In a recent step to increase web search traffic, Microsoft has approached an old competitor, Sun Microsystems for help.

Based on a deal to be announced on Monday, Sun will actively promote a Microsoft toolbar as users download Sun’s Java software. The toolbar will have a field for Live Search queries and access to MSN content.

In the past, Sun and Microsoft have been staunch rivals. The 2 companies have fought during long antitrust battles, such as a $2 billion in patent and antitrust settlement that Sun won against Microsoft in 2004.

The financial details of the deal haven’t been disclosed as of yet. Sun has posted a $1.7 billion loss in the third quarter of 2008.

Sun has signed a similar deal with Google in the past but that deal is ending.

Microsoft has also recently signed a deal with Hewlett Packard to make the search engine by Microsoft the default on all computers shipped to the US and Canada starting in January. The browser toolbar will also be included on those computers.

According to Norton, 35% of all online search is done from the either the address bar, built-in search fields and toolbars.

Chrome is coming! Google’s open source browser project, is coming out in Windows beta. It will be available here soon. This comic by Scott McCloud, creator of the classic Understanding Comics, does a nice job of explaining the technical details. Here is a brief summary:

Extreme tab makeover: Instead of traditional tabs below the address bar (like Firefox), Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window.

Multi-process design: This is said to use “a bit more memory up front” but it splits up the processing jobs of individual tabs. It’s similar to the design used in operating systems, with multiple processes happening at the same time. One advantage is that an error that would normally cause your whole browser to crash will now only crash that particular tab. Also, when web pages or plug-ins use a lot of memory, you can spot them in Chrome’s task manager.

Other streamlining: The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features (I am skeptical here, only because I have never used an implementation of auto-complete that wasn’t annoying). And when you open a new tab, instead of getting a blank page or your homepage, you will see your most visited webpages as 9 screenshot thumbnails. On the side, you will also see a couple of your recent searches and your recently bookmarked pages, as well as recently closed tabs. There are many other features, including a privacy mode, as well as anti-phishing and anti-malware safeguards that keep updating and warn against malicious sites.

Anyway, I’m excited to check out what I expect will be the next generation of web browsers. It’s nice to see that this is an open source project. It seems Google is betting big on the OSS (open source software) model. I think it will work. And I find it interesting how quietly Google goes about taking over… everything.

Note: This article is cross-posted at Tom’s Two Cents.

The browser wars have been heating up lately with the recent releases of Firefox 3 and Opera 9.5. As a long-time Phoenix Firebird Firefox user and recent convert to Opera Mini (which is excellent, btw) on my Treo, I thought I’d run these two through their paces to see what they are made of. The hits and misses after the jump.

Opera 9.5

Opera 9.5 actually came out about a week or so before Firefox 3, so it was the one I tried out first. Opera takes a kind of “kitchen sink” approach and is arguably the most feature packed browser out there. For the most part, this approach works really well. Most browsers couldn’t duplicate the functionality of Opera, and it would take dozens of extensions (which often don’t work when new versions of Firefox come out) to try to pull off the same effect in Firefox.

Here are some of the notable features built-in to Opera:

• Built-in browser sync (even to Opera Mini on my Treo!, try that with Weave)
• An excellent download manager
• Built-in ad content-blocker
• Session management
• Wand (auto-form filler on steroids)
• Web development tool
• A unique trash can approach for recently closed tabs
• A novel speed dial start page

The best, and most notable, “feature” of Opera is its speed however. It really is incredibly fast. It starts almost instantly; actually everything happens pretty much instantly. It is easily the fastest full service (i.e. not K-melon) browser I’ve ever used. Opera also has a pretty good security track record and is even more obscure than Firefox (smaller target for hackers).

While I really appreciate that I don’t have to basically roll my own browser (I’m looking at you and your extensions Firefox), Opera may suffer from a few too many features. Does a modern web browser really need an IRC or email client? Both clients are just average implementations, and the really odd part is how they show up as tabs in the browser right next to web pages. That said, you don’t have to use or enable them if you don’t want to.

The biggest problem I have is with the rendering in Opera 9.5. While most (>95%) of the sites I visited rendered fine, quite a few blogs and Netflix didn’t look right. Even though most of the blogs probably suffer from poor HTML coding and lack of compliance to web standards, it is still something that was a bother. Firefox has always rendered quirky sites well.

Firefox 3

Now onto the reigning “alternative” browser champ, Firefox; here is the quick take on its latest installment. The good: all of the features of Firefox 2. The bad: not really anything new since Firefox 2. The speed has improved a bit and it hasn’t crashed on me yet (should that really be a feature?), but I really have to ask myself what else Mozilla has been doing during the almost two years between Firefox 2 and 3.

Here are the only features I’ve found notable in Firefox 3:

• Scales/zooms images using a higher quality bilinear (or maybe bicubic, see image to the right) method instead of using a low quality “nearest neighbor” approach (finally someone did it!)
• Download manager back-end has really been improved (resume actually works now), it is too bad they ruined the front-end UI for it however

There really aren’t many other new features but most of them fall under the “different, but not necessarily better” category for me. Yeah, yeah, the bookmarks use a database now, but I’m still trying to figure out how that benefits me or why I should care, the “AwesomeBar” is a bit short on awesomeness, and the one-click bookmarking is only easier if you never organize your bookmarks.

The Verdict

The verdict? I’m still using Firefox. The page rendering problems and something about the Opera UI just doesn’t suit me well. Other than that though it is clearly the better browser; I will definitely be following its development. I am probably just too used to Firefox really; especially the keyboard shortcuts for tabs. If I was already an Opera user I could not think of a single reason why I would switch to Firefox though. If you aren’t happy with your current browser you should definitely check Opera out.

…one more thing about Firefox

Back in the day one of my favorite web browsers didn’t really improve much for a long time, remember it? It was Netscape 4 and they weren’t even the underdog. If Mozilla wants to maintain their momentum they need to bring their A-game, there is some stiff competition these days (Opera, IE, Safari) who are all actually innovating.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

While Walt Mossberg is getting buzz for calling Firefox 3 the “best browser for web — for now,” I thought I’d point out my first time paying for something to do with a browser. I purchased the Dictionary Tooltip extension for Firefox 2 for $3.99. And while I’m anxious to give Firefox 3 a try, I’m waiting for the big kick off later this month.

Actually, that was really my only reservation for paying for an extension: whether or not it will work with Firefox 3. As I’ve mentioned before, Firefox 2 is my browser of choice despite the at least weekly lock ups and slow downs due to memory leaks. The reason being that I really like the dozen or so extensions that help streamline my browsing experience in a way not possible with other available browsers.

But the memory leaks and slow downs are frustrating. And losing half my functionality each time I want to upgrade to a new version is even more frustrating (since extensions break version to version). But having said all that, I still found myself willing to pay $3.99 for an extension one month before it might stop working just for how cool and useful it is to me.

In fact, perhaps I’m alone here, but I wouldn’t hesitate in paying $3.99 for every extension I use if it meant a seamless upgrade from version to version of Firefox. Otherwise, I guess it’s true that “you get what you pay for.” And, for now, I’m only willing to pay for really useful extensions insomuch as my ownership appears to be limited to the current version of Firefox.

Anyone else out there willing to pay for extensions?

I’ve chimed in on my opinion of Firefox 3 and the browser’s direction before, but the latest “news” on Firefox 3 has me rolling my eyes. Mozilla is trying to set a new Guinness world record for “most software downloads in 24 hours.” Is it just me or is this a lame attempt to look like a plucky underdog?

Get this though, they are launching this “Download Day” promotion and they don’t even know when Firefox 3 will be coming out, “but it should be in June.” Rule #1 for any sort of promotional day, figure out when it will be before you tell people about it. There also isn’t any existing record so they want to “outdo the number of Firefox 2 downloads on its launch day” which was only 1.6 million, but they throw out 5 million as a sky’s-the-limit goal.

Now I don’t have any of Microsoft’s server logs, but something tells me that with the Windows install base nearing one billion, they have probably had software with more that 5 million downloads in a day at Windows Update alone. It might even happen every month on patch Tuesday.

Mozilla should stick to focusing on the software and leave the gimmicks at home. But with it looking like Firefox’s only compelling improvement being that it doesn’t leak memory like a sieve (which is more of a bug fix right?), I guess they have to get what they can get.

You can follow their race for the record on various social networks, twitter, and even “pledge” on SpreadFirefox.com. How cute.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.

A New York Times article reminded me of my love/hate relationship with Firefox. The article points out that Firefox 3 will be released next month with a bunch of new features. While the new feature list seems impressive on the surface, the truth is that I love Firefox for its extensions more than its features.

Right now, though, I get frustrated with Firefox 2 at least weekly due to lock ups and slow downs associated with memory leaks. A couple times it has frustrated me to the point of switching to another browser (including the beta of Firefox 3). But in each of those cases, I’ve switched back within days. The price I pay in lock ups and slow downs still feels less than the price I pay in loss of functionality by giving up my extensions when switching to another browser.

Along with the new feature set, Firefox 3 apparently runs faster and uses less memory. Don’t get me wrong, fancy new features and better performance is exactly what I want. But will I have to give up my current usability to get it? How long after Firefox 3 is released will I need to wait before the extension problem is fixed?

Firefox, mostly via its extensions, is my browser of choice. But as long as I have to take two steps backward before taking one step forward, I’m going to be disappointed with each new version release every time.

For more on this topic, check out A Tale of Two Betas: Firefox 3 and Internet Explorer 8 and Extensions are a double-edged sword – A Firefox 3 Preview.

For those uninitiated, RSS is generally thought to stand for “Really Simple Syndication,” a name that’s almost as useless as the acronym in explaining what it is. In short, it’s an online technology that allows you to read headlines/articles from news websites, blogs, and other sources all in one place (see example pictured below).

It can be a huge time saver, making it so that you don’t have to browse the Internet to check out the latest content from your top 50 sites (or however many). RSS strips all that information from the original site and consolidates it into one area for you to quickly see content from all over the place.

So instead of typing in the 50 different website addresses into your browser every time you want to see what’s new on any of your favorite sites, you have it all in one place. And what’s better: every time one of the sites updates with new content, you get the new content almost immediately.

You can find sites that support it by looking for the little orange button (pictured above, much larger than usual), though little orange buttons don’t offer much in the way of helping consumers understand what they are. TechConsumer has a slightly bigger button in the top right but with no description. We recently added a bold Subscribe to TechConsumer line followed by the orange button at the bottom of every article to make it more obvious.

But unless you’re familiar with how it works, clicking on an RSS icon or link is only the first step. That simply beings the process of putting an RSS feed into your RSS reader. An RSS reader is the application you use to combine/read all the content from the sites you have chosen. The reader can be online (like the free Google Reader, pictured below), a desktop application, or built-in to your Internet browser.

Since instructions for this process are usually not present on most websites, the service hasn’t been catching on. Right now, only a little over 2 percent of online consumers take advantage of RSS. The nondescript, technical name chosen plus the lack of instructions for how to use it are the likely culprits of average consumers ignoring it.

In theory, the latest versions of Internet Explorer and Firefox should make using RSS easier, as the service is now built into both browsers. But still, it’s the type of service you need to see in action before you’re likely to convert. Though once converted, you’re not likely to go back to browsing the Web the traditional way.

Note: This article is cross-posted at BobCaswell.com.

With the news of Firefox 3 Beta 1 being released, I just couldn’t help myself. I wanted to see what was in store for the Orange Carnivore from Mountain View. A short 6.4MB download and I was installing; everything went without a hitch. Here’s the good and the bad of it all.

The Good

Lean: Overall Firefox seems so much leaner this time around. Even after hours of browsing with dozens of tabs open Firefox 3 is using about one-third less RAM than I typically see Firefox 2 use. The RAM savings didn’t come at the sacrifice of performance though, everything is notably quicker. Going back to previous pages, opening new ones, even the auto-completion when I typed in a URL seemed quicker. Even Google Maps seemed more responsive.

Features: While there is an entire list of changes in Firefox 3, Mozilla has added a notable one. The history and bookmarks have been combined into one database driven section called Places. Don’t be worried that the the UI has changed too much, on the surface most users won’t really notice the difference; it is more of a back end thing. They did add a new “Places” folder on the bookmark toolbar which can show recently viewed pages, tags, or starred pages. In addition, there is a completely revamped bookmarks organizer that will allow you to search your current bookmarks or history as well.

Some of the changes are much more subtle. The search box has been changed so that you can now resize it to any arbitrary size you want. When you scroll through tabs when there are more than can fit on the screen, they have added some animation to make it more clear what is happening.

If you zoom in or out on a webpage (ctrl-plus or ctrl-minus) you will notice that the whole page zooms now instead of just the text. While it is a nice feature in practice, the images look horrible when scaled up. I am still waiting for a browser that will do a smooth (read: bicubic/bilinear, not nearest neighbor) resize of a scale image. If the images looked good, this could be a major feature for those with old eyes that would just like everything to be bigger on the high DPI screens being sold today. It should be noted that version 3 also remembers your page-zoom settings on a site-by-site basis now too.

The Bad

Extensions: It can be summed up in one word, Extensions. While the extensibility of Firefox is a major feature (I probably like my set of extensions more than I like Firefox really), they are a huge problem when it comes to upgrades. Out of the eleven extensions I use, only one works with Firefox 3. That means, no weather, Gmail, Google Toolbar or Bookmark Sync, Image Zoom, Firebug, etc. Now I know some of these will probably be compatible by the time version three dot zero is released, but I’ll bet most of them still won’t. And until 95% of them work, I won’t be upgrading to Firefox 3.

The Verdict: Firefox 3 is a solid, but progressive upgrade. I won’t be adopting it though until at least six months after its release. I don’t know what the technical solution is for the Extensions, but Mozilla needs to figure out something with this. It is unacceptable that one of the biggest features of their product is incompatible from version to version. It happened when 1.5 came out, 2.0, and now 3.0. This is an area where Microsoft has typically excelled.

* Disclaimer: If you plan on checking out Firefox 3 for yourself, make sure you backup your Firefox user profile first.

Note: This article is cross-posted at PseudoSavant.