flock's decision to separate their extensions from Firefox's extensions is a good one. Although their email promoted the idea that this just freed up time for Flock to focus on other aspects of their project, that's probably not the whole story here.

Flock wants to appeal to the social media crowd, a group that typically includes a large number of Firefox users. But in the past, Flock had set themselves too far apart from the Firefox community and gave off the impression they were really an alternative browser. Now that Flock has upgraded to the Firefox 3 codebase and lets you use nearly all the Firefox extensions, the message they're sending is that they aren't that different after all, they're just a version of Firefox 3 with nifty social features. In other words, you get the best of both worlds: Firefox 3 and social media integration.

Will this change in direction work and help Flock pick up some steam? It's possible. If you can move to a new browser which works like your old one and take all your extensions with you, the experience is much less painful. Now all they need is some sort of extension import wizard and we'll be all set.

The Firefox 3/Flash Bug

If you don't have any idea what we're talking about here, consider yourself lucky. The Flash/Firefox bug has been a major source of aggravation for many users running Firefox 3 on Windows XP or Vista. When viewing an embedded video on a web site like YouTube, the videos would start playing, but they would stop after only a couple of seconds. There was nothing you could do to fix it except to close the browser and re-open it (which only sometimes worked) or load up an alternate browser like IE or Chrome.

People's experiences with this bug weren't consistent - some people were affected, some not at all, and for some it was intermittent. To make matters worse, the only solution at the time was to install the Flash 10 player which was then still in beta and therefore unsupported by many large web sites, like CNN, for example. That site would prompt you to upgrade to Flash 9 as it thought you must be running an older version of Flash. 

Both Mozilla and Adobe were aware of the issue, but neither company seemed to really know what the problem was. At one time, Adobe suspected that it was another Firefox plugin that was affecting Flash. The Mozilla developers also did their best to determine the cause on their end, too, but because Adobe was a closed-source company, their efforts could only go so far.

This fix came just in time. Because the issue had been going on for so long, people were getting comfortable running two browsers - Firefox (as usual) and one that played Flash, like Chrome. That opened the door for another big browser switch - this time away from Firefox instead of towards it. What a shame that would have been because otherwise, Firefox 3 is a great browser. We're happy to see that Adobe finally figured out the issue and has made Flash usable again.

Other New Features

As far as the other upgrades go, developers will be happy to learn that the new Flash Player supports the following:

• 3D transformations and animations that take advantage of GPU hardware acceleration
• New text rendering engine that lets developers create their own text layout components
• Pixel Blender integration which lets developers create custom filters and effects which can be applied at runtime to videos, images, and bitmaps

For more details on the technical aspects of these features, Josh Catone has a good write-up over on SitePoint.

You can download the new version of Flash from here: http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer

A number of analysts expect Firefox to capture a 20% market share this month and if the downloads for Firefox 3 are any indication, Mozilla might indeed be getting close to this. Here on ReadWriteWeb, more than 50% of our readers already use Firefox.

While quite a few extensions didn't yet work with Firefox 3 when it was released, most developers have made their plugins compatible with Firefox by now.

Microsoft is expected to release the next beta of its Internet Explorer by August 2008, though the time for the final release isn't quite clear yet. Last month, Opera also upgraded its browser to version 9.5, which garnered a number of favorable reviews.

Yahoo's Product Strategy

There's been a lot of hand wringing in the media lately about Yahoo's rejection of Microsoft's takeover bid. Most of the coverage has focused on the (very serious) financial and people issues that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang is now facing. But this week RWW focused on the impact on Yahoo's product line. Yahoo's key properties remain yahoo.com, email, myyahoo, and even Answers can be considered special. In short, content is what continues to drive Yahoo and those core properties are still enormously popular. It's just a shame Yahoo got bumped out of the way in social networking and online video -- two high growth content segments in recent times. Click through to read our recommendations for Yahoo.

See also: Yahoo Clings to Its Leading Web "Starting Points"

Firefox 3 Sets Download 'Record'

This week Firefox set out to break a record for most downloads in a 24-hour period. It surpassed the 5 million download mark it set out to meet well within the time limit - and ended up with 10.1 million downloads! We polled our readers: are you using Firefox 3? Do you plan to upgrade? Here are the results:

See also: Get Firefox and Vuze is Another Good Download

Wiki Providers Come Together to Offer Universal Edit Button

Leave it to people in the wiki market to know how to collaborate. Nearly 20 different wiki providers have teamed up to offer a new Firefox extension that will notify users whenever they are on a page that is publicly editable, using a standard icon that sits in the same place the RSS autodiscovery icon appears. Clicking on the icon (img. on the left) will take you to that page's editing interface. It's a great little idea that could help breath new life into the wiki community. We would love to see the extension become a standard part of Firefox.

Loopt: Another Mobile Contender

Loopt is the third location aware mobile social network to become available for the majority of U.S. smartphones . It joins fellow competitors Whrrl and Brightkite, both of which have already started to gain traction (see our coverage of Brightkite here). However, this is not a market where the first one to debut on the smartphone will be the ultimate winner. Instead, in the wild west of the mobile social networks, the key will be adoption. This is an area where Loopt is making headway, having recently announced deals with all the major U.S. carriers and support for Blackberry smartphones.

See also: Fring API Could Shake Up the Mobile Web and Mobile Banking on the Rise

SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY

Web Trends

11 Search Trends That May Disrupt Google

Bernard Lunn's first post for ReadWriteWeb (nearly a year ago) started with the premise that search was "game over", that Google had won and the only opportunity left was (re)search - i.e. what one does after the basic search. Unfortunately, none of the search start-ups since then has made a dent in Google's relentless march towards search market dominance. In this article, we outline 11 search trends that may change that.

Info Overload: The Problem & Solution

Information overload is no longer a joke. For those who suffered with this affliction, it never was, but now that there are real numbers attached to the problem, it has finally prompted companies to take action. Those numbers come from a recent study by a research company called Basex and they are to the tune of $650 billion in wasted productivity. Ironically, the time wasted comes from use of applications and technologies that are supposed to make workers more productive. Unfortunately, they seem to have the opposite effect.

Learning from Flickr's Co-founders on Their Way Out of Yahoo

In June 2005 Yahoo! acquired upstart Canadian photosharing web site Flickr and the web hasn't been the same since. Yahoo, on the other hand, didn't change nearly as much as everyone expected it to. Pre-CEO Jerry Yang told then-Business 2.0 writer Erick Schonfeld six months after the deal "I look at Flickr with envy, it feels like where the Web is going." Flickr co-founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield have now cashed out and officially left the company. Though Yahoo! doesn't appear to have internalized many of the lessons of Flickr, it's not too late for the rest of us to look at those same key lessons for inspiration in our work on the web.

See also: 72Photos Offers a New, Sleek Alternative to Flickr

Why IM Interoperability May Just be a Dream

Interoperability between instant messaging (IM) clients is something a lot of users have wished for. More specifically, we wish it was standard and provided right out of the box instead of having to turn to third parties such as Adium, Digsby, Trillian, or Pidgin. Yet there seems to be a problem with the concept of interoperability for the companies of the more popular IM clients.

Also see the results of our poll on IM clients:

Note: 3 IM clients were added belatedly to the poll, due to demand in the comments of our post. Therefore the numbers for Pidgin, Miranda, and Apple's iChat are under-represented.

People in Tech: Brad Feld, Foundry Group

MIT Alumni, technologist, venture capitalist, marathon runner, Colorado dweller, thinker, blogger, and all around super human, Brad Feld (LinkedIn, Twitter) has made a huge impact on startups. With posts on his personal blog, Feld Thoughts, and on Ask The VC (a must read for anyone interested in venture funding) Feld has played a major roll in lifting the curtain on the traditionally mysterious venture process. We recently caught up with him for a quick interview.

SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY

Finally, check out the latest episode of RWW Live, in which Sean Ammirati from ReadWriteTalk, Richard MacManus from ReadWriteWeb, Steve O’Hear from Last100 and Charles Knight from AltSearchEngines discuss a number of big events over the last week.

That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Net Applications has been tracking the uptake of Firefox 3 since yesterday morning, and it is now at around 4.5% -- not bad for its first 24 hours. Firefox on the whole is closing in on 20% market share and is higher among tech savvy crowds (over 50% on this blog, for example). That 4.5% of Firefox web browser users are already using version 3 indicates that about 25% of its user base has upgraded overnight -- that's very impressive.

If you're still on the fence about upgrading, check out the pair of great overviews of FF3 from Lifehacker here and here.

Are you using Firefox 3? Do you plan to upgrade? Let us know in the comments and vote in our poll below.