I find it fascinating to see the variance in browser use in the diverse regions of the world, and nowhere is that variance more apparent than in mobile web browsers. While in the West we may be used to Chrome and Safari being more or less the only game in town, elsewhere in the world the story is quite different. In this article I’m going to take a look at a few charts which illustrate that difference.
The stats used here are collected from the 30 days prior to 25th August, taken from StatCounter.com. They come with the usual disclaimer about the impossibility of getting completely accurate data, and don’t always include feature phone browsers, so should therefore be treated as indicative rather than conclusive. With the caveats out of the way, let’s begin.
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I’ve spent a lot of time in my career writing and talking about future web features, from CSS3 to Web Components. But I’ve recently come to realise that, while I still think these features are important, I’ve been missing out on the bigger picture: the survival of the open web. That sounds hyperbolic, I know, but so many articles I’ve read, conversations I’ve had, and behaviours I’ve observed, have led me to the conclusion that the open web, in the form we know it now, is under threat.
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Two things happened last week: news leaked that Opera are planning to launch a new browser based on WebKit; and the new discussion tool, Branch, came out of private beta. As an experiment, I want to talk about the first on the second, so I invite you to read and participate in my branch Opera Ice: New browser for Android and iPhone coming Februa….
The Xbox 360 software update is due to roll out today, and among the many new features brings an Internet Explorer app, letting you browse the web on your TV (if you’re an Xbox Live Gold member). I was part of the Beta test programme and have been using Xbox IE for a few months, so here follow some of my thoughts, in a kind of review. Apologies in advance for the crappy photos.
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This weekend I attended the London Web Standards group’s State of the Browser, a one-day event with representatives of many of the major browser makers giving us status reports on their products. Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Blackberry were all there; a member of the IE team was due to show but had to pull out for personal reasons (he viewed the live stream and answered some questions from home). The notable absence was Safari, whose community engagement is really not good enough.
There were long talks and shorter breakout sessions, as well as plenty of time to socialise; the LWS must really be congratulated on organising such a good event. There was plenty of news and talking points throughout the day — far too much, really, for me to write here, so I’ll just write up notes of what I found most interesting to me.
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I downloaded the IE9 Beta last night, and while I haven’t had the chance to give it a proper once-over yet, I’m pretty impressed with its capabilities so far. The real star is the hardware acceleration, which opens pages so fast it seems like magic. The new HTML5 and CSS3 support is very welcome.
You can read an in-depth review of it at ZDNet, except it seems to be written by someone who doesn’t really understand CSS very well.
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