browsers

Google push for modern browsers

Here is a quote from this Google blog post:

[…]soon Google Apps will only support modern browsers. Beginning August 1st, we’ll support the current and prior major release of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari on a rolling basis. Each time a new version is released, we’ll begin supporting the update and stop supporting the third-oldest version.
As of August 1st, we will discontinue support for the following browsers and their predecessors: Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 7, and Safari 3. In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.

All I have to say to this is: Bravo Google! Enough is enough!

As pretty much anyone with a computer science degree, I was a big supporter of backward compatibility at the beginning of my career. Backward compatibility just comes naturally. Each and every textbook, boss, and mailing list opponent tells you to care about each and every user out there. Often, with a complete disregard for your own costs. Completely forgetting that backward compatibility is extremely expensive.

There has also been a huge change in software development since my college times. The change is called the Web. Backward compatibility was more important in the old days, when software was installed on a computer and when it had to be distributed via such inefficient ways as compact disks. Since then, software development had largely moved into the Web. Updates can be pushed out to users several times a day and they require no effort on the client side. That has to count for something. All that is asked in return is that your web browser is of a reasonably recent version. And not even that it is of any particular brand – you can chose from a few options, and you can have the choice no matter what kind of computer or operating system you use.

To those scared of the updates and what such changes can bring to them, consider other example, which exist in open source software. Fedora Linux distribution, supports less than two releases back. Painful? Maybe. But it’s a desktop oriented software collection, with a very painless upgrade process (albeit a few examples, such as a recent Fedora 15). What is the result? Most of Fedora users are upgraded to the latest or so version. Compare that with a huge chunk of enterprises running Windows XP, which is a 10 year old operating system, and you can see the difference.

Most modern browsers provide automatic upgrade functionality, which makes user life so much easier that there is really no reason not to upgrade. The only argument for older browsers that I’ve heard to now is support of legacy applications that only work in specific versions of specific browsers. And you know what, I have no problem with getting rid of those. The world will be a better place. It’s been years since we have web standards, browsers that support them, and plenty of tools that assist in development and migration. If you haven’t moved your application in all these years, chances are you’ll never will. In which case, you deserve all the troubles that you are about to get. The world shouldn’t hold its breath waiting for you to upgrade.

Heck, when even Microsoft is jumping out of its pants for people to upgrade MSIE 6 to something newer, you know there is a problem. And solving it once and for all (rolling release version support) is an excellent approach. I hope more people will follow this example.

P.S.: Please excuse the lack of links. The things I mentioned have been discussed many times all around the web and I do see them as obvious truth. Those of you who need references, shouldn’t have any troubles finding some. If you do – let me know.

Firefox 4 is awesome!

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that I switched my default browser a few times already. I went from Mozilla Firefox and Opera to Google Chrome and back a few times. Recently, I’ve been very satisfied with Google Chrome. The main advantage of it is that its super fast. And the initial downside – extensions – got way better now. There is pretty much any extension that I need. Some extensions still have a bit of Firefox catching up to do, but overall, I’m covered.

Recently, Firefox 4 was released. There has been quite a few improvements, especially in the area that concerned me the most – performance. Firefox 4 is blazing fast. Not as fast as Google Chrome, but pretty close. But. It also has a few things that I wanted for a long time and that Google Chrome doesn’t have yet. Here are the two features that were a deciding factor for me to switch back to Firefox as my primary browser for the time being:

Tab groups.
Browser sync with support of the Android.

Tab groups is a feature I wanted for a really long time. In fact, I’ve blogged about it back in October of 2007! I was using hundreds of open tabs back than and not having groups was a real pain. Now I am much more moderate with my tabs, but groups still make a lot of sense. Have a look at the screenshot below.

With just a couple of clicks I can now group related tabs into groups. When I switch between groups, in the list of tabs I see only the tabs open within the current group. This saves plenty of time and confusion. Also it makes keeping track of open tabs much easier. Tabs can be dragged from one group to another group. Groups can be renamed, rearranged, resized, and so on. When I’m done with the task, I can close either a single tab or a whole group. And I can even undo the closing operation on both. Now that is the tool to boost productivity!

The new Firefox 4 also has the browser synchronization functionality, with which one can sync several computers and (now) even mobile devices. You can choose what to synchronize and where. Bookmarks, history, passwords, form data, and even open tabs are supported! And this solves yet another problem for me. I’ve been looking for an elegant solution to send URLs from my desktop to the mobile and back. It’s a problem that I have on a daily basis. And now it’s solved! I simply installed Firefox 4 for Android on my mobile, enabled browser synchronization, and that was it.

With these new features in, and much improved performance, I don’t see any reason for why I shouldn’t switch to Firefox 4. So that is exactly what I am doing starting today.

On a separate note, I have to once again highlight how important are competition and open standards. Competition brings in the cutting edge technology and much improved end user experience. Open standards allow for simple switch between different implementations. Kudos to all the open source developers, participating companies, and anyone else involved. Keep it up guys!

Does Microsoft Internet Explorer really hate Google Chrome?

The other day I wanted to install Google Chrome browser on the nearby Windows PC. Here is what I saw when I opened the download page in Microsoft Internet Explorer.

To help protect security, Internet Explorer blocked this site from downloading files to your computer.

I know, it’s probably a generic protection against downloading executable files, but it’s still funny. Especially, the bit about MSIE protecting security by blocking Google Chrome. Yeah, right.

Happy 6th birthday, Firefox!

Download Squad reminds us that it has only been 6 years that Firefox is with us. That’s true, but I find it so hard to believe. What was the web experience before Firefox came along? I remember that Firefox made it way better, but I don’t really remember how bad it was before that. And even though I spend most of these days using Google Chrome, I clocked thousands of hours in Firefox and it is almost like a relative to me.

Happy birthday dear browser! Best wishes and may you continue to improve, especially now that you have some competition to get you going.

Google Translate tip for Google Chrome

Here is something that I thought of today, played with, and found quite useful – integration of Google Translate with Google Chrome via the search engine configuration. Of course, I know that there are addons for Google Chrome to integrate Google Translate. Of course, I know that Google Chrome comes with certain integration out of the box. But what I need is something else. Once in a while, when I write an email or a blog post or something like that I’d forget a word in English that I know in Russian, or the other way around. I usually open a new tab, go to Google Translate, and type the word in faster than I think of a better way to solve the problem. It’s a completely automated process for me. My fingers know how to do it. Plus it’s all so fast because I do it from the keyboard with shortcuts, so even if I’d have some addon installed with a button in the toolbar, I’d need to reach for the mouse, which would slow me down.

So, here is what I did. I went to Options->Basics->Default Search->Manage. Of course, I didn’t want to change my default search engine from Google to anything. Instead I wanted to add a new search engine. See the above screenshot. I named the search engine “Google Translate (English->Russian)” to avoid ambiguity when I add more search engines for translations between other languages. I assigned the keyword “en,ru”, which is what I’ll have to type in the address bar for this search engine to kick in. And I configured the search URL. Nothing fancy.

Now, whenever I type “en,ru” in the browser address bar, Google Chrome switches from generic completion to a search engine, where I just have to type the word that I want translated and hit Enter. Again, see the screenshot above for how the address bar looks.

In exactly the same way I can add more search engines to translate between different languages. It’s even possible to use “auto” as the source language for Google Translate to figure out in which language the original word or phrase is. And, of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to Google Translate search engines only. I have search engines defined for PHP functions lookup, Wikipedia and IMDb searches, and more. The trick is to find the search URL by performing the actual search on the site that you want to add, and then replace the search query with “%s”. That’s all. Enjoy!